Beat everything including all optional bosses and side content, though my bestiary was only about 77% complete (not that I care about that). This game was a huge improvement in quality and scope over the first game, but was not the masterpiece that Wild Arms 3 was. I liked the individual prologues for the 3 main characters; this should be a staple for more RPGs. It was done better than the first game but still not even close to Dragon Quest 4. I expected the party to be only those 3 characters and was pleasantly surprised to find that there were 6 characters total. The game threw me for a loop by allowing some of the side characters to be renamed, so I changed Tim to Timmeh (from South Park) and Kanon to Karen not realizing they would later join the party. The party and battle mechanics were top tier. Every character got xp as long as they did not end the battle at 0 hp, and characters and equipment could be freely swapped at the beginning of every turn. This is how every Jrpg should be because it is so fun and tactical. I loved the FP battle mechanics. Characters started battles with FP equal to their level, which could increase up to 100 from taking damage and doing normal attacks. Then every character had special abilities (like magic spells) that required a certain amount of FP in order to be used but did not consume or increase FP. Then there were ultimate abilities that did consume FP. Such a genius system. However, despite how amazing all of these mechanics were the game's biggest flaw made it less fun to play through than Wild Arms 1; enemies were too easy. There were no real tactics needed against normal enemies as most died in a single hit for the entire game. No need to keep track of elemental weaknesses to kill quicker, and little worry about taking damage. It felt like the enemies were not balanced around the personal skills and that they should have had their stats doubled, tripled or more across the entire game, mandatory bosses included. I also think that hp should have been restored to full after each battle, provided either healer was in the party. Made no sense to have unlimited healing in battle but not be able to heal at all outside battle.
I actually got game over once during the fight vs Caina with only the main character in knight blazer form. She hit him with poison, disease and sleep on first turn, and he kept getting put back to sleep. I likely could have turned it around by curing and healing immediately but I went offense instead. I proceeded through the game using Ashley, Brad and Tim for normal battles for long term strategy of unlocking Tim's spells. I switched him for Lilika for boss fights as she was the better healer and had buffs. By the end of the game I was using a guide to get everything I had missed to prepare for the optional bosses. Tim was using his hit all non elemental valkyrie to 1 shot entire battles, so he quickly learned all his magic as I farmed 3 necronomicons, learned most of Marivel's blue magic from enemies, and went through the final dungeon to get the best armors. There was 1 point where I accidentally triggered the optional boss in the wind cave and had not saved for a while, but it was no trouble. I beat all optional bosses using a walkthrough and only the 2 toughest gave me any trouble. Ragu took several attempts because his damage output was so absurdly high. I finally beat him by cheesing with Marivel's sleep, and using the 2 flowers I had to boost her luck. Then I had Ash doing his mad lucied in knight blazer form while Tim cheesed high summoning the time guardian, which gave him 3 turns while time was frozen. He used a full carrot to max out FP for the next summon, then nuked 2 bold lances. Ash attacked before him but Lily did not get turns even though her speed was higher. She was doing good damage with non elemental saber on the power up crest. I also had Karen throw the viper fang with power boost for 25k damage. The boss never even got an attack off past turn 1 on that winning attempt. Angolmois took 3 attempts and I had to slightly adjust the strategy from the walkthrough because Brad had bad luck and could not land slow from crest caps. There was no cheesing this boss, rather it was all about minimizing the chances of the healers being 1 shot by his strongest attack, and to do that required staying on top of healing by being faster than him. So I adjusted the strategy by having Ash use the slow cap with normal luck (which landed), Tim heal with first aid, and Lily cast her own slow (which needed to be on the half cost crest) since her luck was best. That double down worked perfectly as both slows landed. Then it was a lot of swapping characters around and making use good use of everything I had. Ash used force charge to get into knight form then mad lucied until he had enough FP to last burst for huge damage. He also used healing items a few times. Brad was the only character slower than the boss so he used revive items on Lily, spent most turns giving mini carrots to the others, and dropped a boost rail gun when his FP maxed out. Lily was the healer, using mystic with the life orb. If she did not need to heal I swapped her out or had her use invincible or defend since the boss's strongest attack could 1 shot her without defending. She did die 2 or 3 times and spent quite a bit of time in the back with 0 FP while Tim took over healing with first aid, until he died. It was lucky that the boss went so long not using his strongest attack. When Lily had to be swapped back in after Tim died she could only defend while the guys healed up with items. Marivel used status lok on Ash to prevent confusion and died at some point. Lily had the sheriff star while the other characters used the full libra and clear chime to negate any confusion. I don't remember if Karen did anything at all. After winning I made my way to the final boss and split the teams so that Marivel, Karen and Tim had to solo mini bosses while the dream team took out the final boss. Marivel struggled because she had a hard time keeping her hp up. I ended up using life drain with occasional mid tier healing item when she got too low. Karen had the talisman that healed most damage she took every turn so she was able to go full offense and wrecked the boss. Tim was trivial as he could heal himself and nuke for big damage. The final boss did not last long.
