Vandal Hearts II

"Vandalized Hearts"

I am a great fan of the strategy RPG from Tactics Ogre to the original Vandal Hearts to Final Fantasy Tactics to the Front Mission series, I just love 'em.
It therefore takes a really bad strategy RPG for me to give one a bad review, and Vandal Hearts II is one of them!

Graphics 3/10
The terrain looks pretty enough, the world map also looks nice (ripped off from FFT as it is), but as for the rest..
The character sprites themselves just don't look right, they look gangly and their faces are totally goofy, and what happened to those big fountains of blood when a character died in the original VH? It's just a little spurt of blood now.
The spell effects and animations in general are nothing special either, all in all I feel like they weren't really trying.
Then there's the character portraits.. GOOD GRIEF, what an atrocity. I've not seen uglier portraits since the days of the NES, and even then they were better than this, which is quite surprising, given the beautiful character art seen in the manual.
It may not seem like a big deal, but remember that portraits are part of what represents a given character, not to mention that they're omnipresent during dialogue scenes and in status screens.

Storyline 1/10
Vandal Hearts had an interesting and compelling story that left room for a sequel, too bad VHII has absolutely nothing to do with it..
Rip off half of the storyline of Final Fantasy Tactics, mix in with pure garbage and a love story that isn't even half-assed and you get the wonderful epic that is Vandal Hearts II.
Character development is minimal, not that you'd care, because most if not all the characters in this game are utterly unlikable.
Our illustrious hero, Joshua, who has no personality, gathers together numerous companions who also have no personality to do battle against the likes of an Evil Queen, an Evil Cardinal, some Evil Knights, and an Evil Flying Fat Woman (I'm not joking) with numerous plot twists you'll see coming from several miles away (mostly involving the ''No, HE'S the REAL villain'' syndrome).

Playability 4/10
Seems like a regular turn based strategy RPG, you can have everyone in your team on the battlefield at the same time, which is a plus over the likes of FFT I suppose, too bad it's the only one.
The way you change classes is a joke, unlike TO, VH or FFT where you must work to change a unit's class, in VHII it's as easy as changing your clothes.. literally. That's all you do, put on armour and you're a knight, put on a robe and you're a mage, the only things you have to work for are spells and some abilities by equipping certain weapons, which are EASILY learned.
Instead of being purely turn based, VHII's system involves the computer moving a unit at the same time you do, this makes the game unnecessarily time consuming and frustrating, as units swing their swords in midair because their target has just moved off somewhere else during their turn.
That said, once you learn to target units that already moved the game becomes stupendously easy save for one or two hideously unfair battles that are won by pure luck.
That is NOT a way to make a game challenging, it's a sign of lazy half-assed programming.

Lastability 5/10
It's a fairly long game with numerous bonus battle maps to fight in, but it's a question of whether you really want to trudge through it's below average graphics, hideous character portraits, atrocious story and bland gameplay, isn't it?

Overall 2/10
Vandal Hearts II is a missed opportunity to continue from the great original.
Instead we have this sorry attempt who's poor quality probably killed any potential for a Vandal Hearts III.
If you're REALLY desperate for a strategy RPG, you might consider this, otherwise steer clear and save yourself from a bad experience.

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 01/08/03, Updated 01/08/03