Vandal Hearts II

"Some how it's worse than the original"

For what it's worth I liked the original Vandal hearts. It wasn't anything special but it was a little cheesy and the blood made it fun. I was very excited about starting this sequel because I heard it had a better plot and better graphics which were both problems I had with the original. Is all well though?

A young man is in love with the mayor's daughter. They are best friends. When the mayor loses his position a new corrupt person takes his place. While it sounds like your typical srpg plot it isn't. It changes a little mid way and while some clichés still remain it does take a slightly interesting turn of events. Sadly I didn't like any of the characters this time around either. They some how felt even more generic this time around.

On one hand we do have some better graphics. The locations seem more put together, not as many seems showing and more solid and real. The problem is that everything is kind of muddy in the texture department. Besides that we have some of the ugliest character models. Humans look as if they are stick people. The portraits while better this time still look stupid.

The music is exactly bad it's just very limited. It has the typical sound to it but by the 10th mission I was sick of hearing the same few songs over and over. No voice work this time either, you need to read all of the text on the black screens this time. The sound effects did nothing for me either and I don't even remember how in-depth they went.

Control had me confused for far too long. Like Metal Gear Solid and most Konami games circle is okay and X is cancel. I just couldn't get that into my head for some reason. Besides that there really aren't any problems but an on screen guide would have been helpful for the first mission or two.

The average srpg has you moving your guys on a grid to attack the others. Once your guys move it's time for the enemy to take their turn.

Well, this game doesn't do that and because of that it makes the entire thing a guessing game that becomes so frustrating that it's almost unplayable.

This game has it so while you set your man to move a random guy on the other team starts moving at the same time. The problem is that your guy still goes where you sent him, which may or may not be where the enemy is now.

Your character can only move once per turn and it's only so many spaces and the enemy needs to be near early on since you only have melee attacks. It's too annoying to keep walking past an enemy because of such a lame idea.

The game offers no classes so everyone can equip whatever they want. So no real strategy is required besides randomly guessing who may or may not move while each of your guys moves towards a target.

I really don't know what else to say. The game has about 50 or so missions. If the main guy dies its game over which just adds to my anger with this game. I've just never witnessed something as broken as this idea. The game also offers some side quests and seems way more forgiving with leveling up. Besides that there are also three different endings (bad, good and perfect).

While it has mildly improved the areas that needed work in the original, this game has butchered the core game play by trying to be different. While it does seem more realistic it causes more of a frustration than anything else because the guys will usually just end up walking by each other which we all know really wouldn't happen. Perhaps if some AI feature allowed an auto targeting for passing by but no it doesn't do that. This is the worst srpg I have ever had the misfortune of playing,

Story - 8/10
Graphics - 6/10
Sound - 5/10
Control - 8/10
Game Play - 2/10
Replay value - 4/10

Final Score - 3/10

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 09/11/07

Game Release: Vandal Hearts II (US, 11/30/99)