Legionwood 2: Rise of the Eternal's Realm - Director's Cut Reviews

Set 300 years after the events of Legionwood 1, this game starts with a mysterious barbarian invasion searching for information on "the Eternal Gates". As usual, some poor guy gets thrown into the deep end and has to save the world. Considering the game starts with him losing his beloved... let's just say he's got a bit of a sword to grind... This game is a slight improvement on the previous game, and grips you from the beginning.

I just finished the game and although I did enjoy it and the battles were very challenging, a great improvement over Legionwood 1's battles which were pretty simple strategies. Unfortunately the story just failed to grab me, I kept thinking "Right beat that boss, soon the map will open up and the story will start to make sense - Oh no wait I just finished it. Huh." The ending is... abrupt to say the least. I got what I believe to be the best ending of the game, Reboot A. Where a stable time loop is formed which sets up the next game's Plot - Heroes of Legionwood. But also makes everything I did be reset. So... Yay? I guess? I did enjoy the game, Its well made. Its just the story failed to grab me like the first Legionwood: Tale of Two Swords did. Still lthat game was free and this one was cheap so I feel like I got my money's worth by far ^_^

I played a lot of RPG Maker Games but Legionwood showed me the bad sides of this genre. It actually punched me right in the face. Dont get me wrong, hard games are okey but i acutally like to have a choise. This game forces you to grind in the first real area after the intro fights! Story might by tempting but there a so many good games around, nope. Sorry. Not this time. No grinding for me please If you like games who come around hard from the beginning this might be a game for you, if not -> a lot of fish in the ocean.

Kinda Cheesy I like the 1st Legionwood better, this game has some very good retro elements, aside from the facts that there are side quests, secret classes & techniques/spells. 2 bad things I will say is #1 - that the main villian usually is the final boss, but instead you fight some demonic creature thats not even challenging enough. #2 - Cinematics, or scenes (whatever you call'em) are very dull, especially the multiple endings. Overall, this game isn't too bad to play, I just wouldn't recommend this to a low class RPG player....

Legionwood 2:RotER is a solid addition to the RPG maker roster for the cost, but be warned, it is DIFFICULT. The story and characters are standard RPG fare, with an interesting if somewhat ambiguous class system. If you play this game and get frustrated I recommend reading some of the class guides and planning ahead. Pros: Again, has everything an RPG needs to work well enough to be worth the purchase cost if you have the stones to finish it. This game is hard enough to be a challenge to even the most hardcore RPG fan. Cons: This game is PUNISHING. Nearly all fights, even the every few second random battles, are quite hard and cannot be plowed through as in most RPG games. Your characters are extremly weak early in the game, and require some grinding to strengthen yourself each time you progress to new areas/enemies. Most of the random enemies have some combination of brutal evasion rates, damage type immunities, multiple attacks per round, spellcasting, AND status effects linked to those multiple attacks, and in some cases ALL of the above (Im looking at you Dire Wasps!!!) Honestly most of this wouldnt be all that bad, except that you do not get a truly dedicated healer, and must rely mostly on items and "guarding" to regenerate health and mana in combat. This will FORCE you to spend alot of your time whittling down enemy groups to the last enemy, and then blinding/silencing it so it cannot damage you while you slowly regen your characters up for the next fight. Tips: Save every 2-3 battles in most areas, as the end can come unexpectedly with one unlucky ambush by multiattack enemies. Stock up on status effect cure items at all times. You will be curing 2-3 times a fight or more against some enemies (Curse you Dire wasps!!!) Do yourself a favor and read some class guides, the tips therein will save you many tears and much hairpulling. Keep older weapons around for a while, you never know when that shiney new elemental sword of uberness will be met with a whole area of enemies totally immune to it... sigh.

