Topic: Games you've recently beat

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Finally...

It's taken me 120 hours, played in chunks over the past two years, but I've finally completed The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky Second Chapter. It's important to note that it didn't take me so long out of boredom or any dislike of the game, more that I'd complete a chapter of the story, be very satisfied with its conclusion, and then move onto something else. Second Chapter is an absolutely massive game, and with a gargantuan amount of text and some very long story scenes, it may not be to everyone's taste.
I feel fortunate that Second Chapter was even localised in the West. It had a difficult road to release, given the gargantuan amount of text needing translating and editing, and the fact that by that point the PSP was completely obsolete.

Taking place a few months after First Chapter's cliffhanger ending, the story picks up largely where things left off. It is therefore absolutely essential to play its predecessor first. Second Chapter sees our heroine, Estelle Bright, continuing her work with the "Bracer Guild" (a sort of civilian police force) while simultaneously searching for the one she loves, who happens to have gone missing. Along the way she reunites with her friends and comrades from the first game. Coincidentally, strange phenomenon begin occurring throughout the kingdom of Liberl at the precise moment she sets out on her journey, and she is quickly drawn back into the fight against Ourobouros, a mysterious Illuminati-esque society. As Trails in the Sky is part of a larger series of games within The Legend of Heroes franchise, not all the mysteries surrounding the society are revealed by the end of the game - not even their ultimate motives. Indeed, the fight here is personal to Estelle and focuses quite sharply on the activities of just one of Ourobouros' Anguis (which I'm guessing is some sort of general) and his kooky band of Enforcers. There is also a sense of tension in the wider world of Zemuria (Trails' continent) with geopolitical concerns lingering in the background.

The world building is brilliant. Liberl is a kingdom rich with history and stories, and almost every character, including NPCs, feel like they have a real stake in the world. Every NPC has something unique to say, which will change depending on where you are in the story and the events that have occurred. Many even have their own full-fledged personalities, backstories and relationship with Estelle and will recall events from the first game. There are also newspapers to read that reflect the events of the world, as well as books containing some thoughtful fables that tie into the themes of the game.
There is also unique dialogue depending on which characters are in your party.

There is real skill in how Second Chapter engages the player, because while the story is new, outside of a few areas the world is identical to that seen in First Chapter. You'll retread the same areas, visit the same towns and talk to many of the same people. Normally - and I'm sure most gamers would agree - I'd balk at the idea of playing a game with this level of repetition. Producing a game in this way obviously saves a massive amount of money and development time, and Falcom are acutely aware that what sets their games apart is the writing and attention to detail in the worldbuilding and character arcs.

The writing itself is generally of a high standard, with few errors (I counted three in my entire playthrough) though at times the dialogue can be rather dry - particularly from Estelle herself. An all-round do-gooder she isn't the most charismatic protagonist, and as a result while she's likeable, she's also not always easy to root for. Thankfully her comrades and the colourful villains more than pick up the slack.

Second Chapter is split into nine chapters, with the first five containing discrete stories revolving around each region of Liberl, while still tying into the overarching narrative. There are a number of side quests, listed as "jobs" in the Bracer branch offices, though as quests are the only way to make money I would argue it is necessary to complete them. Surprisingly for an RPG side quests mostly contribute to the game's rich worldbuilding foundations. There is an exhaustive record of all quests taken, which proved useful to me given the long breaks I took at various points of the game.

Battles utilise a solid turn-based system, taking place on an isometric grid. There are a few cues from tactical RPGs; for example, characters can move around to avoid getting hit and attacks have specific areas of effect. There is a turn-order displayed on screen which is useful for planning attacks and can be manipulated to your advantage. Some turns have certain perks such as "critical attack" or a small health regeneration, which can also benefit enemies. In additional to physical and magic attacks there are "crafts" which are techniques unique to each character. No character is useless, and all feel important not simply in terms of the story, but gameplay too.

While each character is predisposed to either being physically or magically gifted (or balanced between both), players can shape their skills and attributes via "Orbments", which work a little like Materia from Final Fantasy VII. These confer certain attributes on characters and may be used to offset weaknesses or greatly augment strengths. In turn magic - and the spells available - is entirely dependent on the orbments set to each character, so you will need to think carefully about their placement.

Thanks to an XP system where points are dished out on a downward slope depending on how high a character's level is, it is extremely difficult to overlevel during normal play. Conversely, this has the benefit of allowing under-levelled characters to catch up to their peers quite quickly. Generally characters are kept around the level the game wants you to be, and ensures the challenge is quite evenly pitched throughout. However, there is a rather nasty spike in the final chapter, which features one of the longest and most difficult RPG battles I've ever played outside of Shin Megami Tensei 3. It required every single ounce of strategy I could muster and almost took my sanity with it.

In terms of presentation the visuals blend spritework and basic 3D elements. Character designs, represented through portraits next to dialogue boxes, are very nice indeed. I really appreciated the lack of "fan service" (something I feel cheapens the messaging of many a Japanese RPG), and Estelle is not remotely sexualised.
Music is absolutely brilliant. It's not quite the aural orgasm of the Ys series, but it genuinely brings Liberl and the situations unfolding on screen to life. There is no voice acting.

