Game 27 - Langrisser II wrap-up

FACTS

1. Turn type: Player turn/Enemy turn
2. Maps: Medium to large. Terrain gives bonuses.
3. Character Customization: Each character has a branching class path.
4. Character Development: Standard XP level system. At level 10, character automatically upgrades to a new class, although the player can choose which one to advance to.
5. Party Size: You can always send out all your leaders. Each leader has up to 8 nameless grunt soldiers under them (fortunately the game has an auto-move system for the grunts if you don't want to move them all individually).
6. Equipment: Each character can equip one item (which includes armor, weapons, or items).
7. Game Flow: 27 stages, one after another, no repeating stages (unless you use a code) or multiple paths.
8. Saving: Permanent saves both in and out of battle.
9. Death: The nameless grunts all disappear at the end of the stage whether they die or not. A commander who dies misses the bonus XP at the end but survives.

IMPRESSIONS 

This game shows a lot of development from Langrisser 1, although many of the upgrades had already been made in the PC Engine version of L1. So this didn't feel like as much of a jump up, but I thought the changes they did make were good. On the whole it felt smoother and easier to play.

The story is greatly upgraded as well; it's still not quite at the level of later games but there's a fair amount of dialogue during the stages, which is always appreciated.

It seemed to me like the system made a lot more sense in this game -- in L1 I often felt like I didn't know exactly what was going to happen in a battle, whereas this time I could usually tell from looking at the stats and considering the unit compatibility. I prefer this kind of game (and I'm wondering what the first game will be that actually gives you the damage you'll do before you attack).

I've heard this is the hardest Langrisser game. Parts of it were difficult, especially the middle. There were a few stages in the middle I had to restart several times to get everything working right. But once I got a good team of 4th-rank characters it became quite easy from that point on. Even the meteor casting enemies weren't too bad because I could heal, or take them out with ballistae before they could do too much.

Overall a good game, and probably a contender for game of the year for 1994 although I already gave 1991 to Langrisser 1.

Next up is Feda Emblem of Justice, which I'll be playing in the Saturn remake.