So, my overall impression is that, in general, it's a very good game. I definitely enjoyed it. The story was interesting--I knew from the outset that it couldn't possibly be as simple as it sounded, and I was able to guess parts of it pretty accurately, but it still threw enough wrenches into the works to keep me on my toes and guessing--it was fun seeing most of (!) the characters again and Tenebrae is pretty much the best thing in ever. I guess in the end I do prefer the original for a number of reasons, but I'd definitely recommend that everyone here who can at least give it a try. :3
Emil and Marta are pretty cool characters. Emil isn't that different from the other cowardly heroes you see sometimes, at least not at the beginning, but it still isn't something you see that often. He grows nicely and the Jekyll and Hyde-esque aspect of his character is done really well, especially his/their relationship with Marta and the others. Marta can be annoying at times but is most certainly deeper and more interesting than Colette. (I still don't hate Colette, but yeah.) Tenebrae is, as you will hear me say many times, amazing, and he is a very refreshing change from most of the Summon Spirit-and-similar characters in the original games (so were Ratatosk and Aqua, for that matter). Gnome was really the only semi-interesting Summon Spirit in the original, and of course since the Summon Spirits weren't that important as characters that didn't matter at all. But Tenebrae is funny, mysterious, spiteful, jealous, oversensitive, intelligent, brave, stupid on occasion... he's great, in other words. :3
The villains were alternately really cool and kind of boring, by contrast. Richter was awesome but hella confusing (in a good way), a la Kratos, although there was something a little... off about his motivations in the end. They were cool enough for a desperate guy, and it works out after he tells you what his final plans really were, but... I dunno, there's just something that bothers me and I can't put my finger on it. I really couldn't bring myself to feel threatened by Alice and Decus (why on earth do they spell his name that way when it's pronounced "Dex" and would be easier to remember/spell like that anyway); Alice was just weird and slightly annoying and Decus was little more than an oddball, honestly. I mean, it was pretty funny how he thought Emil (and everyone else) was gay for him, and the cologne stuff was amusing, but that freakish swaying totally threw me off and seemed unnecessary. Effective enough as villains when it all came down to it, but ToS's bad guys were better overall. Brute probably could've been a great villain if he'd gotten more screentime, though.
Also I want to gouge Richter's eyes out with his own glasses for teaching Emil that "courage is the magic that turns dreams into reality" thing. UGH IT'S SO LAME THAT IT HURTS WHY RICHTER WHY D<
The monsters, hm, what can I say about the monsters. Interesting enough mechanic, if really only tacked on to feed off of the popularity of Pokémon, and handled well enough. It was kind of hard gaining new monsters, especially in the beginning, and for the longest time I only had the two that Tenebrae helped me catch (the imp sucked but I love my wolf... mmm, Huangdi~) plus one or two that I was able to get by sheer luck. It wasn't so bad getting monsters spellbound towards the middle and end, after I'd hatched some Centurions and given Emil some elemental attacks, but in the beginning when he doesn't have any elemental attacks to speak of you have to rely on Marta (and the others) and the monsters themselves to line up the elemental grid and activate spellbinding. That's not easy, since you either have to use Marta/the other humans yourself, which may not be comfortable for you, or else constantly turn on/off over half the artes in your party so that people only spam a single element of arte. That and you can't control what the enemy monsters do, of course, so if you're trying to line up Lightning while the Blue Roses around you keep abusing their Water-element Life Force move... ugh.
...also I fail at making pacts even after I get them into spellbind, but that's just me, I suspect. I even got that skit where Tenebrae and Marta yell at you and say "you just failed to make a pact with ten freaking monsters in a row YOU KIND OF SUCK EMIL". :/
And my monster book is barely complete at all. ): Obviously just running through what's necessary for the story barely scratches the surface. I'm sure that there are a few monsters you can only get through evolution, but that can't possibly leave as many gaps in the book as I have. I guess going on quests and doing the coliseum might introduce some more, but as I say later I didn't bother much with those for various reasons. Besides, the ones that I did do consisted mostly of monsters I'd either already seen or monsters that I would see shortly afterward in the main story; other than a "boss" or two, like the Rock Golem in one of them, there wasn't anything new. I'm rather confused about that, since I kinda wanna catch 'em all. *shot*
I miss the old monster manual, though. I do like the little informational snippets about the species, and it is nice that you can get full information on a species without having to spend money (albeit not a lot) on Magic Lenses and have a specific character use them, but it feels like the other one had more information in it. It also included human enemies (ludicrous as that was... ohaithur, Sheena, Regal, Zelos and Kratos, you are monsters nao k? :D) and bosses; while that's unnecessary in ToS2, since you can't catch humans and bosses, it just felt more complete to me. Oh, and I find it very annoying that you can't see TP remaining or the elemental alignment of an enemy when you check its stats during battle. Granted, in the case of normal monsters you can just remember which ones you can find in your current location and then look them up in the book (only for the alignment, though), but that's tedious. And, since they aren't in the book for you to check, that doesn't help at all when you're dealing with human enemies or bosses; at that point you just have to guess or completely ignore the elemental chart, go for the jugular and hope for the best. That works well enough, but I don't like it.
