This was a game that I had dived into immediately after finishing Shadow Dragon and as such, all of the characters and everything were fresh in the mind, which helped a great deal. To begin with, this game has an enormous cast of over 100 characters that you can recruit into your army, and this is both a boon and a curse.

Of course, you have a very wide selection of characters to choose from and that's very fun, as well as getting to see all of the characters return from Shadow Dragon and all the new things that they do. But at the same time, there are an overwhelming number of people. I refused to let anyone perish and as such, my party was so large and so, so many characters went unused.

All the same, the story is an interesting one and has the first 'avatar' unit, allowing you to have someone fully customized for your run and being able to handle pretty much any role you need filled.

The maps are fun although there are quite a few too many caster enemies the further you get into the game so Resistance becomes far far more useful than Defense as it goes on, and some of the maps are so sprawling that your flying units are basically required...but all-in-all it's a worthy successor to Shadow Dragon and I enjoyed it immensely.