A decent sequel that offered some interesting mechanics and story, but did not live up to the original.
Working my way through this franchise definitely brings me a new appreciation for them. Having played during the PS1/2 era, this one was a refreshing take, but did feel like it lacked in combat. I still enjoyed my time with it and a looking forward to the rest of the series.
The story was pretty standard for the time ... a big bad takes over the land and you and your crew (a group of nobodies) take it upon yourself to set things right. You have a core team of three characters and a fourth will join your party for different parts of the campaign. This was a nice change of pace and allowed you to experiment with different builds, however there wasn't much incentive to do so.
Gameplay was completely changed up in this one. All of your characters can use any type of magic and there are no character levels. I think the idea was to give the player freedom to build their characters how they wanted, but it really just made everyone feel bland. The one thing I did like was that you levelled up a weapon type or magic by using them. It definitely had a different feel, but I mostly just ended up equipping 2 weapons on each character and only levelling up some starting magic (fire, thunder, blizzard, cure, life, and ensuna). There wasn't really a whole lot of need to do much else. I found focusing on weapon proficiency had the most gains for me, so I didn't need to have any magic specialists. The map was fairly sized, and monsters were "level capped" to different areas. This made it so you could go up against impossible scenarios right out of the gate if you weren't careful, but made it extremely grindy in the beginning to level up any of your weapons.
The overall feel of the game was similar to the prior one, but definitely felt more streamlined. Each section had you travelling to a destination which end in a dungeon (or series of dungeons) with a boss. It got a little repetitive, but the story was engaging enough with some twists and turns to make it worthwhile.
I played this entirely on Steam Deck and it ran flawlessly. 60hz/60fps and didn't break a sweat (not surprising, but still nice). I had 0 crashes or frame dips. The deck is tailored for this kind of experience. It took me just over 18 hours to complete.
Overall, I was pretty happy with the game. It had it's ups and downs, but was a net positive. I highly recommend for anyone wanting to experience the entirety of the franchise or someone who wants to see a different take on certain gameplay mechanics in an RPG/JRPG.
Working my way through this franchise definitely brings me a new appreciation for them. Having played during the PS1/2 era, this one was a refreshing take, but did feel like it lacked in combat. I still enjoyed my time with it and a looking forward to the rest of the series.
The story was pretty standard for the time ... a big bad takes over the land and you and your crew (a group of nobodies) take it upon yourself to set things right. You have a core team of three characters and a fourth will join your party for different parts of the campaign. This was a nice change of pace and allowed you to experiment with different builds, however there wasn't much incentive to do so.
Gameplay was completely changed up in this one. All of your characters can use any type of magic and there are no character levels. I think the idea was to give the player freedom to build their characters how they wanted, but it really just made everyone feel bland. The one thing I did like was that you levelled up a weapon type or magic by using them. It definitely had a different feel, but I mostly just ended up equipping 2 weapons on each character and only levelling up some starting magic (fire, thunder, blizzard, cure, life, and ensuna). There wasn't really a whole lot of need to do much else. I found focusing on weapon proficiency had the most gains for me, so I didn't need to have any magic specialists. The map was fairly sized, and monsters were "level capped" to different areas. This made it so you could go up against impossible scenarios right out of the gate if you weren't careful, but made it extremely grindy in the beginning to level up any of your weapons.
The overall feel of the game was similar to the prior one, but definitely felt more streamlined. Each section had you travelling to a destination which end in a dungeon (or series of dungeons) with a boss. It got a little repetitive, but the story was engaging enough with some twists and turns to make it worthwhile.
I played this entirely on Steam Deck and it ran flawlessly. 60hz/60fps and didn't break a sweat (not surprising, but still nice). I had 0 crashes or frame dips. The deck is tailored for this kind of experience. It took me just over 18 hours to complete.
Overall, I was pretty happy with the game. It had it's ups and downs, but was a net positive. I highly recommend for anyone wanting to experience the entirety of the franchise or someone who wants to see a different take on certain gameplay mechanics in an RPG/JRPG.