Paltheos
Member
Zwei: The Ilvard Insurrection
Done. Definitely warmed up to this one over time.
I was right about the combat system being a little more elaborate than the original Zwei's. The physical attacker doesn't get too much in that regard - pretty much just a combo extension in late game - but the magical member of the duo gets a ton of different magic spells. Non-elemental is a solid, all-purpose, low DPS but great range and quick speed spell, earth is the best AOE in the game (even if you can't hit fliers), light is solid DPS on a non-moving straight line (one of the few spells that doesn't track), and dark is fast and high dps and piercing. ... Water, wind and fire are also there but are a little too circumstantial.
Complaints about the combat is enemies sometimes just becoming invulnerable for no good reason, limited i-frames for your own characters, and a camera which is often not optimally placed. Many times you'll be targeting something off-screen and if it's that far away, it's usually not a threat but the camera issue persists in the coliseum, which consists of enemies that can very much beat you into the dirt in an instant from off-screen.
Story is whatever, which isn't unusual for one-off Falcom titles, but the English dub is pretty damn good. Standout performance is Kira Buckland as the vampire princess Alwen imo. She captures the matter-of-fact superior yet friendly and playful tone of the character perfectly. Her idling field line, "1,2~ 3,4~" is also burnt into my brain (for the better). Ragna's performance is fine too, but especially later in the game it feels bogged down by the Falcomisms of the script. I feel playing with the dub was a solid choice, even if I didn't have much of a choice because XSeed tied all language settings to a single toggle (that is, everything from the voice work to the readable text all in one language or another).
Soundtrack isn't Falcom's finest but is still better than their output post-crisis. It's dominated by Sonoda, with a handful of tracks from Unisuga, Momiyama, and Osaki, the latter two of which were new sound team members at the time, and also included a few leftover tracks from Takeshita and a couple grand orchestral tracks commissioned from Jindo. The Sonoda omnipresence and the general playful tone of the game means the soundtrack is often more subdued but it is occassionally varied. I think I like just about all of Osaki's tracks - from the ninja village and mountain levels he did to the climactic boss tracks ("For My Master" is cool and he did not hold back in "The Force of a Trueblood"). Pretty good work for a newcomer. Takeshita's leftovers vary wildly in quality, which is a little surprising considering that most of his leftovers used in The Legend of Nayuta are almost across the board great. "Ordium Shrine" is the standout Takeshita track imo; a lot of the rest are missing that extra polish I'd expect from him but are still decent.
One thing the game really nailed musically is a great throughline. "Bokura no Mirai", I'm convinced, is the best vocal opening in any Falcom game, although I kind of only really appreciated it after the game was over. It's used in so many tracks in the game, and so well, that I can't help looking back fondly on it. "A Prayer to Espina" might be my favorite track in the game (tight competition with "A Heart Connected with Another"), a rare for Sonoda to top any of my lists but it's such a solid action piece that in typical Sonoda fashion uses the central motif so well. The biggest grin slid across my face when Unisuga kicked in the bagpipes in "Spiral Fortress Melzedek" to play the main theme (one of Unisuga's weaker final dungeon tracks and not as consistent as Ishibashi's "Mythical Land Serpentina" from the first Zwei but it's still as deep and experimental as you'd expect from Unisuga). "Bokura no Mirai"'s also in "Help Alwen" and near the end of "Risk Everything on This Moment" too and probably elsewhere that I didn't realize or remember. Just a cool song.
Anyway, I've completed 25 Falcom games now (and I haven't even started Ys X or Daybreak yet). Neat! My gut ranking for Zwei 2 is at... #15.
Done. Definitely warmed up to this one over time.
I was right about the combat system being a little more elaborate than the original Zwei's. The physical attacker doesn't get too much in that regard - pretty much just a combo extension in late game - but the magical member of the duo gets a ton of different magic spells. Non-elemental is a solid, all-purpose, low DPS but great range and quick speed spell, earth is the best AOE in the game (even if you can't hit fliers), light is solid DPS on a non-moving straight line (one of the few spells that doesn't track), and dark is fast and high dps and piercing. ... Water, wind and fire are also there but are a little too circumstantial.
Complaints about the combat is enemies sometimes just becoming invulnerable for no good reason, limited i-frames for your own characters, and a camera which is often not optimally placed. Many times you'll be targeting something off-screen and if it's that far away, it's usually not a threat but the camera issue persists in the coliseum, which consists of enemies that can very much beat you into the dirt in an instant from off-screen.
Story is whatever, which isn't unusual for one-off Falcom titles, but the English dub is pretty damn good. Standout performance is Kira Buckland as the vampire princess Alwen imo. She captures the matter-of-fact superior yet friendly and playful tone of the character perfectly. Her idling field line, "1,2~ 3,4~" is also burnt into my brain (for the better). Ragna's performance is fine too, but especially later in the game it feels bogged down by the Falcomisms of the script. I feel playing with the dub was a solid choice, even if I didn't have much of a choice because XSeed tied all language settings to a single toggle (that is, everything from the voice work to the readable text all in one language or another).
Soundtrack isn't Falcom's finest but is still better than their output post-crisis. It's dominated by Sonoda, with a handful of tracks from Unisuga, Momiyama, and Osaki, the latter two of which were new sound team members at the time, and also included a few leftover tracks from Takeshita and a couple grand orchestral tracks commissioned from Jindo. The Sonoda omnipresence and the general playful tone of the game means the soundtrack is often more subdued but it is occassionally varied. I think I like just about all of Osaki's tracks - from the ninja village and mountain levels he did to the climactic boss tracks ("For My Master" is cool and he did not hold back in "The Force of a Trueblood"). Pretty good work for a newcomer. Takeshita's leftovers vary wildly in quality, which is a little surprising considering that most of his leftovers used in The Legend of Nayuta are almost across the board great. "Ordium Shrine" is the standout Takeshita track imo; a lot of the rest are missing that extra polish I'd expect from him but are still decent.
One thing the game really nailed musically is a great throughline. "Bokura no Mirai", I'm convinced, is the best vocal opening in any Falcom game, although I kind of only really appreciated it after the game was over. It's used in so many tracks in the game, and so well, that I can't help looking back fondly on it. "A Prayer to Espina" might be my favorite track in the game (tight competition with "A Heart Connected with Another"), a rare for Sonoda to top any of my lists but it's such a solid action piece that in typical Sonoda fashion uses the central motif so well. The biggest grin slid across my face when Unisuga kicked in the bagpipes in "Spiral Fortress Melzedek" to play the main theme (one of Unisuga's weaker final dungeon tracks and not as consistent as Ishibashi's "Mythical Land Serpentina" from the first Zwei but it's still as deep and experimental as you'd expect from Unisuga). "Bokura no Mirai"'s also in "Help Alwen" and near the end of "Risk Everything on This Moment" too and probably elsewhere that I didn't realize or remember. Just a cool song.
Anyway, I've completed 25 Falcom games now (and I haven't even started Ys X or Daybreak yet). Neat! My gut ranking for Zwei 2 is at... #15.
