The fall of 2002 was truly a blessed time for Playstation 2 owning RPG players. Despite being one of the smaller of the pack, going against Kingdom Hearts, Wild Arms 3, and Suikoden III, Summoner 2 holds its own surprisingly well and is a welcome addition to the system's library.

The game sits in the graphical middle ground of PS2 games, neither wowing nor poor enough to really note. The game was a little on the dark-and-drab side, and there were occasional slowdowns or minor occurrences of clipping, but nothing that detracted from the gaming experience. On the plus side, all the areas were pretty big, and the level design was pleasantly eccentric.

Neither was any of the music particularly great. Although nice for atmosphere, none of the tunes are staying with me, or got me particularly excited at any point in the game. However, there was a good amount of voice acting. The voices were suited to the characters, did a fair job of carrying emotion, and had very few ‘flake outs’ or even mediocre voices. The dialog was also pretty good, and the characters (and presumably actors) played off each other nicely.

Gameplay is solid but nothing overly imaginative. Built around the basic ‘hack and slash’ model, Summoner 2 mixes things up a tad by adding the ability to attribute skill points to your characters. Although each character has fixed skills you can build, you are more than able to fine-tune them to better suit your fancies. Each character also has a skill that causes them to learn different kinds of special attacks that are not really spells, triggered by various button combinations and further differentiating the different 'types' of characters. You spend the majority of the game with three member parties, able to switch freely between controlling them, leaving the other two to whatever AI script you chose for them.

The AI Script is one of the game's few failings. Although you are given some seemingly useful options, the Scripts are uniformly inept, and aside from being good extra targets and occasionally throwing a healing spell your way, the computer controlled characters leave you pretty much on your own. Which is fine, since I played as one person almost the whole game anyway. Also, the spells in the game are relatively useless, because I never really noticed anything that indicated what I was supposed to be using them on, and I don’t really have the patience to trial and error my way through an entire game. The difficulty cranks up a notch or three toward the end, becoming a tad frustrating, but since you can save anytime there isn’t an enemy actively attacking or tracking you, dying won’t ruin your day. Also, throughout the game you acquire the ability to transform one of your characters for a few minutes at a time into Summons, who can pretty much lay waste to whatever the game wants to throw at you, even in the late stages.

The Story begins with an interesting idea; you take the role of Maia, who is the Goddess Lahara reborn, and must fulfill a prophecy and restore the tree of creation, Eleh. Although not too far removed from other RPGs, the idea of knowing from the start that you have to go fulfill a grand prophecy is certainly different. The main thrust of the story is that Maia is unsure of exactly how she is supposed to go about fulfilling the prophecy. As well, since she is supposed to fulfill this prophecy, she must also rule as the Queen of Halassar, the old country of Laharah. This is a whole set of difficulties in itself, because Halassar was a part of the larger kingdom of Galdyr before Maia was born, and the King of Galdyr was not happy to lose half his country, and indeed fought those who rallied around her some 16 years before. Plenty of conflict also occurs between others who offer to aide the young queen, and plot twists and betrayals are plentiful.

For all that going on, though, there is a price, and the price is steep. Although the game offers a complex world, a unique mythology and a good chunk of interesting history, it winds up overdoing itself and never really delves into any of it. The game has so much to tell you about the world that it finds itself telling everything in passing.

The characters have the same sort of problem. Although each has an interesting personality and a different perspective on the world, the game moves on so quickly that you never really feel like you ‘know’ any of them. The whole game has a feel of “Well, here’s this character who seems to know a little about the world and would like to help you because… oh, wait, here’s someone else!” From what I can tell you can spend more time with everyone by partaking in side-quests, but a bit more development during the main story would have been appreciated.

Perhaps the main story had to be somewhat abridged to make room for the mind-boggling amount of side quests. From governing the fledgling Halassar (to which I say “It’s good to be the Queen”) to helping the hapless to optional super-bosses, no potential side-quest was left unused. There were also some interesting extras you unlock as you progress through the game, and although they have no bearing on the story or characters, they do show off Volition's sense of humor. It's good there are so many side quests though, because skipping them I capped off my playthrough at no more than 14 and a half hours. I wouldn’t go so far as to question getting the full price worth from the game, but less than 20 or 25 hours on the first run just doesn’t sit right with me.

The game is by no means perfect, but a likable cast, involving story, and passable combat make it a worthy game for any RPG fan.

Final Grade: 84%