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Legends of Illarion 2 is a fantastic game with fairly deep combat and a story that brings you into its world.

  • Delsin7
  • 12/26/2019 09:15 PM
  • 1036 views
Review for Dyluck’s Legends Of Illarion II, By Delsin7


This is a mostly spoiler free review of Dyluck’s game, Legends of Illarion II. If I have gotten anything wrong in this review, or missed something important, please let me know so I can correct it.

The review is divided up into sections for easier viewing:
-Overview
-Characters
-Story
-Mapping
-Skills
-Battles
-Art and Music
-Conclusion


Overview:
Before playing Legends of Illarion II I hadn’t looked at the gamepage, I didn’t want to spoil anything or create an impression of what it was before trying it. I was very pleasantly surprised at how good the game was. After the first half hour or so, I opened the gamepage to see how long the expected gameplay was and saw it was a much longer game than I thought it was going to be. Which ended up a good thing since I found it quite enjoyable. Good for Dyluck too or I’da brought out the whip.

It is a sizeable, but not bloated or overly long-winded game. The gamepage says approximately fifteen hours of gameplay, but I clocked in just over twentyish hours, mostly due to searching everywhere, fighting a few extra battles, and doing all the extra content. The flow is concise with little backtracking or obvious filler. You won’t get to what seems like the end of the game only for a whole new continent/world/disc 2 to open up. If you enjoy JRPGs then it’s worth a try. Also if you enjoy the occasional Lufia style puzzle.


Characters:
The gamepage has a detailed section for the characters with a synopsis and their skills, so this won’t be spoilery. Playing it blind I was, without much effort, able to figure out the characters motivations, strengths, flaws, and personality through the story and gameplay. So its up to the player whether they want to know about the characters beforehand or to learn about them over the course of the game. Suffice to say, they were interesting and the game has a serious lack of cardboard cutouts. The main character being a ‘not starry eyed youth’ was refreshing and his willingness to do dirty deeds because they needed doing was compelling. Reminds me a bit of a darker version of Yuri at the start of Tales of Vesperia, before they destroyed his character to push a repentance and obey authority narrative.


Story:
Set in the world of Illarion in a young age, an evil Entity formed of mortals internal darkness seeks to bring ruin. The five gods wait for heroes, but one becomes impatient and changes destiny. Will this path lead to a brighter future or a vain attempt at gaining mortals favor in the guise of a savior?

The story was generally well paced with some interesting foreshadowing and minor twists. There wasn’t any crazy off-the-walls plot twists or out of context shakeups, but not every game needs those. And a lot of games with those shouldn’t. A few sections of the plot or some cutscenes seemed to flow quite a bit faster than the rest, but it doesn’t detract from the overall experience. Most of the story is told through cutscenes and tends to be text heavy. There are some optional side plots that reveal more about the characters and interconnectiveness of their world. Story is always tricky to talk about without going into spoilers, but character motivation is a very important part and makes it less about ‘but thou must’ and more ‘what can I get out of it’ for saving the world.


Mapping:
In a word, good. In more detail, it usually obeys the three tile rule where appropriate, there are no big empty rooms unless a puzzle requires room to work, and there is a wide variety of environments. The forest and bastion are particularly nice. There is even a shiny cave awaiting adventuring youths. Layouts are more than a simple grid, even for towns and villages. Villager’s houses are usually not enterable as is the second floor of most inns. On the world map the names of enterable locations are displayed above their entrance/exits. Saves bumping into everything looking for that hidden bird forest.


Skills:
Skills are placed before Battles because they are combat-centric, integral to beating the game, and do not affect the game outside of battles. Almost all skills are gained through a skill learn system accessible through the Skills menu. Due to the skill learn system, where you can freely respec and change skills out of combat, you have a lot of options for dealing with new or difficult enemies. I generally didn’t respec except to test how it worked, once due to a bosses special mechanics, and at the end of the game to fit end game equipment and skills. Every level a character advances nets them one additional skill point. Skills cost two skill points and choosing the right ones can be very important. Or you could always respec.

Skills are separated into three main types, Weapon Skills, Magic Skills, and Passive Skills. Weapon Skills are skills only useable if the character has the appropriate weapon equipped. Moshran can’t use Axe skills if he has a Greatsword equipped for example. Some use MP while others use FP, a modified form of the RM staple TP. It would have been interesting if characters had weapon sets, or could switch weapons in combat, to open up different weapon skill combinations in battle, but it would have probably been tougher to balance. Maybe for Legends of Illarion III. Magic Skills are elemental, non-elemental, damage, healing, buff, debuff, etc spells. Each magic using character has their own specialty, Elara knowing mostly ice, wind, and lightning magic for example. Passive Skills start as one of four stat boosts, but once they are learned four different stat boosts are unlocked, and after that elemental resistances. The stat boosts are a ten percent bonus and the elemental resistances are fifteen percent bonus, which is nothing to sneeze at.