Evolving monsters by feeding them was weird, especially since several of my monsters are apparently incredibly picky and didn't like most of the recipes I was able to find. I almost never used cooking just to raise stats, but that was because I was in a hurry, some of the ingredients were hard to find without expending some degree of effort (RRRGH where is the MILK) and, again, most of them were really finicky. It was a little weird how, after evolving to a certain monster, the next time your monster was able to evolve it would turn back into its original, usually much less impressive form; while I guess in the end it was okay because presumably it would still get progressively stronger each time it cycled back to the final form, I was sort of offended by the idea of having to turn my beautiful Fenrir back into a dinky, rather ugly little wolf and so stopped evolving him there. And getting the items you need for the special evolutions is either really hard (assuming I'm right in my guess about what those items are) or next to impossible (assuming I'm wrong, in which case I have no idea what you're supposed to be looking for).
The skits were great. Seriously. First of all, they actually added voice acting to them, so it's easier to follow along if you don't read quickly (I generally do, but it was still nice). And... and they're just adorable. Tenebrae picks on absolutely everyone and he's grumpy and vain and amazing. And even the skits without Tenebrae are cute/funny (much as I dislike relationships in general, Emil and Marta are just so dumb and awkward when it comes to their feelings for one another that I thought it was really cute) and just... aaaah. They also added some that were nice throwbacks to the first game--a "Quick-Jump" skit, stuff about Raine's Ruin Mode... even a skit where Presea pokes Tenebrae's "paw pads", which I am assuming is a nod to those "paw paw" skits in the original--I don't know, I never got to see them. If they involve Presea being as adorable as she was in this one, though, then I need to go dig up my skit transcript file and find them nao. She and Regal pretty much call him "Paw Pad" for most of the rest of the game, aww~ :3 Nobody ever gets Tenebrae's name right, haha.
There was also this one absolutely ridiculous skit with Zelos, shortly after he joins the party for the first time, where he serves Marta this, like, seven-course meal and only leaves bread and water for Emil. Then he tells Emil that he's "such a gentleman that he was gracious enough to send for sparkling water" or something like that. I know it doesn't sound that abnormal at first, but it happens while you are invading the Vanguard Fortress trying to rescue Zelos's sister and that is absolutely retarded. :D I know that a lot of skits have pretty hilariously awful timing as it is, and in more games than just the Tales series (waltzing Rennac and L'Arachel!), but Zelos "sending for sparkling water" while they're on a desperate mission in the enemy base is just too much, IMO. See, this is why they need to bring back the field map! At least then it would only be slightly retarded!
...Zelos only says "hunny" once in the entire game, though, blah. And it seems like he's a lot meaner to Sheena. He doesn't hit on her so much as repeatedly telling her "All you've got going for you is your chest!" or words to that effect. After which he gets clobbered, of course. :3 He was always pretty mean to her before, but... maybe she shot him down really badly at some point prior to the game, I dunno.
The original characters, yes. They were awesome, as always. The different voice actors the majority of them had were very difficult to get used to--come baaack, Scott Menville and Shiloh Strong D:--but it wasn't too bad. Actually, it might just be my bad memory talking, but it feels like the only returning character that did have the same voice actor was the mayor of Iselia. :/ I guess Colette and maybe Genis might have, and I really can't tell with Regal and Presea (I'm pretty sure Regal's is different, as I don't remember him having a slight British accent from time to time), but I know that Lloyd, Zelos and Sheena had new actors and I'm pretty confident that Raine did. They either didn't roll the names of the VAs in the credits or I missed them, though, so I can't tell for sure. Rgh, I need to play the original again and remind myself.