I mostly enjoyed the creative puzzles. Some of the riddles and platforming challenges were annoying, but the puzzles were mostly very well designed. I wish dungeons had maps as I got disoriented sometimes while turning the camera, and some places were confusing (that damn trapzohedron). The story and characters were excellent though some of the dialogue was odd, like some of the phrases and words used made my brain hurt a bit. Not sure if it was a translation/localization issue, or if the writer had trouble making the characters sound like real and distinct people. It was worst during the scenes with those 2 lizard men, and I would not have minded at all if they were cut from the game. I loved the ending as it was very touching and delivered more or less exactly what I wanted. It showed what the characters did after the world was saved and ended 1 year later with Ashley and his gf meeting everyone with twin babies in hand but fading to black just before they reveal their names. Best way for a romance plot to end, and you know they named the kids after the brother and sister that died for the final boss. Though his gf was far from the most attractive woman in the game. There should have been more done with the love triangle with Lilika. She was clearly into Ash and he was clearly not into her, but I would have liked a few more scenes. The hottest woman was Antenora, too bad she was a villain. Npc dialogue changed many times as the game progressed, so I made sure to talk to everyone in the chateau and main town/castle regularly, but did not always check every other town. Always a good sign when developers put in that extra world building even if most NPCs were only 1 note. I especially appreciated the short scene during the ending of the dark haired man and woman sneaking off together, which would only mean anything if you kept up with their little romance sub plot.
Post game levels were 62, with 60 and 61 before the final boss. Everyone used support accessories for random battles; weathervane to prevent surprise and fighting alone, coin purse for more money, elven slippers for surprise chance, and occasionally odd slippers for more random battles. Everyone maxed out hp up skill first, then the warriors did physical attack, magic defense, and physical defense. The 2 mages did lower FP (which was not good but seemed like a good idea when they were low level), magic attack and both defenses. Marivel was odd because when I first got her I did not know if she was a warrior or mage, so maxed her physical attack. Later I found out she got spells so I maxed magic attack too. Towards the end of the game the warriors maxed critical and I began putting points into up parameter and hp restore for everyone. I upgraded Ash's guns to get accuracy 80% or higher then spent the rest on attack. For most of the game he 1 shot enemies with his normal attack and did consistent decent damage on bosses with gun shots. I never did use full clip because turning into demon knight was much better. Never used combine and maybe only used accelerator early on a few times. Overall I though he was the most powerful character because of the demon form, but without that he would probably be a little behind the other characters. He mostly used the hope medium, before that focusing on attack power. Brad had the highest hp and attack so I fed him every str apple to max that. I upgraded his guns exclusively on attack (except 2 extra bullets for rail gun), which proved to be extremely expensive. I gave him speed mediums so he went first in random battles. For boss fights he alternated between building FP with normal attacks, and using lock on with his arms. Later he used boost with his arms which also seemed to have 100% accuracy. I used Kanon a lot for random battles late game to unlock her best move by having her force charge and Tim use FP shift, which allowed her to start attacking with phalanx on turn 2. She was the fastest character but was a bit weaker offensively. Getting new crests to assign spells for Lily was less engaging in this game for some reason. She had fewer spells than princess in the first game, in particular never getting light and dark nukes, and a lot of the less useful spells were cut. I did buy a light and dark ring for her to use mystic on for those nukes, but never needed it. I also never used extend or dual cast because the game was either not hard enough or so hard that she had to use mystic life orb to keep everyone alive. I gave her all vit, magic and speed apples, and she used magic power mediums, especially love. I did not like how Tim was only 12; way too young to be a fighting character regardless of how good at magic he was. He lacked many of the support spells that Lily had but made up for it with his own unique spells, group heal, and hit all nukes. He was significantly more frail than Lily, and slow but did have the highest magic power.
This game came so close to being one of the best jrpgs of all time, if only the challenge throughout the game was enough to require engagement with all if its systems. It was not enjoyable to slaughter enemies with barely any thought. I prefer it when every battle is a serious life and death struggle that forces optimization. The thought of playing through this game again leaves me feeling bored. Despite all that, the mechanics, story, characters and world building were excellent.
8.3/10