My favorite team was Moshran, Elara, Cherga, Sirani, and Malachin. End game has access to good slash damage synergy, powerful full party healing and negative status removal, powerful area of effect damaging spells, a buff that cuts mp cost in half for rest of battle or until dispelled, and a few more tricks. If there was a sixth character slot it would prolly go to Oldra, simply for even more healing, aoe spells, and aoe revives. Madness.


Battles:
Battles are a main part of the game and essential to completing it. If you’ve played a JRPG or Rpg Maker game before then you’ll be right at home. Random battles are initiated by the player moving next to a wandering enemy sprite event on the map. Because of this escaping from battles is sometimes a bit finnicky, but it also means you can avoid battles if you want. Don’t avoid too many as you will need the xp and money to deal with future challenges.

The battles are varied with the monsters fitting their environment. Generally the battles aren’t too difficult, but just auto attacking will lead to a bad time. Abusing the enemies with elemental weaknesses can really help the player win the fight. Stronger enemies can be whittled down with debuffs and status effects and be made much more manageable. As far as I can tell, each buff and debuff stack is fifteen or twenty percent and stacks twice. Double buffing and debuffing makes a big difference. Sidenote, but this games version of poison is evil, it deals hp and mp damage. Less effective on enemies as normal enemies shouldn’t last more than ten turns, but if not cured it will mess up the party.

Bosses were fun, with most being more than a tank and spank affair. Only the late game bosses were immune to most stat debuffs and status effects, early on these were the difference between beating a boss and having to use ressurection items. If a boss poses too much trouble, devising a new strategy, respeccing skills, shelling out for that new equipment, or finally parting with a healing potion can make all the difference.

There is also a special item you can acquire early on that has a twenty-five percent chance to deal damage to the whole enemy troop at the beginning of random battles. It can be powered up multiple times over the course of the game and is a nod to the Lufia series. No spoilers...ish, but it would have been neat to power it up to a level it could be a battler and tank bosses.


Art and Music:
For both audio and visual it was a mix of Rpg Maker rtps, free use assets from the community, Celianna and Avery were some I recognized while playing, and the all popular rips. Final Fantasy 4 (Advance I think or maybe that Final Fantasy compilation series) enemy battlers were rather common. The art assets chosen meshed well and nothing stood out as garish or of a distinctly different style. There was no hyper realistic 3d rips standing next to 2d 8-bit upscaled battlers.

I am not sure if the character sprites are Mack or custom, but they are quite fitting. The main characters sprites are particularly nice and fits their personality, Moshran looks great and warrior-like, Elara looks graceful and magey, etc. The character busts worked and were animated during talking sequences. I’ve seen their style before, but can’t remember where. The combat and spell animations are very well done with some appropriately world-shattering effects for endgame spells.

The music was appropriate to the situation and solid overall. I recognized a few tracks while playing even though they weren’t the more commonly ripped game music. I think one of the songs was from Wild Arms III. I don’t think there was a track I didn’t like now that I think about it. Some sound effects are very familiar from the 16-bit era, ie the chest opening sound from Lufia.


Conclusion:
Five out of five alpacas. Or four alpacas and a taco, but since we don’t have that rating its five stars. It’s not perfect, even my fave games like Chrono Trigger aren’t, but it’s very solid with few bugs or performance drops. I only found one minor passability bug and a mispelled name in twenty hours. Pretty dang good if ya ask me. There needs to be more Rpg Maker games with this level of polish and consistency. Minor nitpicks or wishfulness over weapon sets aside or a sixth character slot, one of the best games played all year. It brought me into the world of Illarion and made me want to play the first game, the sequel. Good job, Dyluck. Now get to work on the third game in the series!

Posts

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Dyluck
For thousands of years, I laid dormant. Who has disturbed my slumber?
5184
Thanks Delsin! I'm so glad that you enjoyed the game! And I'm really happy that you explored everywhere, saw the extra stuff, and probably found everything! And thanks for the notes too! It's really satisfying to know when someone takes the time to look for everything in the game. I only wish I could have offered more rewards to be found =)
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