MagnaCarta 2 (X360)

“Not really a lot to say about this game, its ok. Not awesome, not terrible, just ok. Its best described as a Action RPG, movement in real time, attacks by pressing a single button, but its not a mindless hack and slash. Will discuss that further in...”

“Not really a lot to say about this game, its ok. Not awesome, not terrible, just ok. Its best described as a Action RPG, movement in real time, attacks by pressing a single button, but its not a mindless hack and slash. Will discuss that further in a bit.

The story is about a young man named Juto (voiced by the guy who does Ichigo in Bleach), he has no memory of who he is. He lives on a small island, living the lazy peaceful life, that is until the Northern Forces attack and he watchs his friend, Melissa killed. Arriving just before the attack is the Southern Forces, (Yes thats what they call them, Northern and Southern Forces, real deep right?) lead by Princess Zephie, thats a shortened version of it... not even going to try to spell her full name. Island gets taken over, Juto joins the Southern army, and follows Zephie in her goal to defeat the Northern Forces. Thats the gist of it, its an OK story with a few small twists, such as knowing Juto is not who he seems to be, has connections to the Northern Forces, the leader of the Southern Forces (man named Alex) knows the leader of the Northern Forces (Man named Schuenzit) and are secretly working together, which they blatantly tell in cut scenes. Things like that.

Thats the story, and now for the battle system. The game follows you around in 3rd person view, you can run around pretty quickly in any direction, when you see an enemy you pull the left trigger to draw your weapon. You then slow down to walking speed which can get slightly annoying since casters love to back pedal away from you and you seem to walk as fast as they do going backwards, tho you can charge by pressing the left joystick. Your standard attack is simply mashing the A button, but to keep it from being a Hack and Slash, they give you a Fatigue meter. So for instance if the meter has 100 points, pressing the A button fills it about 20% each swing, sometimes more for heavier hitting characters, once it hits 100%, you go into overheat mode. Once overheating you can't do anything for several seconds untill it drains the entire bar back to zero, however thats not enough, it still keeps you at roughly 75% full on the fatigue bar. To counter act that, they made it so you can reset the bar to zero by doing team attacks. In battle you control one character and you have 2 others who are controlled by the AI, when you get closer to overheating and use a Special attack, which is mapped to your X button, and the attack sends you into overheat mode, you swap to a different character to control. If you time it right and get that character to go into Overheat mode with a special attack while the first one is still cooling off, it does extra damage and resets the fatigue bars of both characters to zero.

While that sounds simple, sometimes its not, you swap characters by pressing Up for character 1, left for character 2, and Down for character 3. No matter what AI you set them to, your party members sometimes just dance in place around the enemy and do nothing to fill their fatigue bars, so you can send one yourself into Overheat mode, but the other 2 are very low, so you swap to them to build fatigue quickly, but end up missing the window of opportunity and then wind up with 2 characters overheating. You can set the AI to 3 different settings, Attack closest, attack leaders target, and use skills aggressively. However no matter what setting I do, it always seems like one character just wants to walk around and do nothing, so taking control of them constantly to build of fatigue to set up chain overheat attacks is the only way to go. Every character also has a random special attack, mapped to the B button, every now and then it flashes on your screen, hit it before it vanishes and you pull it off. Some of them are very powerful, some just suck. One of Zephies is a auto kill, another characters puts up a healing reflect shield, any damage she takes is instead reverted to healing.

Every character has 2 different types of weapons. For example, Juto has Sword and... stick thing attached to his arm. Its supposed to be a shield, but seriously, its like attaching a 2x4 to your wrist, thats not a shield, and also a 2h Sword style. The Sword and Shield style does less damage, higher defense, and more specials involved with defense, 2h Sword is all out high damage and damaging attacks. Zephies are a Rod and a Fan. Fan style has all her healing abilities but her attacks are extremely slow and do next to nothing for damage, her Rod style is quicker and does more damage, but all her Specials are ranged damage. So every level you can dump points into one or both styles and swap weapons to use those specials.

Special attacks use anywhere from 1-8 points, called Kan. Honestly Kan is only used by the mage types, but they never gave a explanation for the melee types, so just calling all the points Kan is fine. You gain Kan by attacking things in melee, every 3-4 swings gives 1 point of Kan, your low power”

“I'm really undecided about this game. I've played it for about two weeks and I'm only 5 hours in. It suffers the same problem as most other JRPG's. The characters and story are incredibly childish and uninteresting, the game is drawn out...”

“I'm really undecided about this game. I've played it for about two weeks and I'm only 5 hours in. It suffers the same problem as most other JRPG's. The characters and story are incredibly childish and uninteresting, the game is drawn out unecessarily long and over all it's just very slow and boring. On the other hand, the combat is a lot of fun which is the only reason I've kept playing. Will continue to slug my way through it and see if the game picks up at all but at this point I'm skeptical.”

“Again war erupts, a Queen is assassinated, a man with Amnesia is about to begin a quest to save the world, welcome to the start of Magnacarta 2. Magnacarta 2 is a very large upgrade from the first one, for starters it's a lot better of a game. The...”

“Again war erupts, a Queen is assassinated, a man with Amnesia is about to begin a quest to save the world, welcome to the start of Magnacarta 2. Magnacarta 2 is a very large upgrade from the first one, for starters it's a lot better of a game. The game takes place a 1000 years after the first Magna Carta and has no real direct history with the first one other than the warriors called Magna Carta. So picking this one up will not confuse someone new to the story of Magna Carta.

STORY/THEME
The story is not very original and anyone who has play a JRPG will have play this story a million times already. Although the story is nothing new it's still fun, it moves well and never confuses the gamer like the first one. Set in a medieval environment a war has torn the world apart and it's your job as Juto to put things right. You'll meet 5 other characters that will join Juto on his quest to bring peace.

MUSIC/GRAPHICS
The music is nice with a mix of orchestra and sometimes a heavy guitar to match to mood or scene taking place. The music is never annoying but it is nothing memorable. The graphics are nice everything is render nicely. Although other current gen systems have better graphics the environments, characters, and enemies are lit nicely and creates a very nice mood to the game. One weak part to the graphics is the lack of movement from characters. When an important conversation starts up the 3D models will appear on screen and talk. Although they look very nice and move a little during conversations it's the stiff, flat feeling the characters give off that makes the conversations lack emotion when emotion is happening.

GAMEPLAY
Magnacarta 2 is an Action RPG and works a lot better than the first one. The gamer is given 3 attack commands one is a normal attack, one is a counter attack, and the final is a special attack. These attacks work very well, first the gamer draws their weapon and travels around the land looking for enemies. After finding one they just push the normal button to create a combo then follow up with a special attack. The counter attacks happen randomly and work differently between each character. One counter attack only happens if a character hits with a critical attack, while another needs to take damage. There are also chain attacks and linked attacks that happen between characters. Magnacarta 2 is a lot faster of a game then the first one. Any player from the first will be very happy to play a faster paced game.

Outside of battles the gamer will converse with NPCs for random dialogue or will come across NPCs that will want them to do jobs. Doing a job will give the gamer SID (money), experience points, or items. The story is linear but for the most part the gamer can travel around to work on jobs/side quests until ready to continue the story.

OVERALL.
Since Magnacarta 2 is just like every other JRPG conversations, finding items, doing additional quests, and progressing through the story Magnacarta 2 will feel like an old friend to people who play JRPGs. Anyone new to JRPGs would find this game entertaining as the challenge to this game is not very hard. Magnacarta 2 is a great step up of what Magna Carta 1 was, and is a great game to start with for anyone new. Veterans to the JRPGs would enjoy the game but will forget
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