BUT ANYWAY they were great. They had a lot of cute, funny and clever moments, they all abused one another horribly (Tenebrae helped :D), they were true to character and fit into the story well. Oh, and in the very end Zelos finally gets Judgment. That's a minor thing, but it always ticked me off that Colette could learn Judgment and Kratos could learn Judgment and you could use them whenever you liked, but Zelos, despite having a movelist otherwise identical to Kratos's barring maybe one other move, could only use Judgment when he was trying to kill you. :/ I never did get a chance to have him use it, especially since switching Raine out for Regal worked so beautifully in the final battle and I had no reason to try other arrangements, but I'll be sure to do it at some point just for the principle of the thing. Even Colette and Regal were pretty cool, despite the fact that they seemed to annoy most people before.
...I mean, I'll probably always think they're all awesome no matter what. ToS and ToS2 are just some of those games where I cannot bring myself to hate anyone at all, at least as far as the main characters are concerned. (Chocolat and the mayor of Iselia came back, but they can still go die in a fire. rrrgh I wanted to stab them.) I understand that Colette is a horribly shallow character, and that Regal's emoemoemo can be grating, and I make no excuses for them, but for whatever reason I just find it endearing instead of irritating. Anyway, they really weren't as bad this time around, I promise.
Regal also fights in his president's suit maybe 60% of the time and it is so much better than the prison uniform/girlshirt. Unfortunately the art staff was lazy and didn't bother redrawing the status page pictures and skit headshots of the old characters, which meant that Regal had the stupid prison uniform on at all times in those pictures even when he didn't in the actual story (they changed it back and forth for the little pictures that go next to the HP/TP bars, why not just go all the way?). Bah.
Animorph is right, though: it is very short. I finished in ~37 hours, whereas my only finished ToS save file is like 112 hours or something. Effectively, it's only half the length of the first. The fact that they replaced the field map with a quick-jump world map didn't help; I dunno, maybe it's just me, but I generally prefer walking to jumping around a map in most RPGs. It would have allowed more time for leveling without having to grind or go out of your way--not that I ever once felt I was underleveled for anything, though, which I guess is good--and allowed for more monsters, those extra chests they had out in the field, and... eh, I dunno, I just like that way better. More sidequests and minigames and things definitely would've been nice as well; I know they had the quests, but those can get a little monotonous sometimes. I don't know, maybe they get better the further along you go. I didn't bother trying that many because I just wanted to finish the main story. I also didn't bother with the coliseum beyond the first party-battle round, partially because I was still in a hurry and partially because I'm generally not very confident when it comes to the coliseum anyway. There are probably still some cool weapons/titles to get there, and I'll give them a go the next time around, but yeah. More actual sidequests like Niflheim or the costume-title quests would have been great, though. (And if they were there, it would've been nice if they were a just a tad easier to find/trigger because I obviously totally missed them.)
The music and everything was nice, I thought, although it was hella annoying how the music drowned out the voice acting in some of the cinematics. If they hadn't had a transcript of the text at the bottom of the screen I might not have been able to follow half of what was going on. I tried adjusting the volume, but it never really helped; I guess you don't have that much control over the cinematics. :/ It would have been pretty nice if they hadn't played such happy, campy music during some of the minigames, though--I mean, I know it's a minigame and it's supposed to be fun, but in the end the stupid Garuda is still trying to kill me and I don't think that happy-skippy-music is very appropriate!
The ending... eh, I wasn't so thrilled with the ending. I mean, it did its job and was certainly more consistent than whatever bad shit they were smoking when they came up with what happened to Kratos, but in places it felt cobbled together and a little rushed. I'm also sad about Richter... I'm glad that I didn't have to kill him and that he did turn out to be a great guy (if a bit melodramatic there), but now I don't want him to leave and I miss him. And for all intents and purposes it seems like they got rid of Tenebrae as well, which is cruel. D< (At least there's still Genis, I guess. haha lol Lloyd is going to have an affair, you rock Genis.) There were a few things about what happened to Emil/Ratatosk/Richter that confused me, but I guess they're just technicalities and not huge problems so meh.
