Keep It or Delete It?: Pushmo (3DS eShop)
Keep It or Delete It?: Quasar Quinn: Escape from Zargnon (Android)
Keep It or Delete It?: Mutant Mudds (3DS eShop)
Final Cut: Hetalia: World Series (Season 3) (DVD)
Keep It or Delete It?: Paper Monsters (iPad)If you’ve been reading my Currently Playing Blog, you’ve seen that it took longer than expected for me to finish this game thanks to my console eating Disc 2. Now here’s the question: just how good was the meal for my 360?
MagnaCarta 2 for the XBox 360 was developed by Korean developer Softmax using Unreal Engine 3 and published in North America by Namco Bandai on October 13th. Though it is called MagnaCarta 2, it’s actually the third game in the series after MagnaCarta: The Phantom of Avalanche and MagnaCarta: Crimson Stigmata, for PC and PS2 respectively. I haven’t played either of previous titles, but I do know that the reviews on Crimson Stigmata were less than flattering. Supposedly, MagnaCarta 2 improved many of the issues with its predecessor, but not enough to make it a great game.
Frankly, the story is pretty melodramatic and linear; outside of a plethora of sidequests, there isn’t much you can do to derail yourself from the canned storyline. Disc one felt just about as generic as JRPG’s get: You play Juto, the mysterious young man who has lost his memory, and as the game opens, your village gets attacked by the Northern Forces. Some Southern Forces troops are already on the island exploring for ancient weapons called Sentinels, and they come to your aid, but you are overmatched and forced to leave the island. During the retreat, Melissa, who has taken care of you on the island, gets injured and you’re forced to leave her behind. After this, you decide to join the Southern Forces’ Counter-Sentinel Unit in order to seek revenge and save Melissa, if she’s still alive. The rest of disc one is spent fighting skirmishes against the Northern Forces, performing quests to help out townspeople and listening to Juto wallow in self-pity. Disc two improves the storytelling somewhat, but it’s still far from shocking. As the war rages on, the emotional impact on all of the characters grows, but it all seems a bit overacted. Plus, all of the standard RPG plot devices are there: kidnapping, people changing sides, dark secret revealed about the characters’ pasts, etc. There were no glaring plotholes, and there are one or two story points that weren’t completely predictable; so, I should give them credit for that, but the story in general could have been much stronger.
Generally, with mediocre story, you get mediocre character development, and MagnaCarta 2 gives no real surprises in this department, either. If it weren’t for the sidequests, which help to fill in some of the character development, most of the characters would be pretty forgettable. Even still, I never really found myself connecting with the characters, and actually grew antagonistic towards them at times due to some of the voice acting. The dialogue gets melodramatic at times, and the number of sighs in the game is a bit ludicrous. I noticed it while I was playing and mentioned it to Sandra, and she started counting the sighs and grunts during her playthrough. She’s about 25 hours in and has counted up 58 for Juto alone and 141 total sighs and grunts. I was always under the impression that an ellipsis indicated trailing off of a sentence or silence, but apparently it was the sigh indicator in this game. BangZoom Entertainment usually does a pretty good job with their voice acting in both anime and video games, but this is not one of their finest works. Zephie and Crocell were done quite well, as was Keiten, the Mare chieftain, but Juto was overacted a bit and Celestine’s voice got a little annoying after a while.
Fortunately, the gameplay was a bit better than the story. Most of the game is spent using a party of three on the main screen with up to three members in reserve that can be switched out at any time. Story dialogue stops the action bringing up larger versions of the characters and text boxes However, random interactions with citizens and battles take place on the world map; you can see your enemies running around on-screen and engage them at your leisure. There are two modes for your characters, battle mode and movement mode. In movement mode, your characters run faster than normal (though I wish it was a bit faster), but you cannot attack enemies or use skills. It should be noted that enemies can still attack you in movement mode, though. In battle mode, your characters draw their weapons and your footspeed slows down, but the characters can attack and use offensive and healing skills in this mode. Each character is given access to two types of weapons, each with its own strengths and weaknesses and its own set of skills. Skills are gained via skill points earned at level up. There are two skill trees, one for each weapon, where points can be spent to learn new skills or improve already known ones. It’s a pretty intuitive system to get used to, but I found it pretty unnecessary to use some of the weapons.
The battle system is reminiscent of Final Fantasy XII minus the programmable “gambits.” Fighting occurs in real time, with button presses corresponding to attacks and skill uses. It takes a few iterations to understand the ins-and-outs, but once you get the hang of it, it’s pretty easy to make it do what you want. During battle, you will control the group leader, while the AI controls the other two characters for you. The AI was a little weak for both your support and the enemies; so, it evens out in the end, and anyone who can skillfully use the chain system can deal with most enemies easily. Sometimes the AI doesn’t compute the proper pathfinding; so, you will be running along and enter a fight only to find one of your party members stuck behind a rock somewhere along the way. It never gets to the point where it causes you problems, but it can be pretty annoying. The other annoyance during battle is that, sometimes, if you’re fighting in tight spaces, the camera will get hung up and you won’t get much of a view of the field. It only happened to me in a couple areas, and never during a boss fight, but it’s hopefully something to fix if they make another sequel. When it comes to fighting the battles, the characters expend stamina to attack and use skills, and when their stamina reaches zero, they overheat. If a skill is used when the character overheats, it can trigger the aforementioned chain. If you switch your leader to a new character and cause them to overheat before the first one recovers, a “chain break” occurs, resetting both characters stamina to maximum. This can be done over and over again fairly easily, making battles much easier on your characters. To trigger skills, you gain kan, the ethereal, magical energy in MagnaCarta 2. Juto and Argo gain fighting kan, which is stored for use later, while each of the other four gain elemental kan, which must be used in the area it is gathered or it will dissipate. Most of the encounters are pretty simple and don’t provide much challenge, and many of the bosses you encounter can be disposed of with patience and persistence. There was one boss in particular that was pretty annoying for me, but at no point did I ever have more than one person die in a fight, and didn’t lose anyone at all in the final battle. Completing the quests and fighting off enemies without grinding provides enough levels to keep you alive, which is a nice change of pace.
Graphically, the game doesn’t really stretch the limits of the xbox 360, but it certainly does not disappoint. To the untrained eye, the character designs could be described as anime-esque, but they have their distinctions. Outside of how Celestine and some of the other Mare females dress, there isn’t much fanservice to the character designs. They are refreshingly normal and done well, and along with the environments, are probably the highlights of the game. The environments are nice and lush, and the woodsy areas are almost relaxing to run through, if it weren’t for the enemies you have to fight off. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same for the sound. Along with overly-dramatic voice acting, the music is pretty forgettable. It matches the environments pretty well, but doesn’t distinguish itself in any way.
All in all, MagnaCarta 2 is a pretty average offering. Nothing about it is absolutely horrendous, but nothing about it stands out either. I would consider this a game to rent at best for the average gamer and a buy only for those who really love RPGs, but, without a new game+ mode, it doesn’t really have much replay value at all.
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Greg Barbe on 19 Nov 2009 at 5:24 pm #
Haven’t gotten to play it myself yet, but I guess its a good thing I got my copy on sale.
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Dan Furnas on 21 Nov 2009 at 12:25 am #
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a bad game; it’s just not exactly groundbreaking either.
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