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One of RMN's absolute must plays.

  • UPRC
  • 05/06/2020 04:45 PM
  • 1028 views
After doing a full Let's Play of this game, and only missing a few optional things that I'm aware of, I figured throwing out a review for this game on RMN seemed like the next best step. Truthfully I should have done this immediately after finishing the game so that it would be fresh in my memory (it's been a few months now), but I think I can still manage to toss out this review despite waiting a little bit to write it.

Legends of Illarion II is a pre-sequel to Legends of Illarion, meaning it is a sequel, but set before the first game. The first Legends of Illarion, which I'm currently playing through, is a pretty significant bag of mixed goods and bads and was made in RPG Maker 2003. Legends of Illarion II, made a few years later in VX Ace, is a significant step up from the original in quite literally every possible way. That isn't meant as a slight against the first game, but rather a compliment towards this game. Legends of Illarion II is, without a shadow of a doubt, one of my favourite RPG Maker games of all time. Let me tell you why.

You begin the game as Moshran, a young fighter from a snow-covered town that seems to be steeped in rich warrior culture and tradition. Moshran commits an unforgivable act according to the traditions of the town, and that is killing another person while battling them in a duel. You immediately know that Moshran didn't set out to kill the poor soul, but that doesn't matter to his kin and they hastily banish him from his town. Moshran's friend Petranor tags along and, from there, Moshran finds himself on a roller coaster of an adventure that sees him and many new friends that he makes along the way fighting to save the world from powerful elemental entities. These dangerous entities can change seasons, make the land shake and wither, and muddle the minds of men all from the safety of their lairs. It is made abundantly clear to Moshran and company that these entities need to go.

The process of adventuring around the game's world to take down each fiend kind of reminds me of oldschool Final Fantasy games where you'd be chasing down specific elemental crystals to progress the plot. Because of the plot being structured in this way, I found that it felt very familiar and welcoming.

The two stars of the show are the battles and the writing. Dyluck utilized a lot of great scripts (some unknown to me, but I could identify several Yanfly scripts) to make battles flow really nicely. You've got your standard VX Ace DBS in action here, but Dyluck shook things up by making each character (sans specific mages) innately empowered with one element and granting them different abilities depending on what weapon type they currently have equipped. Moshran for example can wield greatswords and axes and, depending on which weapon type you go with, he'll be able to perform very different abilities. One weapon's skillset is very much geared towards punishing enemies with vast amounts of damage while granting Moshran increased survivability through life draining, while the other skillset offers him several abilities to debuff and hinder enemies in a variety of ways. More or less all characters have this dual-skillset design, and it keeps things super fresh as it allows you to always change up how your party plays and letting you find cool new synergies between your party members.

On the topic of skillsets, characters earn ability points whenever they level up, and you can use these points to either teach your characters new abilities for either of their two skillsets or increase their elemental resistances and attributes such as strength, magic, or maximum hit points. It's a really fun system that keeps you looking forward to each and every level up, because you know that you'll have at least one new ability or stat increase to give each character when they gain a level. You can even reset your points and redistribute them at will, so you're never locked into any specific character build and can experiment to your heart's content. The only major drawback I had is that I found that AP was becoming slightly pointless for me in the late game since I ran out of things to sink my points into on a handful of characters, but this may have been because I was a little overleveled since I did do a fair bit of grinding a few times.

Grinding. That's another thing you may or may not need to do in this game. Some bosses hit hard, and I mean HARD. Imagine your characters are Clippy (the Microsoft paperclip) up against a tank and you'll have an idea of how terrifying some bosses are. They never feel overpowered though, and most of the time the solution wasn't for me to go grind a few levels but rather to just shake up my strategy a fair bit. Most enemies, bosses included, have some pretty major weaknesses that you can exploit which makes them way more bearable. Half the fun of the boss fights is just figuring out what those weaknesses are.

Now, the other part of the game that I like to put on a pedestal, the writing! If the first Legends of Illarion game is anything to go by, Dyluck has come a long way with his writing. I found the interactions between party members, and a majority of the NPCs, to be extremely well written to the point that this didn't always feel like an amateur RPG. Almost all of the playable characters have very nuanced personalities, and they all have their own flaws and/or personal demons to battle with. Cherga, Malachin, and Sirani in particular had to deal with some pretty tragic stuff and I genuinely felt for them. Something more sunshine and rainbows, the friendships and relationships that develop between the characters is superbly well done! The evolving relationship between Moshran and Elara is very believable and excellently executed, and watching the silly coming together of Adron and Sirani is both amusing and heartwarming at times.

I don't have anything else major to comment on, but I will say a few things in brief:

▪ Puzzles! This game has a lot of them. Just about every dungeon has at least one puzzle. Some of them are lots of fun while others are super tricky. I found a few puzzles to be very unintentionally vague on Dyluck's part and I couldn't figure them out, but thankfully he does include an item that lets you skip puzzles if you're having trouble with them. What a nice addition this was!

▪ The music. More or less all from commecial RPGs from what I could tell, but Dyluck uses them so well here. Every track in this game fits perfectly, especially the battle themes. This game is a huge treat for your ears.

▪ This game will make you cheer for sheep.

▪ No random battles is a welcome change. A lot of fights are extremely easy to avoid as well, which lets you approach fights on your own terms rather than the game's. Just don't avoid too many fights! This game doesn't pull any punches at times!

Overall, excellent experience with this game. If this is any indication of what Dyluck's got brewing next, consider me an instant follower and supporter.

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Dyluck
For thousands of years, I laid dormant. Who has disturbed my slumber?
5184
Wooo I wasn't expecting a review too, after all the lets plays. Thanks, UPRC!
I don't think my writing was that good though, haha!
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