This game is well made no doubt and you can feel that DarkGaia is a competent game designer. But this game feels extremely rushed and unpolished. I expected more of this game. I'd like to make this review short and to the point so I'll just dive into it. STORY Compared to the first game this game feels more like a spin-off story than a completed sequel. Although the storytelling and the writing is very good i still feel that alot more story could had been mashed in there. I cleared the final dungeon at around 12 hours at level 19. This was just after picking up my last party member. For obvious reasons this left me with a feeling that the game was not really complete. One bonus is that there is quiet alot of optional content in the game that provides more story. That's all fine and dandy but personaly i would had liked to see the main story expanded instead. Out of the six main characters only two of them have any time at all to see any real king of character development. With that said the characters are still very well written and atleast a couple of them are genuinly likeable. GAMEPLAY The gameplay is solid but nothing out of the ordinary. The battles are hard at times and can be quiet annoying but the game offers loads of different ways to tackle them. You can for example play a battle slowly with one heavy damage character and three Clerics if that floats your boat. The upside to the difficulty is that i found myself satisfied when i defeated certain bosses. Battles aside the puzzles are mostly frustrating and kinda feel placed in the game to expand the playtime. GRAPHICS I like DarkGaias mapping alot. I really feel that he makes the most out of the built in Graphics in every RPG Maker engine. He has a real knack for making all areas feel unique and full of life. MUSIC Some really good choises here. I especially like the fantastic battle music from NemesisTheory. There is not much to say about this really. The soundtrack as a whole does it's job well and provides even more atmosphere to the areas and battles of the game. MINOR POINTS There are some bugs in the game. It's one of the things that makes the game feel rushed. Overall it's nothing game breaking though and it does not really lower the overall experience that much. OVERALL The game is still worth the price in my opinion. You get 10-15 hours of really solid old-school gameplay out of it. But you better be sure that you enjoy the SNES era of JRPGs because this game is not for everyone.

Finally beat the game! Well, one of several endings. I have to say that this game is an exceptional turn based RPG. Here are a few reasons that I personally enjoyed the game: The class system is way more balanced than Final Fantasy ever achieved. With the right combination of skills and equipment, you can make every class a useful one. Every character can be developed however you see fit. There is a lot of replay value in just trying out differently developed characters. There are a lot of side quests, but nothing that you have to devote hundreds of hours to complete. The story line is fantastic. It's not over saturated with juvenile snark like most modern games in the genre. Its a story that grabs you, and compells you to keep playing. Apparently there are several endings, and decisions you make can affect the endings and storyline. That also adds to the replay value. The difficulty is hard, but reasonable. You have to apply thought and strategy to get through it, which means it doesn't get very repetitive (except for later dungeons, where the switching mechanisms can drive you nuts!) But not so nuts that you throw the controller and give up. A lot of people complain about the difficulty, but if any of you remember playing final fantasy 1 and getting off your ship at the wrong port, or playing Dragon Warrior 1 and crossing one too many bridges, the difficulty doesn't even come close to those days. The soundtrack is really good. I'm not a musical person, but I appreciated the variety of background music. It set the mood for the different scenes very well. I'd give this an 8/10, and I personally can't wait to see another Legionwood game.

Worked 10 hours ....then get new party member .....says in menu its supposed to say party...this is where you choose who you want. Iv seen screen shots but mines not there....also sometimes takes 2hours for an item to register into my inventory........i just wasted so much time.....done.....

