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chuckroTwo centuries after Energi mostly disappeared (in the ending of the first Alphadia), the mechanical revolution has taken place. Reunited childhood friends Leon and Milfy are working for the Guild, doing odd jobs and protecting the locals from monsters.
So, really, what you need to do is read my review of the first game. Because practically everything still applies: The skill system is the same, the dungeons are wildly uneven, the equipment is all oddly front-loaded, there’s too much enforced linearity, every item has “energi” in the name, only buff/debuff spells matter and autobattle is a must.
The difficulty takes a jump around the time you reach the town of Starway, and the Schwartz Pass, which is a far, far larger and less linear dungeon than any of the previous ones. They also revisit remade but very similar versions of the tower dungeons from the first game. (Including all the dick-move pits and spikes.) Somewhere around the time you get a ship, the character advancement slows significantly and the plot seems to needlessly stretch out. There aren’t any equipment upgrades to purchase once you get the ship, as you’ve already effectively visited every town. The airship makes half a dozen interesting-looking dungeon locations accessible, but if you go to any but the next step in the plot sequence the characters scold you about entering dangerous areas without a good reason.
Needless to say, chunks of the plot make no sense if you haven’t played the first game. Enah is now the guildmistress and looks exactly the same, though she’s lost all of her high-level skills. Ash went inert for 150 years, then woke up and has been investigating “energi holes” and getting progressively less stable.
The thing that pissed me off the most is that, while you have six characters, two of them (your better mages) sit out half the boss battles, and then your strongest fighter abandons the party for the final boss battle. Characters not in the active party don’t gain levels as quickly and don’t gain skills at all, which means if you’d been using said fighter (and I was), you suddenly are at ¾ strength for the final battle. Not cool, game, not cool.
Overall: If you enjoyed the first Alphadia, this is more of the same to a ridiculous degree. Honestly, though, it’s not great, and KEMCO has much stronger offerings.
So, really, what you need to do is read my review of the first game. Because practically everything still applies: The skill system is the same, the dungeons are wildly uneven, the equipment is all oddly front-loaded, there’s too much enforced linearity, every item has “energi” in the name, only buff/debuff spells matter and autobattle is a must.
The difficulty takes a jump around the time you reach the town of Starway, and the Schwartz Pass, which is a far, far larger and less linear dungeon than any of the previous ones. They also revisit remade but very similar versions of the tower dungeons from the first game. (Including all the dick-move pits and spikes.) Somewhere around the time you get a ship, the character advancement slows significantly and the plot seems to needlessly stretch out. There aren’t any equipment upgrades to purchase once you get the ship, as you’ve already effectively visited every town. The airship makes half a dozen interesting-looking dungeon locations accessible, but if you go to any but the next step in the plot sequence the characters scold you about entering dangerous areas without a good reason.
Needless to say, chunks of the plot make no sense if you haven’t played the first game. Enah is now the guildmistress and looks exactly the same, though she’s lost all of her high-level skills. Ash went inert for 150 years, then woke up and has been investigating “energi holes” and getting progressively less stable.
The thing that pissed me off the most is that, while you have six characters, two of them (your better mages) sit out half the boss battles, and then your strongest fighter abandons the party for the final boss battle. Characters not in the active party don’t gain levels as quickly and don’t gain skills at all, which means if you’d been using said fighter (and I was), you suddenly are at ¾ strength for the final battle. Not cool, game, not cool.
Overall: If you enjoyed the first Alphadia, this is more of the same to a ridiculous degree. Honestly, though, it’s not great, and KEMCO has much stronger offerings.
