"A gem of a RPG, very underrated"

Legaia 2 is the sequel to the excellent PSX RPG Legend of Legaia, and it certainly doesn't disappoint fans of the innovative RPG series. An innovative fighter-style battle system combined with a great story (which, admittedly, takes a while to become good) makes a great RPG, but it has flaws. Battles are too often, and constantly drag on, the voices are...horrible...putting it mildly, and you'll have to revisit older areas constantly (some may like that. I don't.). Fortunately, only few of those actually affect the entire game.

LoL2's (LOL!) storyline starts off slow, but picks up as the game goes on. When the water-giving crystal Aqualith is stolen from your town of Nohl, you, Lang, set off on a journey to retrieve it, but in the end, find yourself in a bigger mess than before. You'll meet up with 4 others, who also want to save the world. Some parts are stupid, and are just lame excuses to have you go through previous dungeons again and again. This really detracts from the overall experience.

The battle system in RPGs are usually the most important aspect. Without a good battle system, a RPG usually becomes monotonous. Legaia 2's battle system is both innovative and fun. Instead of choosing commands like attack to perform a generic attack, you have to input directions to perform arts, or super attacks. Arts have a certain direction combination, that you can uncover through either trial and error and dumb luck or art books which teach you new special arts. Normal arts increase your AP, or attack power, which you in turn use to perform super arts, which do more damage but reduce AP. The super arts are the key to victory. There are also two different types of secret arts that do tons of damage but reduce AP, and other attributes. These are variable arts that reduce AP and take two characters to do, and mystic arts, that are sort of desperation attacks. They require full AP, at least half your HP and 100 MP. These do amazing amounts of damage and are usually reserved for bosses.

Magic is done using origins, or Ra-Seru in the first LoL. As you go through the game and increase levels, so do your origins which learn new abilities. Each character has a different element origin, so you'll have to use them often to destroy enemies. Each attack has its own animation, similar to FF8 GFs, but very fortunately, not that long. Origins also heal, and increase defense or attack attributes for that battle.

Legaia 2 is extremely hard, a refreshing change of pace from the easy RPGs that have been released recently. The earlier battles are tough, but at a point in the game the difficulty level suddenly ramps up and you'll find yourself struggling to survive even the most common of random battles. Health is lost extremely easily, so healing items are a necessity. I guess the difficulty is a trend in this series, LoL1 was also hard...darn Berserker!

Legaia 2 also has some innovative features. You can combine weapons, armor and accessories using materials found after defeating monsters. This is really useful as it takes no cash, which will be sorely needed as the prices for weapons and armor jack up really high late in the game. You can camp in the game, where you can save, rest, chat with your teamates, combine and cook using recepies that you find usually from inns. These food increases attributes by huge amounts temporarily, which becomes invaluable with the extreme difficulty. Ingredients are needed obviously, you can buy them or get from monsters (I still don't see how you can get pork from bats :D ).

There are plenty of side-quests in this game, all found in the side-quest shop ( :D ) in a certain town. These range from killing monsters to finding people in sewers. The rewards is money, ranging from little, to an amazing amount. Mini-games are also present, such as flower-growing, an amazingly boring ''game'' to side-jumping, an interesting game. These break up the monotony of the game, but hey, what mini-game doesn't break up monotony?
The Centurion Challenge is the real only main side-quest. It is where you go through a small narrow cave filled with headstones, each one leading to a battle. The first few are already tough, I can't imagine the later ones :D

As usual, there are flaws, like every game. The voices are totally mismatched, and don't sound natural at all. They are very fake, and you'll cringe when you hear them. Very uninspired. You'll also eventually have to revisit every area countless times, including dungeons. This gets really bad and boring, to cover up the lack of a really great story. One more very important thing, is that there is no world map. I hope this doesn't become a trend, as I personally hate it. But I guess it is required in a game where you have to revisit places multiple times. Battles are too often. You'll fight battles far too many times, and they constantly drag on, so you'll find yourself fighting in battles for too much time. It gets extremely boring. This dragging on could be good if the battles were rarer, but this isn't the case. Unfortunate.

Graphics in Legaia 2 are average, remenicent of early PSX RPGs, or even DC RPGs. The only good things are the excellent details on the backgrounds and characters. There is actual individual finger movement! Amazing! This is truly next-gen! The animation is also good, especially in battle. The art animations are excellent and nice to look at. The battle backgrounds are good as well. One major downfall is that the enemies are usually just different colors of previous enemies. How come so many RPGs are catching the ''Dragon Warrior syndrome'' of enemies being the same except for a color palette change? Character design is excellent, best ones include Lang, Stiel and Rauss. Some are just uninspired, such as Balken and his spawn.
One extremely cool aspect is that when Lang equips a new sword, in battle you can see it, and most of them are very cool. A nice touch to add to the overall graphics.

Sound and music isn't anything memorable. The typical fast-paced music for battles, and slow-paced music for emotional scenes. Towns have the usual jolly festive music typical in RPGs. In battles, the characters have their dumb quips before attacking, such as ''Take this!'' Typical average stuff. The voices are extremely bad, as I've said earlier.

Legaia 2 is very long, but most of that playtime is spent in battles and training, because of the ramped up difficulty. There are some good moments though :D The first Sharon meeting comes to mind.

Overall, Legaia 2 is a great RPG that will certainly tide you over till the next major release. Pick this gem of a title up, you won't be disappointed.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 11/15/02, Updated 12/02/02