~ THE LEGEND OF HEROES II ~
Falcom / Hudson Soft
Super CD-ROM
1992
Fans of the first Legend of Heroes will feel very comfortable with this follow-up. Say hello again to a little playfield and littler sprites...
...and reacquaint yourself with an easy-to-use, super-fast battle system. On an unfortunate note, the enemy designs remain lackluster.
Not everything stayed the same. While the original could easily be conquered in under ten hours, this one might well require thirty your first time through it. That might sound like a good thing, but you have to spend so much of that extra time accumulating money and experience that the adventure becomes a miserable grind at times. It didn't wreck the game for me, as I'm not one to mind some perfunctory leveling, but you'd better make sure you won't mind it either before you get going here. Many obligatory, unexciting battles await you.
But the responsibility for maintaining the player's interest for a quest three times as long as the one that preceded it apparently encouraged LoH2's designers to step things up as far as storytelling goes. While LoH indulged in anime-style theatrics only during its opening and closing sequences, its sequel boasts between-chapter cinematic intermissions. This is mainly conversation-type stuff, though, nothing particularly exciting or mind-blowing...
...and the best artistry and a little more flair are still to be found at the beginning and end of the quest.
These portraits tell a tale intended to be a few-years-later continuation of the story we experienced the first chapter of in LoH. Since the crafters of this tale didn't want to have you traipse around the same old overworld locations for another full quest, they came up with an alternative primary setting: an incredibly intricate network of underground tunnels. Nope, you won't be retracing many of the steps you took in LoH; instead, you'll spend hours and hours and hours and hours trying to find your way around bleak, dark tunnel mazes. Needless to say, the "environments" get a little dull.
One potentially enjoyable element of those tunnel journeys is the challenge of evading enemies. In the first game, you needed to obtain special items to be able to see where hostile creatures were positioned on the map. Now, roving monster groups appear as black blobs without any item-finding required, and these blobs are often numerous and sometimes extremely aggressive. Pulling off your best Barry Sanders moves to dodge an undesirable encounter can actually be lots of fun.
Another interesting play element is the magic system. Instead of costing typical MP, each spell has its own "vial" displayed in the character-stats sidebar; a vial empties when the spell it represents is cast, and it gradually refills as you go about your business on the field screen, with certain powerful spells requiring more recharging time than others. It's definitely a neat system, perhaps not preferable when all is said and done to the traditional method, but cool and effective enough for a one-game go.
More than merely effective is the music, which is flat-out exceptional at times. As was the case with the first game's tunes, LoH2's tracks are basically Ys-like arrangements that might be hard-pressed to make the final cut for an Ys adventure, but still, some of these town and cave numbers are absolutely fantastic.
Character design is also an LoH2 strength. True, you still have to tolerate a precocious blonde kid as the lead, but he has likable fellows to travel with and heinous villains to confront.
LoH2 isn't great overall, failing even to measure up to its predecessor. But it retains many of the solid gameplay elements that the successful first title relied on, introduces some cool new ideas, and delivers more good music. As long as you won't mind the tunnel treks and excessive grinding too much, you should find it to be a PCE RPG worth experiencing.
