Namco-Badai, since when do you make Japanese role-playing games? While I certainly appreciate you sending me a copy of your new game Magna Carta 2 to review, I have to admit, I was initially pretty skeptical going into it. I mean, you make Tekken, and various children’s games. Do you have what it takes to make a good JRPG? Well after playing it, the answer most certainly is yes. Magna Carta 2 is phenomenal. Combining elements of World of Warcraft, Infinite Undiscovery, and Star Ocean: The Last Hope, I’d say you’ve got it all! Released just last Tuesday October 13th, Magna Carta is certainly a title that RPG fans are going to love!
Magna Carta 2 opens with a cut-scene describing a civil war between the northern and southern people of Lanzheim. What seems to be a struggle for the throne turns out being something completely different that you discover over time. The game’s primary character, Juto, finds himself in his home in Highwind Island taking battle lessons from his would-be big sister Melissa. Taking a cue from Lost Odyssey, Juto is an amnesiac and can’t remember his past. While Melissa is having him do some errands around town, the Princess and co-leader of the southern forces shows up to investigate an ancient artifact that is rumored to be located on the island. Shortly thereafter the northern forces show up and a huge battle erupts on the beach and we find that Juto has some crazy battle powers. Melissa is slain by one of the primary antagonists and Juto vows to avenge her death by joining the Princess and her Counter Sentinel Unit in the southern army. The game really begins here as Juto begins his quest of self-discovery and of course the story goes through significant plot twists, especially near the beginning of the game’s second disc when thing start to get real serious.
Throughout your journey, a total of 5 additional characters will join your party, and each is very well detailed with a rich back story and boat loads of emotional dialog. The story as a whole is awesome and the world is very well developed with elegant side characters and well-defined races. You’ll get hooked from the beginning and you aren’t going to be able to put the controller down as you try to progress through the game to see what’s just going to happen next!
From start to finish, Magna Carta 2 should take you between 30 and 40 hours depending on how many of the games ridiculous amount of side quests you partake in. You will progress through the story via a series of required and optional quests delivered World of Warcraft style by talking to various town-folk with exclamations above their heads. Most of the quests involve the traditional killing of monsters, collecting of items and escorting people around. There is also a skill-tree quite similar to WoW that allows you to select the skills that you would like your characters to utilize and specialize in.
Each character has two separate play styles based on their weapon-type and skill tree and each one offers a significantly different game experience, especially that of the healers who excel in either healing, or unleashing devastating magical spells.
Much time will be spent walking through monster-filled open fields to reach your destinations, but once you reach the second disc you’ll be granted instant transportation between combat-free zones that you’ve previously visited, which will save you a lot of time as you tackle some of the more in-depth side quests.
This RPG is real-time combat and it takes its queues from both Star Ocean and Infinite Undiscovery. All of the monsters that you fight are out in the open, so there is no separate battle screen, and each of the 3 characters in your party can be taken complete control of on the fly. Initially I thought the controls were pretty wonky. If you attack too fast (which is not fast at all), your character will go into an overdrive mode where he will do additional damage for the next few seconds followed by several seconds where they simply stand there unable to perform any actions. If you perform a special move while in overdrive mode, and immediately switch to another character, he will do additional damage. If this character goes into overdrive before the first character leaves overdrive, you perform what is called a “Chain Break”, which returns both characters to their initial state, allowing them to both start spamming attacks again. Sound confusing? I thought so too. It took me quite a while to get a hold of this, but once you figure it out, you are going to start unleashing devastating attacks over and over again, and then things get really fun!
You will spend a lot of time upgrading your equipment as the vendors constantly have new gear to purchase. Additionally, you have the ability to customize your gear with gems, a la World of Warcraft, that give you various stat bonuses and abilities. There is also a simple crafting system that allows you to create accessories to provide additional stat bonuses.
It’s important to point out that you will never have to go grind out levels to become strong enough for the encounters ahead. There aren’t really any difficulty checks so you’ll enjoy yourself all the way through this great adventure.
Like Lost Odyssey and The Last Remnant, Magna Carta 2 utilizes the Unreal Engine 3 for beautiful graphics and cut-scenes. Luckily though it doesn’t suffer from the frame rate and texture popping problems that the other titles were plagued with. You’ll travel through a variety of dazzling environments and come across some of the most beautiful gaming women you’ve ever seen. The art-style is a little different than some of the other RPGs out there and I actually really like it. Some of the environments look to me more like paintings than they do game worlds.
The sound track is great as well, but it’s nothing that I need to make additional comments about. Aside from a single character, who unfortunately never shuts up with a high pitched whiny voice; the rest of the voice acting is fabulous, which certainly helps with the games immersion. Very seldom do you actually have to read anything as probably 95% of the game is voice acted, which is a great addition.
Well Namco-Bandai, you certainly surprised me with this awesome Japanese Role Playing Game. Magna Carta 2 has it all: great graphics, an amazingly addictive story, and a great skill-based and entertaining real-time combat system that will keep you smiling as you rain hell on all kinds of enemies. Really, the only thing I found annoying with this game was the slow movement of your characters while in their combat stance. Well once you figure out how to start chaining combos over and over, you can certainly look past that. There is nothing ridiculously hard about Magna Carta 2, and it contains so many great RPG features, that even if you aren’t an RPG player, this game would certainly be a great purchase for you regardless!
