Seinarukana -The Spirit of Eternity Sword 2- Reviews

It's an interesting game that's part visual novel and part turn-based strategy. Took a while to get through all 12 chapters but I enjoyed the story after it got going (the first chapter took a bit to get going).

If you wish to read the story: use cheat engine with a script to detect HP, and add hotkeys to set their HP to 0 for an instant win (just search online, and read instructions, name of the game in the script needs changing) as its horribly long. It took me like 60 hours 1st playthrough as I was doing SS (and multiple interruptions), second playthrough 20 because in mid playthrough I decided I had enough and go straight for Target and get cheat Engine. So even with enemies, instant victory, it still took me 7 hours per route (start to finish) so 117 in total to do 100% of this game, The gameplay is sadly a minus, so if you wish to not cheat, READ MANUAL, as otherwise, you are doomed, bosses are a joke if you have the correct set up (like using % type against bosses is way better, the more HP the more damage you will deal, even on the hardest level almost if not 1 hit KO bosses but not normal enemies the gameplay is unbalanced and not worth it, no skipping battle or anything either). The story really depends on your preferences if you will like it or not. In my case, it was de comedy that made me not hate the game, they should have just focused more on that. THIS GAME IS ALL AGE. look for the patch in the discussions or buy the game straight from the produces. This is the original game, not the PSP or Special Edition (just way...way not the special edition that has tons more stuff and battle skip.....). This game is a nice continues, however, is most likely the last in the series as it had no success and since, as far as I understood, the copyright was given back to the authors by Xuse (meaning highly unluckily any new game....and even then, for it to get an English translation)

This visual novel is a soft sequal to Aselia the Eternal, a very old console game. You don't especially need to play the previous game, as the story is pretty much self contained. There are some characters that appear from the previous game though, and you will enjoy them all the more understanding where they came from. In my opinion, the game is an improvement in gameplay, but it lost a lot of the charm that the first game had. This game replaces a lot of the dark themes of the previous game with a happy go lucky school slice of life style of story telling. You are floating around in a school with all your classmates! That really took a lot of the mystery and beauty out of the setting of the game, but that's the last i'll compare the two. The games story is still very good, albeit pretty cliche at times. The aspect that made this game, and the game before it, some of my favorite visual novels are the setting of the world, the behind the scenes characters, the mysterious eternity swords. The setting is so good I hope that one day I will see a sequel which revives this fantasy world.

Good game. The world-building itself is pretty engaging as it tried to expand on what Aselia the Eternal introduced and although the plot is less original and heavy in comparison it's still good enough. Other fun part is how the scale of plot and perspective on things significantly grows with each chapter in more or less surprising way. Some problems are well pointed out in other reviews but I'd still recommend the game if you care about the tactical gameplay aspect or want more world-building after the first game (or both!).

[h1] Don't Expect the Greatness of Aselia [/h1] My desire to promote Visual Novel - Turn-Based Strategy hybrids is at war with the part of me that's saying if I were making one, it wouldn't be like Seinarukana. I give it a very reluctant thumbs-up after being on the fence for most of the game. No technical issues, whatsoever, is the absolute extent of what Seinarukana does better than Aselia, in my opinion. Starting with plot. As for the two main heroines, I found their flaws to be front-and-center, overshadowing their strengths. Nozomi struck me as possessive, clingy and jealous, while her main competition Satsuki struck me as bossy, overly flirty and self-absorbed. These two don't stand up too well when compared with Aselia and Esperia. Other options presented themselves, thankfully, and I went with Katima. [spoiler] I was on the fence between Katima and Ruputna, but once I realized Ruputna wasn't the girl from the intro I immediately went Katima all the way. Glad I did; Ruputna is as dumb as a box of rocks. [/spoiler] However, the personalities of the other four romance options aren't very fleshed out. One of the biggest flaws of the plot is that there's just too damn many characters, and that causes dialogue and events to be spread pretty thin among the cast. They get lines here and there, but they're predictable and insufficient. They could've done without Naya and Narukana, just to name a couple. Maybe the reason for adding them would become evident if I played their routes, but it's not happening. Katima's route I can barely call satisfying. I picked up a few cutscenes specific to Katima and a very tiny ending scene. Seriously? After watching a great deal of the second half of Aselia change based on the romanced character I picked, I was astounded to receive so little in Seinarukana. Could be that the game wanted me to pick Nozomi or Satsuki... and then listen to them needle one another about who's got a better grip on Nozomu? Screw that. Then on top of the romance mess, the plot gets far too grandiose. Without giving specifics, it tries to do too much and gets convoluted, Person X is a pawn of Person Y who's actually dancing to the tune of Person Z the entire time... so let's just beat the hell out of everyone [spoiler] finally stopping with the creator of the worlds. [/spoiler] It goes far into the realm of ridiculousness. Then comes the battles. I'll start by saying I was content with how Aselia did things up until the final dungeon, which was huge and had far too many nodes, making it a complete slog (and the main reason I played 2 routes instead of them all). Well, that final dungeon slog was how I felt about just about all of the battles in Seinarukana. The maps were much larger, and my army is still moving at one node at a time. Skills became a lot more complicated, which meant diving into character skill screens a lot more to make sure my team wouldn't get slaughtered. Battles were an absolute slog, and I wished for a SKIP button for the battles as they've provided for the dialog. Still, with enough planning (not to mention completely shutting off all animations, which is probably mandatory), I slogged through in hopes the plot would reward. That's when I ran into the bosses. They're cheap as all hell. When I got my ass handed to me in Aselia, I could always trace the fault back to me. When I got beat by Seinarukana, however, it was a result of the game providing insufficient information. A lot of early-ish bosses require specific skills and builds to beat successfully. While I certainly don't expect pushovers, the player needs a bit more information than that. Currently, it's a matter of going with a generic setup and hoping it sufficient, and if it isn't, I'm forced to reload and optimize my team to suit the boss. That's not the way strategy should be, in my opinion. What kept me from a thumbs-down review was that around 3/4 of the way through, the game pulled an FFT and provided the player a "T.G. Cid" character that can literally solo the rest of the game. Nothing could stand in her way, even the final boss. She was my Easy Button, the next best thing to a SKIP button for battles, and you better believe I pressed her relentlessly. The game never punished me for it. In the first game, after I completed Esperia's route I wanted to jump right back in and complete Aselia's route right away, and I did so, astounded at all of the new content. I hoped for the same with Seinarukana, but after completing Katima's route, I'm done. I don't want to jump back in. I don't think slogging through battles (from Chapter 8 and on only; I have the perfect save point too) is worth two (likely small) cutscenes with heroines I don't even like.