The final boss battles were also rather disappointing. Aqua/Ladon/whatever was lame after facing Decus and Alice. The battle with Richter was challenging enough and definitely took me a few tries (thank you Regal you are an effing godsend aaaah) but then there was the thing with Emil vs. Marta and Lloyd that confused the tar out of me--was I supposed to try and win or lose on purpose? The story progressed after I gave up trying to figure it out and just lost, which is fine, but what happens if I beat Lloyd and Marta? Game over?--and Emil vs. Ratatosk!Emil was a pathetic cakewalk. Lloyd vs. Kratos was harder than that... hell, Sheena vs. Kuchinawa was probably harder. :/ (I think Mithos and Mithos MkII were harder than Richter, too, by the way.) They were nice touches and were appropriate to the story, but they should have ramped up the difficulty on Emil vs. Emil, at least. And I think having to take control of Marta (or Lloyd, I guess) during the second-to-last battle would have been better, because then those two would still win as the story seems to require and it would be more challenging and satisfying. Admittedly, I guess I was kind of glad that they were easy because a difficult battle there might have meant losing and then having to do those plus stupid Richter all over again, but it wasn't especially satisfying. I think that that little problem could have been easily resolved by having a demon lord or something come rampaging through the Ginnungagap or however you spell it.
Um, what else, what else... other little things:
-RRRGH they didn't explain why it was necessary for Kratos to effing leave. I am officially angry with Namco now. Again, I will remind you that this isn't just disappointed fanwhining--I still maintain that Kratos leaving totally broke his character development and ignored half of the stupid little mantras Lloyd kept chanting throughout the entire game. Way to not fix it, Namco. :/
-They also didn't do anything with Noishe. :/ That whole thing with the Mithos skit and the discussion in Heimdall was entirely pointless, then. Again, good job there.
-My understanding is that the whole thing with Presea "being sensititve to demons" also remained unexplored--they brought it up in the first game during the Devil's Arms sidequest but then dropped it, and Tenebrae mentioned it briefly here as well but then it was dropped again. Again, I have to ask... why, then? What's the point? Of course, there is the possibility that it wasn't dropped in the first game--I never did finish Niflheim (burn the book, I mean; I always let it stay because I liked going back in), so it's possible that some closure or at least further explanation happened after destroying the book that I just haven't seen yet. Hmm. Can someone just tell me if that's the case or not, because I still don't like the idea of closing my booook D:
-I wish we'd gotten to see more of the Centurions' non-core forms. That isn't relevant in the slightest, of course; I just thought it was boring that we didn't. Just Tenebrae and Aqua, boo. They could've at least done Solum, since he was so important to the story and all...
-On that note, I wish we'd gotten to see what Ratatosk looked like before taking on Aster/Emil's form. Ratatosk is supposed to be based on some sort of squirrel-thing in Norse mythology (I have yet to look it up properly), and I keep picturing this weird giant squirrel causing all of this trouble. I've even been calling Emil's Ratatosk Mode "Squirrel Mode". But then... no squirrel. Boo.
-Sheena can't summon in battle anymore. D: Yeah, they took out Over Limit and all (well, some of the Vanguard can use Over Limit as a very annoying arte that I wish my people could learn), but they could've just put the Spirits in as regular artes the way they did it in Phantasia. Bah. Unless her mystic arte, which I haven't seen yet, has something to do with summoning, that is.
-urgh the bosses all have the most annoying mystic artes... they drop all of my party to just about 1 HP, rrgh, while Emil's Devil's Hellfire (cool as it is) attacks the weakpoint for massive damage but in the end isn't anywhere near as broken. I have yet to see the rest of the party's mystic artes because they don't use them when they're computer-controlled and I haven't had time to use all of them myself, and I doubt that anyone I have access to is as broken as Richter, Brute or Decus, but I am curious about them.
-I do not like Verius's womanvoice. I'm sure he didn't have a womanvoice before, what haaappened
-damn the monsters grow fast, by the way. My strongest is currently my Fenrir, Huangdi, at level 87 or something (Emil is only level 57, by comparison, and Marta's like 53), and that's after evolving him twice when he was already in the twenties and thirties. I don't like being outpaced like that, even though they don't actually seem to be that much stronger than my human party (barring the absolutely massive HP and TP, that is). S'okay, though, because Huangdi is my baby~ *hugs*
-I wish you could name the monsters on your own, though. Some of the names were cool enough (again, Huangdi; that's the sort of thing I'd pick most of the time anyway), but others were meh and they were apparently random and ugh. Also, when I first looked at the back of the box I wasn't really paying attention to the screenshots, and so I saw this little yellow thing and did a double-take because I could've sworn it was a Pikachu. It was just a chimera, of course, but even after I got one of my own I still called it Pikachu just because. Damn the stupid game, his name isn't Petro, it's Pikachu. D<
-Tenebrae is still the best thing ever. :3
