Legaia 2 was a rather low key release. In fact, I didn’t even know it existed until it started showing up in bargain bins for $20 a few months after release. Although such treatment in no way means that a game isn’t worth playing (the same happened to games in the Suikoden series, after all), in Legaia 2’s case, it was low key because it had little to get people excited with. It is, to be simple, very average in almost every way.

This is evident from the first time your characters step onto the screen. Unpixilated, slightly blocky, limited but well executed facial expression, and somewhat stiff motion; all describe the characters in Legaia 2, as well as a number of games released at the same time. Backgrounds and the like look nicer, but at the same time are rather well used and generic locations- peaceful hometown, castle prison, snow village, and I could go on. While this doesn’t steal the graphical or design quality of these things, it does leave them unimpressive somehow.

Sound in Legaia 2 possesses an unusual set of circumstances. First, when actually playing the game, none of the music jumped out at me, and I kept wondering where the influence of Yasunori Mitsuda (although he was not the only composer, he did indeed compose some of Legaia 2’s music) was. But, when I later considered the music and played a few songs in my head, they sounded pretty good. Simpler than I’m used to from Mitsuda (and RPGs in general), but still pleasant. Balancing this, however, is the voice acting. There’s a word for it: painful. There’s no sugar-coating it. The voice acting in Legaia 2 is painfully bad, and I started to get into the habit of muting my TV after a while. The only good news here is that voice acting is used only in battle. Thus, you can avoid it and still hear the music.

The quality of Legaia 2’s story is best explained by a brief summary of it. A boy, orphaned in his youth and raised by a small village, must go on a quest to reclaim the sacred crystal of his village in order to save it. He soon discovers it is a larger plot, and that he alone has the power to truly stop it, although he of course has help along the way. In other words, Legaia 2 contains nearly all the more classic RPG clichés. Moreover, it doesn’t really present them in a unique or interesting fashion. The pacing is decent, but on the whole, Legaia 2’s story is just sort of there, and serves primarily to justify the gameplay.

Although the characters fall into the same trap of cliché, they are able to rise above it. That is, while the characters are recognizable clichés, they are still believable and interesting. I was sympathetic to Lang’s quest, I was amused by Kazan’s drunken wisdom, and I chuckled at Sharon’s energy. As well, the relationships between the group members were well established and developed in a believable way. Basically, even though the characters use cliché as a base, they still make a point of being people too. From the liberal use of cliché in the rest of the game, it would appear that Legaia 2 was meant to shine in areas of gameplay. In this regard, it only succeeds marginally. The basics of combat are indeed unusual. Attacking is based around combos of high, low, left, and right swings. These chain together into combos called Arts, which are basically more powerful hits. New arts are learned by finding the proper combo, and arts as well can be chained together as you gain more hits per attack. There are 5 kinds of Arts: Normal, Super, Hyper, Variable, and Mystic. Normal Arts add to your AP bar, while Super and Hyper arts consume AP. Thus, you can either form combos around maintaining an amount of AP, build up AP for one mighty attack, or any number of things. Variable Arts consume AP as well, but require another character to use a complimentary Variable Art. Finally, Mystic arts require a full AP bar, 100 MP, and the character to be at less than half HP, but do extraordinary damage. Beyond each characters Arts, they also have basic magical abilities, with each character having a theme. The hero Lang, for example, has fire attacks.

Outside of combat, the game offers little. Some minor puzzle elements that serve more to make backtracking worthwhile than anything else, a few interesting puzzles scattered around, and a few mini-games that aren’t much fun round out gameplay. The game does have some interesting side quests, but nothing earth shattering either. There are also a few problems in the system. First, the game has a heavy equipment emphasis, so not keeping utterly up-to-date in equipment can be fatal. This effect is more annoying given a slight money scarcity. Second, learning Arts by trial and error is fine early in the game, but as you progress and have to use longer chains, learning anything new boarders on impossible. Finally, around halfway through the game, the difficulty takes a massive swing upward, and enemies start doing damage disproportionate to your HP and healing capabilities. Yes, some like their games tough, and the game isn’t exactly marrow blasting in difficulty, but the sudden switch is very annoying.

All in all, Legaia 2: Duel Saga is a thoroughly average game, and while I’m hardly sorry I played it, it still felt like little more than a filler game, and I wouldn’t really recommend it to anyone until after they had played the Playstation 2’s more noteworthy games. Still, given that the game is available for rather reasonable prices, it’s definitely worth looking into.

Final Grade: 74%