Giving a thumb since robopanda333 make the patch. Story and logic IMO, is inferior to aselia (Ex: all alternate world speak japanese; while aselia the MC need to learn the language). Battle again IMO, aselia have better elemental order and skills. Overall was hyped knowing it was translated, but was kinda disappointed that it didnt meet my expectation plus screen resolution problem. i would recomend playing aselia than seinarukana sadly.

First off, this was translated by Aroduc so if you like previous translations from Seiha then get the game. I know that on the blog for the translation there were complaints about removing flavor text from the second page of abilities to display what the ability does. I PREFER the way Aroduc translates because having what the abilities do is FAR MORE IMPORTANT imho than random flavor text. That bein said, Aroduc does try to localize sometimes so if you are a 'purist' then you probably won't like it. Second, this is one of the only game heavy VNs licensed in English in existence right now. So if you want a VN with good gameplay, BUY this to send a message to the industry for more. In addition, if you are put off by typical JRPG games due to grinding, this game does not require heavy grinding but rather smart gameplay. This game is still a VN however, as evidenced by the very long intro (2-4 hours before a real battle) and numerous dialogues in between each campaign. Plot wise it follows the standard 'call to action' -> 'journey' -> 'climax' -> 'denoumont' format of fiction. It does try to put in a few mature real life scenes. It follows the setting of introducing characters in a school setting to try to connect to (I guess the target audience) and then transports them to the actual story setting like Muv Luv does. With regards to the gameplay I would describe it as a simpler Madou Koukaku/Nobunaga's Ambition without empire building and better battle mechanics. Madou Koukaku is an anime fantasy themed Total War like SRPG (except not translated into English). Nobunaga's Ambition is a Total War like game as well. For a more mainstream comparison, imagine controlling armies on the world map from Fire Emblem Awakening and having turn based Rock paper scissors combat instead of a tactical grid. Do note that this game took a long time to get onto Steam from release so art assets are dated somewhat. I think the art looks fine as it is. As a disclaimer, if you are looking for Eushully like quality or more modern art quality you will be dissapointed. I would say the art quality is a notch above Recettear and around the same as Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon. Lastly if you are looking for the non all ages version you should buy from other sites. Or honestly you should just go and buy Sakura Dungeon or something because that will get you want you want for far less effort. I think the all ages version is fine so far and they added new scenes for the all ages version. Advice for playing: - Turn off combat animations in settings after the first campaign (cutscenes prior to that won't make sense without animation). Save frequently! If you lose a battle you have to restart the campaign. Also build artificats early on that increase Mana conversion rate, you will want it later. _____ Aside: I kinda wish they made a 2D campaign map though, Madou Koukaku had a prettier 2D map and honestly for indier games like Nobunaga's Ambition or Seinarukana 2D looks so much better than 3D and it's cheaper too. Oh, and if you are reading this JAST: I would love a translation of Madou in English because machine translation is unintelligable.

Terribly balanced boss fights that are impossible without specific skill setups. Make sure you read a game guide prior to playing this or be prepared to load back several hours of wasted gameplay so that you can get those skills.

