The Original Legend of Legaia on the PSX was everything an RPGer could dream of. A unique battle system, lots of difficulty and a good storyline too. When I heard of the sequel, I waited and waited and when it finally got here it was very well done and the battle system was even refined. But the game didn't have that great storyline and the difficulty that the first one gave off was lost. But this was made up for with tons of sidequests and great character developement.The gameplay is much like the first one. However, there's a difference. You'll be asked LOTS of question that you must make a choice too. This helps you develope your character. The choices you make affect the dialogue in the game and how others view your character. Thus, you're developing your OWN chracter. Also, characters get nicknames in this, which also define how they're viewed. Interesting boost of gameplay (and try and find ALL the nicknames for EVERY character).
The battle system has been a little redone. Where as in the first one, normal battles could get teadiously long, this one allows for you to shorten those battles. For example, there are arts that add AP to your AP gauge (I'm assuming that most of you have played the first one) and they never subtract. Then you've got super arts which detract from your AP gauge. The only way to fill up an AP gauge is to use normal arts. This is a good idea but there are tricks to the point where you could use the same combo over and over full of a bunch of normal arts and the use a super art or a hyper art (A VERY POWERFUL attack) and NEVER lose AP. This made the game severely easy and I was already doing 25000 HP of damage to enemies by level 30! That's really sad (and considering I'm a maniac at raising levels my level 90 characters killed the final boss in one round). You have art techniques that are much too powerful making the difficulty level of this game seem like a joke.
The storyline in the game was not as good as the first Legaia. You've got no serus or ra-serus this time. Instead each chracter has an "Origin" because they are a "Mystic." The main guy is trying to destory the world and revive it with only mystics or something like that...must've dozed off halfway through the storyline. Why? Because the story moves at an incredibly slow pace. Not only that but the way its told seems like a rip off of the very first FINAL FANTASY game! You go around collecting the sacred stones so that you can restore the world back to the way it was. Sort of like the role the crystal's played in Final Fantasy and Final Fantasy V. The dialogue is also a little annoying at times as there are parts where some of it is useless and meaningless. But at least whatever your next task to do is always highlighted in blue making it easier to never get lost.
Wandering on the world map isn't slow like it was in Legend of Legaia. But that's because you can't explore the overworld at all. I'm not mad at this very much but it makes so that you must talk to another character to reveal the location of the next town or dungeon. There aren't any hidden dungeons either. The only hidden locations on the world map are shops. But the shops are very useful...
As far as secrets and sidequests go this game is chalk full of them. There is a hunter's guild to do which contains several sidequests that provide a challenge. There is also a hidden dungeon in town that has 100 battles to do (and that takes a hell of a long time!). Also, your chracters are always hanging out around town when you visit them. Talking to them reveals different things and each time you leave the town and come back they're in a different location. This helps further develop the chracters and gives the game more interface.
THe music in the game is somewhat weak. Battle music is great but dungeons are annoying. They also took tunes from "Legend of Legaia" and that music was beautiful. The problem was that they took TOO MANY tunes. While some are remastered and played smoother, they got annoying at times.
The game presents a long 40 hour or so and it's A WHOLE LOT MORE if you decide to attempt all the sidequests in the game and learn all the nicknames and such.
OVERALL: I could tell you more but the game is immensely huge giving for much more RPG goodness than any other RPG I've seen before.
On the good side
+Improved Battle system
+More character developement
+Lots of interface
+A deep story nonetheless
+Nice graphcis
+Good music at some parts
+Lots of "Legend of Legaia" nostalgia
+TONS of sidequests
But on the downside
-Improved battle system makes the game VERY easy
-Too much old music and not enough new
-Magic animations are too long
-Slow paced story
-Weak story (though deep)
The original "Legend of Legaia" was a delightful game. Started out feeling simplistic and child-like, ended up surprisingly stirring and sophisticated. The graphics fit the style of the game, and it was the first game I ever played where the characters' outfits changed drastically in combat as they got new weapons, armor and accessories. It was truly a gem for the PSX.The new game sacrifices most of the charm for "improved" graphics, which are shockingly bland. The colors are very drab, the characters festooned with strange lines that are supposed to delineate muscle tone, and the camera just sits squarely on the floor, with very few dramatic angles used throughout the game. It's a very boring game to look at, honestly.
The music...how can I say it? I understand reusing themes in new arrangements, but they've reused the music with no improvement in instrumentation or arrangement. It was a marked disappointment.
The only good thing this game kept from the original is the combat system, and the improvements made there are dubious at best: I liked the concept of "charging up" your AP gauge and your arts bar with a "Guard" move...it required me to make decisions about how to fight every single turn. In the new game, the Normal Arts moves add AP, and the Super Arts and Hyper Arts consume it. With special items, the length of your arts bar changes, but is always fixed, otherwise. As a result, I can set up an efficient combination of Normal Arts and Hyper Arts that will prevent my AP gauge from dropping at all. Entire lengthy battles played simply by mashing the X button repeatedly. Yawn.
Cooking is a fun addition to the game, as is combining to improve your Weapons, Armor, Items and Accessories. With Cooking, you can bump your stats up (and sometimes down) for several battles, plus get a little conversation going with your characters. The major complaint I have about Cooking is that the game doesn't keep the effects of Cooking a secret: the very first time you cook something, you know what impact it will have on your characters. Combining--particularly for Weapons and Armor--greatly resembles the weapon upgrade system in Final Fantasy 8, but with a lot more options available to you. It would have been nice to find a manual of sorts to tell you what could be upgraded to what, what you would need to make the upgrade, and where you'd be likely to find it. To fill my needs, I simply bought or traded for junk whenever I could, then tried to see what new combinations I could produce. Fun, but a bit aimless and frustrating. Combining Acessories was the most enjoyable to me, because I could always see what new skills I'd get before making the combination, and the skills can make-or-break your combat (for example, you really need anti-berserk to win the fight in the Gambler's Arena mini-game).
The story was...mmm...okay. I kept waiting for it to get started, or to throw a twist or two my way. As it is, the primary story consists of exactly what you expect it to: main character meets some other characters after initial meeting with the main bad guy, then goes and collects some stuff in the process of undermining the main bad guy's plan. No surprises.
The characters are reasonably interesting, and I really liked the firecracker attitude they gave Sharon (though her in-battle quips got seriously annoying after the thousandth battle). There does seem to be a lot of depth about the characters and many side opportunities to discover hidden surprises about them. I especially liked the consistent approach to responding to questions that was employed with Lang: whether you chose to have him agree, disagree, or tell someone off, his responses to questions posed by the NPCs were credible and in character. It was easy to make him a smart-mouth sometimes and have him be understated at other times without feeling like he was suddenly a different character.
Overall, it was an entertaining game, but a little shallow and with combat that looks spectacular but which was ultimately tedious--it was generally more entertaining to set the characters to Auto combat than to watch them perform the same moves over and over and over and over again.
If you liked the first one, you'll enjoy this one, yes. If you didn't like the first one, you'll like this even less. If you haven't played either but are interested, get "Legend of Legaia" instead--it plays well on the PS2 and has a much more engrossing storyline.