I really don't know how to feel about this game. Neutral, I guess? I don't really know whether to recommend or not recommend, honestly. I guess based upon the fact that I've played for 10+ hours and haven't thrown in the towel would count as a recommend. This game has a lot of flaws, so play at your own discretion. [h1]Pros[/h1] [list] [*]A class and sub class option. Nice. I've never seen this. This essentially gives you the power to have a character major in one class and minor in another one. Good when you can make all of your characters clerics if you want. Makes me feel like I can play God a little bit. [*]Encounter rate is decent. It's high.. but not insanely high. Which is good, because you do battle a lot and it can be tiresome if you're actually trying to make some decent progress. Or, if you're in trouble and you're trying to escape. [*]Dungeons are all a respectable and comfortable length. Not too long.. not too short. This makes it easier to retreat to town if you need healing or items. You can go back in and retrace your steps pretty quickly and make progress at a good pace. [*]You can save any where and at any time. Phew. This is a real life saver. They didn't take a page from the ol' "save point" book. [*]Most tihngs are inexpensive. Reviving your character from the dead is costly, but it's relatively easy to avoid this when you can buy large quanities of items for cheap to help you restore your mp/hp. Inns are also cheap. With all the enemy encounters, you'll also have a hefty amount of cash to buy new equipment in each new area. You have a lot of opportunities to heal/improve yourself BEFORE you die, saving you a headache while also saving you some cash. [*]The music is pretty solid. [/list] [h1]Cons[/h1] [list] [*]Your party's hit rate is atrocious. This is a real problem. Seriously. Even my incredibly speedy Rogue character misses every other turn.. and that's with no added debuffs or status effect. This is frustrating and makes battles more drawn out than they need to be. It doesn't seem to matter your stats, what class you are playing, what equipment you have.. it's just a whole lot of missing for no goddamn reason. [*]Little to no warning when you're about to run into a boss. This can be remedied by saving frequently.. but come on. [*]No quest log. Another serious problem. This makes it really difficult to track quests. There's not even any point in doing them because it's so easy to forget. A real shame.. I feel like side questing should play a big part in RPGs. [*]Takes forever to level up. This seems to be a weird scaling issue they didn't fix.. because you fight a RIDICULOUS amount in this game. [*]There is no "warp" option (so far) to leave an area quickly. This makes traveling/exploring really quite painful. I mentioned above that dungeons aren't terribly long, but it is still a pain in the ass regardless when you have to drag yourself out of the dungeon instead of using a simple spell, item or ability to get yourself out quickly. [*]There are a lot of unique sprites, which is nice to see... but what's lacking is portraits next to dialogue boxes when sub or side characters are speaking. This bothers me. All the main characters have portraits next to their dialogue (as they should), but not a single other character has one. Ever. Would it have been so hard to add in? It really puts a hamper on the story telling aspect when they make every other character seem not at all important. [*]Unpredictable character pathing. When you're in towns, for example, NPCs can box you in and there's not a damn thing you can do about it. Sometimes they don't even move, or don't move in a direction that gives you room to get out. [*]No voice overs at all. You have to read all of the clunky and extremely drawn out dialogue. Most of which, over time, you could care less about. I understand this game was most likely a low budget RPG maker type of game to come from an independant/small developer.. but having it read aloud would really make the experience a bit better. [/list] Now, unfortunately my computer's hard drive died and I lost my save data.. so I never got to finish this game 100%. It wasnt worth restarting just to finish and see the ending in my opinion, nor is it something I'd seriously recommend to a friend. However, I've seen some pretty terrible RPG maker games out there, but this one at least tries a lot of unique things and makes an honest effort. Try it if you're curious. It's middle ground: there are better, but there are also worse.

As a fellow RPGMaker enthusiast I truly wanted to be able to give this game a favorable review. But for every enjoyable part, there seemed to be an unequally annoying part that made me forget it shortly after. I often felt that I was playing a contest entry NOT a published product. Enjoyed: -------------------------------------------------- - The simple, but well thought class/job choices. (One of my annoying list was slightly mitigated by the ability to sub-class everyone as a Cleric.) - The availability of a multitude of items, with actual utility. (making up for possible bad class choice in battle, and when out of mana.) - A reasonably believable story line. (Much less suspension of disbelief is necessary to enjoy it, unlike many JRPG stories.) - Competent map making. (A little boxy, but for RPGMakerXVA default tiles, the attention of variety is acceptable.) - Market pricing. (It is nice that the price of goods and acquisition of money are relatively painless, but not excessive.) Annoyed: -------------------------------------------------- - Complete lack of any quest log. (It's nearly impossible to keep track of side quests without writing them down on paper.) - Painfully linear game play. (Everything, including most over land map access is key-to-open, without any reason to return once completed.) - Long winded and RAMBLING dialogue. (To each their own, but after the third 500+ word story sequence, with dramatic pauses and area transitions to boot, I had to FORCE MYSELF to push through them without quitting. Your story is NOT bad, a little cliché but not bad. Do yourself a favor and try not to spell out every detail in WORDS. Leave some of it up to the reader to intuit from setting, animation, and music. It reduces the tedium of reading it, and respects their intelligence at the same time.) - WTF Difficulty curve!?! (I realize that you added a difficulty slider to the options menu, and it works, but the difficulty goes from laughable on CASUAL, to randomly deadly on NORMAL, to survival? ROFLCOPTER! on PURIST. It seems that you are using a random troop member replacement script for battles, and that results in some battles where you MUST escape, or die. Period. And if you aren't using a random replacement script, you must enjoy pissing off your customers. -- While I can accept this in a scenario where battles are visible, and I have at least a chance to 'chose' them, the default random battle mechanic makes it downright infuriating at times. Ex: The difficulty spike, in NORMAL, inside the second dungeon/cave was enough to finely make me rage quit for the day.) - What? That was a puzzle?!? (At least a few times, I was left to assume that I was looking for an item to 'pass' an obstacle. Neither the obstacle itself, nor the item I found that allowed me to do so, had any indication, in its description or dialogue, of its actual purpose. I either randomly returned, or hoped I was right in back tracking, to discover how they related.)