ONYX 2: Clinging Soul

Hello,
I'm here since this game had no review and since I loved it as much as its prequel, here I am!
Onyx was a classic game, one that I call "DDD", that means:

Dungeons (lots of them, filled with random encounters and weak enemies)
Duels (or boss fights, if you prefer, against a single strong enemy)
Dialogues (lots of them, usually because the story is quite complex)

The thing I loved of Onyx was its modern setting and atypical story, nothing like your classical fantasy jrpg, even if there were still bad guys and demons to be fought. The game was good even if simple and with some flaws being it a bit "rough" as it was the first complete game of the maker.
Onyx was a long game, and I did not expect a sequel at all, but instead here we are, talking about Onyx 2!


Ok, let's go!

The Good
Onyx 2 continues the story that seemed finished in the first game (play it!)but this time the protagonist is Evan, the dreadlocked party member that joined the team later in the first game. Probably the fact that it was a character that had not opportunity to have a great part in the first game like the companions that were present from the beginning (like Tari, my favourite) made him a good choice as the new protagonist.

This doesn't mean that we won't see some old faces and visit some familiar places (like Mepori, the city in the desert of the first game, for example), anyway we have a new cast of many different party members, from the policeman Lee with his pistol techniques to the axe wielding doctor Damien, an excellent mage. Evan himself is a versatile party member with many useful abilities, like the skill to regenerate both his Hp and Tp. We have also the return of the Hubby, a pocket dimension that lets you manage the party and change the characters at will.

Oh and you can also save the game at will, a thing that lessens the pain of the many random encounters.

Now let's speak about combat: there are no many differences from the Onyx system, except maybe for the side view of the battleground with animated battlers. Nothing new, still serviceable and maybe nicer than the old visuals. Mechanically combat is the usual "attack, defend or use your techniques" but given the many party members and their different skillsets it's a fun system. Difficulty is for the most part balanced, and you can try to flee from combat if you are bored (this seldom happened to me), but pay attention or you will face the next boss underlevelled.
Luckily the game warns you each time you are going to face a difficult opponent, and while this happened also in the first game, I think it's great since you surely want to be prepared for the hardest fights.

Ok, for what concerns instead both graphics and musics I think there was an improvement. I liked the music selection more, and I also noticed that the use of chipsets and charsets is more accurate: in Onyx I complained the presence of weirdly dressed characters and cyberpunk buildings that had medieval interiors, here instead I see more coherence, the different cities for example are all different but well done.

Another plus is that, like Onyx, the game comes with the author's guide, an invaluable instrument if you have any problem.


Evan and the Peditra are back to fight monsters and demons like in the old times!

The Bad
Unfortunately there are still a couple of flaws that prevents this game to be a real masterpiece: for example there are still some spelling errors ("apart of life", "liscence"), then there are some difficulty spikes in some parts (I had a lot of trouble with the first boss and with one in the temple with Paul Martin,because they instakilled my characters, but for the most part combat was not too hard).

Also, no portraits like for Onyx. This sometimes forces you to watch closely who is talking, anyway it's not troublesome. I see that the old version of the game employed some custom portraits that were removed for the release. I do not think that they were bad (they look similar to those used in Clouded Heart), still I prefer the more traditionals facesets. Anyway nothing at all it's ok anyway (what I would dislike it's the mixing of facesets of different atyles).

A final problem (well not to me!) is that Onyx 2, compared to its prequel is like "more of the same". So do not expect minigames or complex puzzles, just combat, boss fights and many dialogues. It's a simple game but its good at what it does.

Final Thoughts
Clearly you can appreciate fully this game only if you played and finished the first Onyx game. But if you were able to finish the first, surely you liked it a lot, then I'm sure you will like this one too. Well I did.
It's an old game, so I did not expect much, but at the same time I knew what I could expect for a sequel of Onyx: a great story that made me play from the beginning to the end (and, expecially in this second episode, surprised me more than the first game).
A true classic, nothing more and nothing less Onyx, so 4/5 in my opinion.