Shukumei Star II

Shukumei Star II changes a few things up from the first game in the series, but ultimately feels largely the same. Thankfully, this isn't a bad thing and anyone looking for a fun dungeon crawler with plenty of content, some grind, and various secrets won't be disappointed.

Like the first game, the plot in Shukumei Star II is probably its weakest aspect, but it's also not the main drawing point. The best way to describe the plot in this entry in the series is as a mash-up of various plot aspects from several Final Fantasy games. There are four elemental crystals, there's an evil corporation trying to rule the world, bad stuff happens when the crystals are taken away, and so on; there are a few twists along the way, but the plot in general isn't anything particularly new. On the plus side of things, the storyline integrates well with the aesthetics as the world changes in some pretty significant ways after various events and these changes in turn often lead to new sidequests opening up or previously inaccessible treasure becoming obtainable.

The characters themselves are also something of a mixed bag. Shukumei Star II has an enormous cast of over twenty playable characters, some of which are hidden characters, so it's expected that some would be more developed than others, but none of the characters particularly stand out and character motivations for both protagonists and antagonists are often vague or confusing. That being said, a surprising number of the characters have sidequests related to them, some of which just involve talking to certain NPC's with the character in your party and some which are more involved, and these sidequests do help significantly in fleshing out the characters and the world's lore.

What the characters lack in development they make up for in combat. The fun-yet-flawed abacus system from the first game has been replaced entirely. Now, every character has one set of skills which can be purchased from shops and either another set of character-specific skills which are gained via leveling or an ability which can enhance that character's strengths. For example, there are several healers in the game, but one can learn all the healing spells and has the option to double-cast a spell at the cost of a temporary stat debuff while another healer can't learn the highest-tier healing spells yet is the only character with complete access to the Holy set of damage-based skills. Characters are balanced well as those with strong skills usually have access to only lower tiers of purchasable magic and vice versa and skills themselves are varied. Furthermore, several characters obtain and/or use skills in unique ways, such as a character who can copy the skills of other party members, a gambling character who grants various buffs to the party depending on the strength of poker hands, and a bard who has few permanent spells, but who can temporarily use dozens of spells on a per-battle basis by inputting arrow-key commands, which themselves are discovered in various bookshelves across the game, as a sort of magical take on Sabin's Blitz ability from Final Fantasy VI. To top it all off, the game frequently switches between putting players in control of the two protagonists, Treves and Stefanie, so players will have to get used to using at the bare minimum eight different characters split between two parties of four instead of simply focusing on four characters while the rest sit around and never get used.

The combat system is also well-made in general. Though it uses a standard ATB system, Shukumei Star II is a game in which mana conservation and support skill usage are both vital to survival even against many normal enemies, let alone bosses. Enemies themselves generally come in groups of three or four and usually do more than just spam normal attacks, though it is unfortunate that multiple enemy types rarely appear together. However, each area of the game has one, two, or even more miniboss-esque random encounters featuring a single strong enemy which can quickly devastate the party if players do not take full advantage of all the abilities at their disposal so there is always a sense of tension and risk even outside of boss fights. This being said, it should be noted that combat in Shukumei Star II does get off to a bit of a rough start as a surprising number of early-game enemies have party-affecting status ailments like Fear and Sleep which players can't do much to counter and the agility-based ATB bars at lower levels fill up slowly to the point where equipping everyone with agility-boosting accessories and having a character with time magic cast Fast on the party every fight felt essential to making the game move at a decent pace, but both of these issues go away after the first 2-3 hours of this 15-20+ hour game. As a lesser complaint, it seems like an odd decision to have neither of the main characters particularly skilled at using magic, Treves can learn low-tier summoning spells and can use his normal attack twice in a turn at the cost of some health while Stefanie can learn low-tier dark magic and can temporarily reduce all her stats to give a massive stat boost to the rest of the party, since both protagonists have a strong skill and can equip good gear, but rarely will players feel the need to do anything other than normal attack with them, or double attack in the case of Treves. These complaints are minor though and the combat system is overall fun, tense, and exciting.

Above all, Shukumei Star II's greatest strength is in its dungeon and world design. Dungeons start out small, but become progressively larger and more challenging as the game goes on, to the point where it will easily take several hours to make it through the final dungeon alone. Of course, large dungeons aren't necessarily well-made dungeons, but, thankfully, each dungeon has one or more creative overarching gimmicks which fit well with their respective dungeon's theme and there is always plenty of treasure and other secrets to find along the way. The world map itself also feels like a bit of a dungeon as it frequently changes after various events and there are all sorts of optional areas and fights to discover on it, though one maze-like segment which players are forced to go through no less than three times in a row becomes rather tedious. Even the towns have plenty of hidden areas and sidequests to discover within them to the point where a player can easily spend many hours looking for optional content and still have more to discover.

Aesthetically, Shukumei Star II relies very heavily upon RTP assets and reuses many spell and attack animations from the first game, but is still impressive. Towns, dungeons, and the world are all put together well and feel both large and natural. In addition, players can no longer find stars to collect around the world like in the first game and there is little in the way of flavor text when examining various objects in towns, but every area is brimming with items, spells, and optional encounters to discover so it always feels rewarding to attempt to interact with everything possible as a thorough investigation can lead to some rather surprising things. NPC's also help to make up for the relative lack of flavor text as just about every one of the dozens of NPC's in the game says different things as events unfold. Cutscenes also are frequently very impressive and it's worth noting that there are still a fair number of non-RTP and edited sprites used alongside the basic assets and they all fit well together.

In the end, Shukumei Star II isn't a perfect game and doesn't make any particularly massive improvements over the first game in the series, but it's a very solid experience nonetheless and its high points easily overshadow its flaws. Those who can't stand grinding or who are looking for a game with a particularly engaging story may want to look elsewhere, but lovers of exploration, dungeon crawling, and a good challenge will be far from disappointed.