Seinarukana is a lengthy game with 6 possible routes. It's about 50% visual novel and 50% SRPG, imo. Your choices and gameplay matter for which route you get. With that said, each route simply focuses on a specific heroine in your harem, and the mechanics for getting the end you want is fairly obvious. It's technically a sequel to Aselia the Eternal, but other than taking place within the same universe (er.....multiverse) and a couple small easter eggs ([spoiler]Tokimi is still best girl[/spoiler]) this is completely stand-alone, and you won't lose anything from skipping the first one. On the strategy side, units take turns traveling on points along fixed lines, with each point having small stat modifiers and healing/leveling/etc. taking place in towns. In this series, units are generally squads of 3 characters, with an 'attacker,' 'defender,' and 'supporter.' When your squad of 3 sprites meets an enemy squad of 3, they proceed to take turns beating each other up within that 'encounter' in a different screen. The vast majority of your tactics lies in how you organize your squads and their abilities (and there is a dizzying plethora of abilities) rather than how you move them, although that's important too. I personally enjoyed the story of the first game a bit more. The dark tone and sense of desperation that persisted for so much of Aselia was addictive. Additionally, the harem cliches are slightly stronger in this one, which is always a bad thing in my book. However, I still enjoyed the characters, and I don't want to give too much away, but while I like the Iliad better, the Odyssey has some charm as well. So in the end, it's an apple and an orange. The SRPG side is significantly improved from the first game. They got rid of the stupid mind mechanic and added something called combat mana. The outcome of each encounter is no longer predetermined. Your typical encounter now plays out in 10 turns (each side takes 5), so skills no longer have multiple 'actions.' Your skills cost 'combat mana,' and your characters only charge 2 combat mana per turn, so if a skill costs more than that, it won't occur. You can change the positions in your squad every turn, and the AI NOW CHANGES POSITION TOO! This adds a small element of luck since the enemy behavior differs from squad to squad. Unfortunately, a few issues from the first game are still present. In particular, the awkwardness of constructing buildings and manually leveling up your characters to prepare for unknown threats while trying to finish a mission as quickly as possible has not gone away. The weirdest part of it is that in the first game, you were often trying to survive the onslaught of an enemy horde on your decrepit villages, so towers were ubiquitous. In contrast, in Seinarukana, every mission is an offensive campaign, your buildings will only last for two or three missions max, but it offers a smorgasbord of defensive buildings. I literally built defensive buildings on one mission in this entire game, and even on that occasion, it panned out that I was just overreacting and didn't need them. tl;dr - Story was good but not amazing? Like a 6-8/10 - Tactics is a lot better, but still has a couple of flaws. - If you enjoyed the first one, it's almost guaranteed you'll like this one too.

I would say this is not a real review at this point, and will be updating it as I get further into the game. I'm only writing this now because literally no one else has written a review yet :/ First thing first, this is a visual novel(VN) so if you don't know what that means or don't like visual novels you probably shouldn't start here, mostly because this is a sequel to another game, Aselia the eternal. For the longest time I thought it was only thematically a sequel but that isn't the case, it is a true sequel. You could play this before Aselia, but I loved Aselia so much I would hate you if you did that :[ Special note: this is the All ages - Special edition, If you want the adult scenes purchase it on j-list. If you are still reading this and are like "I don't know about VNs but that combat system looks interesting", after 3 hours of gameplay there have been 2 choices and only scripted battles. From my experience with the prequel the battles will be much more important and take up a larger portion of the game, but if you just want the strategy game portion and are the type to skip cutscenes, there is a lot to skip. If I haven't dissuaded you yet let's actually get into what makes this game good so far. I really love how much detail the Eternity Sword games have to their world. It takes it's time establishing it's characters and their relationships, what they eat, how they live, the language they speak, the day to day chores. This was what grabbed me so hard about Eien no Aselia and that level of detail is here as well. It would be annoying if the sped through the first chapter to get to the fighting faster, because the characters motivations wouldn't be as developed. That said I feel there are a few things that take me out of it. There was one scene that confused me because it jumped away from the protagonist to see a conversation we wouldn’t know about, which is fine, except the protagonist was on their way to that room and it seemed for a bit he was listening in to it but he wasn’t and it made me kinda glitch out (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEzVllYsbH8#t=154m10s if you wanna see in my video my reaction, it is a like 5 minute scene and i don’t figure it out until after the scene.) I also felt that certain characters we see in chapter one should have spoken in Phantasmagorian (their special made up language) so we wouldn’t know anything about what they were up to the first time through, but oh well. The art has a similar style to it as the previous title but it shows that it is a newer title in how clean the art is. Art is too subjective for me to say it’s good or bad, I like the designs of all the charactors, if you want to see for yourself the art check some videos. The music isn’t anything really special, but the use of the music is on point and I would suggest playing it with the music as it really helps set the emotional moods and makes it more immersive. All in all it is a worthy successor to Eien no Aselia, and I’m looking forward to finishing it. I streamed onto youtube the prolog and chapter 1 with a friend of mine, if you wanna see some of that to get a feel of the game check it out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEzVllYsbH8