<Disclaimer>: I have played(and finished) the game before the release of the latest patch, so it’s possible that some issues described in the review are already fixed.

There is a lot that can be done with RPG Maker – ranging from different themes to even varieties of genres, which we can see in the games list nearly every month... That being said – there always happens to be someone who will actually try to make a honest attempt at a Final Fantasy-esque jRPG. You know, the kind that this software was made for. Legends Of Illarion 2: Sins of The Gods by Dyluck is one of such games. And it’s not half bad either.

Let’s save the world!

The game is a prequel to the first Legends Of Illarion(which I haven’t played), which was based on some obscure browser MMORPG(I haven’t played that one too) and it takes place in a land called(you’ve guessed it) Illarion, ruled by a few gods, stuck in the cycle of destroying and reconstructing the world to keep a dark entity called Dai Luk at bay. The game starts with one such reconstruction and few centuries after that we get to know one of our protagonists – a barbarian called Moshran. Unfortunately, our main hero is in trouble, because he has accidentally killed one of his clan members during a tournament. To calm down enraged members of his village, the clan leader sends Moshran on a mission to find a source of environmental problems in the land. Our warrior teams up with his friend called Petranor and both of them embark on this mission. This menial task turns out be a much more serious issue and Moshran will now have to go on a quest to destroy a group of elemental Entities and eventually – Dai Luk himself – all while venturing through Illarion and teaming up with various other heroes from many races and diverse backgrounds. And the price for victory – godhood.

Yeah... The game won’t win many awards for originality any time soon, but on the other hand – it’s a perfect fit for an old-school, high fantasy jRPG that Illarion 2(let’s say it’s a short version of the title) is. The characters are simple archetypes – there is a tough warrior with a heart of gold, a magician who goes through life by logic(mostly), greedy but courageous dwarf, an easy-going, comic-relief prince(and whose jokes are mostly so bad, they should’ve been accompanied by a laugh-track) and many more. And nearly all of these characters talk in a rather unnatural way, full of pathos, like actors from a stage play. And yeah – it will probably annoy a lot of people, but for me – it added to the charm of a heroic adventure that Illarion 2 is.

There is one problem, though. The game has moments where it tries to become more serious and dark. Like, we’re on this heroic Let’s-Save-The-World adventure and suddenly the game throws themes like drug deals and slave labour at you. What takes the cake is a CERTAIN scene, where one of the main character does something so horrible and for a really bad reason, that it’s bizarre. You’ll know exactly what I mean when you see it for yourself. And after that – the game suddenly comes back to it’s „normal” mode, maybe mentioning these dark moments from time to time... It doesn’t really work and the built up charm suffered from it. I’m not someone who dislikes dark themes, but in this game – these moments feel more forced than anything.

While we are on the topic of problems with the game’s story – I need to talk about the dialogues. They’re serviceable for the most part, but they are all rather stiff, which gets tiresome after a while. And some characters are literally walking tutorials. They don’t even try to sound like human(or non-human) beings, but rather excerpts from instruction manual.

The best part of the story is definitely the ending. It’s a long way to get to it, but it will be worth it. I won’t spoil it of course, but you should know it’s awesome. It’s extremely cheesy but that’s exactly what makes it so great(and it works perfectly with aforementioned charm). If you happen to try this game – you need to play through to the very end just to see this! You won’t regret it, trust me.

It’s a pretty nice World...

The most polished part of the game is most definitely the visual and audio side. The resources are mostly RTP and some additional stuff, but it’s put to good use. The maps are mostly really nice, some of them I would even call beautiful because of their lighting and atmosphere. There are some bland ones(especially desert towns, which are really samey and as a result – confusing to navigate), but these are a really smart part of the game. All of them are rather linear in nature, with maybe a stray road leading to some treasure, but there was a lot of effort put into the visual side of these maps.

There was also an effort to put some nice details into the game. First of all – the characters’ portraits are „animated” while speaking. Yeah, it’s just a simple few pictures of our characters with different mouth shapes, but it’s a nice touch nonetheless. All of the skills also have voice-lines. All of these may seem like small things and, yes, they are, but they make battles and story scenes more interesting to look at and bring these rather simple characters to life. The character-exclusive skills are also properly named to convey the character’s personality – for example, the dwarf Irmorom has skills named after terms from economics.

When it comes to the music – it’s alright. It was chosen well and adds a lot to game’s atmosphere. Except these few songs with whistles – at first these were pretty hilarious, but they became annoying really quickly. Thankfully, one character gives you a music box at one point, which gives a possibility to change the music of encounters with normal enemies to player’s liking.

...But the journey may be tough...

There’s no tip-toeing around this now, but it has to be done. Now, we’re going to talk about gameplay. For the most part – it’s a decent jRPG adventure, but it has it’s problems.

Let’s start with the tutorial, that I’ve found extremely patronizing and too „protective” of the player. How patronizing exactly? It’s the kind of tutorial that won’t allow you to go to the item shop before going to get weapons and armour in the weapons shop first. And even when you, eventually, get to that item shop, the supporting character will tell you an exact amount of stuff to buy. That patronizing. And it doesn’t stops there – the first two hours are filled with such tutorials, not to such an extreme degree like in the first village, but they’re still there. And the worst part is that the game lacks them, where they would be really needed. Like, you get a possibility to learn a skill that gives a passive boost to your CON or ESS. What’s „CON” or „ESS” ? Or, how the statuses works? Well, you may get these answers from a handy guidebook in your inventory that you receive... around 1-1,5 hour in. Of course, you can figure this out by playing the game, but still – it would be helpful to know beforehand, especially because the possibility is there.

As, I’ve said during the map praises – the game is rather linear. Sure, there are some stray roads to take and optional content to find(there’s supposed to be some cool reward for finding four collectibles, but I haven’t found all of the parts, also there are some items that give certain characters really cool spells), but the road from the start to the end goal is mostly a straight line littered with enemies. Especially in the Entities’ dungeons. All of them seem to have a rather boring design and puzzles, which is a shame because other dungeons(those that are not „main”) are mostly great. The haunted castle was definitely a highlight for me – it has the coolest puzzles and was for the most part non-linear. The other playable story moments are also interesting, like the infiltration of a manor owned by a corrupt mayor. It’s a shame that the „main” dungeons – the „meat” of the game – are not as interesting as these sections. Unfortunately, all of these parts, good and not-so-good, share a common problem.

What are we mostly doing in all of these locations? As in every heroic tale – we viciously kill every monster on our way to the boss. Most of these encounters have some quirk or at least an elemental weakness, but there is one problem. Their HP. Lots of it. It’s common for these fight to last at least 2 minutes and there are a lot of these encounters in the dungeon. Sure, you can avoid these fights entirely(the enemies are placed on maps themselves, rather than in the random encounters), but you need to do them, if you want levels and money for new gear. It’s even recommended by the game itself. And you will want these levels, because you’ll want to not spend ages with the bosses. And, oh boy, if normal enemies have a lot of HP, then don’t even get me started about bosses. Nearly all of them have an endurance of a sturdy wall... made of titanium. My record time with one boss(the Entity before the final boss) was 15 MINUTES. And the worst part about it is that the fight itself was easy – just kill Entity’s helpers as fast as you can- but slowly getting rid of it’s massive healthbar(and an occasional heal every 2 turns) was what took so much time. The last two Entities are the worst offenders – not only they have their own gargantuan amount of health, but they also have long mini-boss battles in the room just before them. The funniest part is that the ending has two boss rushes before the final boss, but their amount of health is just right. I would even say that these fights are enjoyable, but why wouldn’t it be like that for the rest of the game? And the final boss also has a balanced amount of both HP and challenge, so there’s that.

Oh, and there’s one mandatory boss that has an insta-kill move and can also use a powerful spell that damages group of heroes in the same turn. I think it wins the anti-award for being the worst part of the entire game.

We also get lots of gold(or coppers, I guess) from every fight. The first part of the game is rather balanced with the amount of loot and prices in towns, but from the half point onward – I had so much money on me at all times, that I’ve stocked up on every single item I could, just to make use of it. To add to that – the amount of coppers needed to stay at the inn is the same for the whole game, except from the last town in the game – where it rises to measly 100 coppers. And at this point of the game, I had tens of thousands of them. And it was just from basic amount of encounters and bosses – I didn’t grind at all.

The game also has some unnecessary mechanics. The problem is that they sounds good on paper, but in the game itself... It’s complicated. The easiest target is the crafting system, because of course there is one. I agree, that it’s kind of helpful at the start of the game, but after some time, the player will have to remind themselves of it’s inclusion. We craft stuff ranging from bread and potions to armours and weapons, but there is never much choice. I think there is less than 10 recipes in the game and these are only for consumables. The good stuff like the gear doesn’t need recipes to craft – just materials. We collect materials from the world by using tools bought in the shop. The problem is that when we buy the tool – we have it forever. They never break or anything. And all of them cost peanuts and are not mandatory to finish the game(except the very first tools that the tutorial forces you to buy), so I don’t see why don’t give all of these to the player from the start.

The another weird mechanic is the Learning Point system. It means that we can choose what skills our character will have. And, at first, I was pretty excited about it. Personally, I’m more into classic western cRPGs like Fallout, so I was looking forward for that kind of customisation – to get only the skills I wanted to use... Unfortunately, it’s not how it works at all. Yes – you do get points that you can use in a category you want(it’s Weapon 1, Weapon 2{oh, and we’re going to talk about these soon...} and Passive Skills). Also yes – you can choose freely which skills you can get. There is a problem, though – to unlock new skills in your chosen category, you have to not only get on a certain level but also learn all the skills in that category.

There is also no point in specializing in one weapon(the only exception are Moshran and Irmorom), because both categories have some different skills that you will have to use sooner or later. Which in the end renders the whole system useless and probably automatic skill allocation after a level-up would be a better choice, especially because all the skills cost the same amount of Learning Points anyway. As it is now – every level-up was not an exciting moment of getting another chance to customize my favourite heroes, but rather a chore, especially because new characters in our party(and there’s a lot of them) comes with no skills and a bunch of Learning Points to spend. Thankfully – there is an option to „refund” all of these LPs and also an option to automatically spend all of them(which I refused to use, because I’m stubborn).


Yay, it’s time to spend 0,5 to 1 minute choosing skills! (also, look at the money)

The last mechanic I’d like to talk about are the weapons. Not only do they deal different kinds of damage, but also provides different set of skills for a character to use. In theory – great idea! In game... Go figure.

The problem is that it is not a bad idea to include. It lies in execution. You see – it even kind of works with characters that don’t use spells, but when they do – that’s where the core of the problem is. Most spells(not all of them) are the same for both weapons, they just differ in targeting. One weapon can attack a single target, the other can target groups. So, the conclusion is that – the weapon that focus on groups will ALWAYS be in use during the encounters with normal foes, but it will ALWAYS be switched for the bosses(except when you forget to do so – I hope you’ve saved!). Even the game itself knows about this issue and at one point even tries to persuade you to use a single target weapon for normal enemies, because it claims that they will be tougher, but the thing is that the weapon which can target groups will always be a better and less time-consuming choice, even if the spell will be a little weaker.

When it comes to the gameplay – overall, it’s not bad per se, it just can get really annoying at times. Thankfully, where it works – it’s enjoyable.

„All’s well that ends well!”

I’ve been thinking about this review for about a week before starting to write an actual text(and before completing the game itself) and I was conflicted for the whole time. Legends of Illarion 2 is a decent, old-school style jRPG. It has it’s moments of glory and it also has it’s Sins(Of The Gods). The production values are solid(there were some typos sprinkled here and there, but who cares – it’s easily fixable), the atmosphere is there and the story is pleasant to experience and has it’s charm(for the most part). On the other hand – a lot of design choices can be simply annoying and there were certainly days when I just didn’t want to play it. Your enjoyment of the game will most certainly be determined by how much patience for the game’s annoying elements you will have.

That being said – I’ve persevered, got around 17h 30 m worth of playtime and in the end - I think it was worth it. Especially, because of the ending. I won’t lie that it wasn’t a complete cheesefest, but I had a blast with it – and that’s what is important.

Now, it’s time for me to explain the score. To be perfectly honest, for the longest time I’ve wanted to give this game as much as most of the other reviews gave – 3,5/5. That being said – the author is still working on new patches to fix a lot of issues I’ve presented here(especially bosses’ HP). There were also a few patches(that I’ve honestly didn’t notice, so I completed the game on the older version) already. So, I guess that’s some bonus points. The decisive important factor for me, though was the ending. I’ve already wrote a lot about how much I love it, in the review, so I won’t repeat myself. I think it alone is worth that additional 0.5 point to the score. I know that journey is more important than the destination, but for me - the satysfying ending can excuse a bumpy road, even if just a little.

I think it’s a good game, or at least a decent one. It has pretty big problems but also a big potential. And I can’t wait to see what lessons will the author take from this project and use them in the (possible?) new one.


PS. Ronagan is the best party member, but he joins too late and there is maybe 1-2 dungeons with him. It’s a crime!