Trails in the Sky Second Chapter is an extremely solid RPG that I thoroughly enjoyed. I feel it's easy to recommend to fans of the Trails of Cold Steel series, but I'd also heartily recommend it to fans of the genre, though only after the first game has been played. Aspects that stand out are the exceptional worldbuilding, engaging story and mostly excellent writing - though this second point comes with the caveat that Estelle's dialogue can occasionally be a little dull. The battle system is solid and quite tactical. In all a well-balanced and finely crafted Japanese RPG from the oldest master of the genre.

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The lastest entry getting the Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy review treatment is Jade Cocoon 2.

I spent 55 hours and 33 minutes on the title (Weirdly the shortest amount of time I've ever had to beat it I think) over the course of 2 months. I was rather sporradic with this title but played it to completion along with some of the post game too.

Seeing as it's only been on PS2 that's the only way you can play it.

Certainly wouldn't of minded a PS2 classic version on PS4 though. That way I could've taken some screenshots for the review too but... What'cha gonna do?

Our colourful cast!

A little Background

Jade Cocoon 2 is unsurprisingly a sequel to the PS1 cult classic Jade Cocoon: Story of the Tamamayu. It's a direct sequel as well rather then a completely different world and setting a lá Final Fantasy (barring the actual "-2" sequels that the FF franchise has of course)

Made by Genki once again and published in the west by Ubisoft of all things (they also did the pal version of the first I believe?)

Y'know back when Ubisoft were "cool" and didn't just copy and paste out open worlds like they were going out of fashion? Hell they helped publish SMT 3 Lucifer's Call/Nocturne in the PAL region too originally!

Anyway Jade Cocoon 2 came out in 2001 in Japan and America (the US release only 3 months after the jap release). It took a further 6 months to reach us PAL players in 2002.

It took a little while longer to reach my hands though.

I didn't know about it in fact til a faithful trip into the hive of scum and villainy that was GAME in 2007(?)

... Except this was when they still kept the discs of preowned games in the box and it was stolen when I took it to the counter. Or the staff was lying and just nabbed it for themselves...

I never saw it again til 2010 or so in a 3 for £10 deal at a different GAME.

Needless to say I popped down the cash for that badboy faster then you can shake a stick at.

Anyway Jade Cocoon 2 tells the story of a ten year old boy named Kahu. Coming from a nearby village, our dopey wide eyed protagonist ends up journeying to the Temple Of Kemuel in search for the Cocoon Master's of legend as he dreams of becoming one.

Except they don't exist anymore!

Luckily for our hero there's something akin to a Super Hyper Cocoon Master for our hero to become. A Beast Hunter.

Unfortunately his first day doesn't end up going quite to plan...

Mistaking a fairy cocoon for a super rare divine beast egg during his final exam to get a Beast Hunter license, Kahu ends up getting cursed by the fairy inside the cocoon.

If he doesn't locate the four orbs of: Wind, Earth, Fire and Water (specifically stated to be the ones from the previous game) that are deep within the four forests in time, he'll end up turning into one of the very monsters he's joined up to destroy...

Story

You probably don't remember but over a month ago or a few pages back in the topic I praised the original for a more mature tale that seemingly had very little or any localisation and it's very geninue feel ( 》Here it is in fact《)

What about Jade Cocoon 2? ... errrmmm...

I'm not saying the story or how it's presented is hot garbage. It's ok, nothing groundbreaking mind you.

It's just particularly quite jarring to go from a serious and laser focused title that was the first to this that breaks the fourth wall a number of times and is much more tonally scattershot with "humerous" interludes, seriousness and everything inbetween.

Also unlike the first which you could say had a fleeting thing or two with meaningful themes on enviromentalism, mankind's inherrent cruelty... This title doesn't seem to have anything to say really. At least nothing it's already said or you've haven't heard a billion times before from other places.

And that's fine. Not every game needs some message to go along with it even if it was just a passing thought in the first.

I play games to enjoy and lose myself in fun gameplay or neat story and characters.

(Except when I play Dark Souls which is when I want to punish myself )

The yarn spun in Jade Cocoon 2 is good. Not great. It hashes a few things from the first along with some of it's own story beats but I'd say this game is much more gameplay focused compared to the first which I think struck a nice balance between what I'd say are the two main cores of a game (Story and Gameplay) with it's shorter length.

Characters

Kahu

He's our main protagonist of this adventure. He isn't renamble in the slightest... Because he has voicework! He's also like most kid hero manga/anime protagonists and thick as two short planks and in turn has no clue what the hell he's doing.

Hooray!

The voice work for him is... undeniably solid for a character that's supposed to be ten. I unfortunately don't like him very much though. I'd much prefer Levant and his silence personally. Or at least an older character.

Nico

She's a fairy. Specfically she's THE fairy that ends up cursing Kahu. Woken up from her sleep by the bumbling kid, she ends up joining him.

Why exactly?

To... see if he fails or not? -Shrug-

She's somethimg akin to an anime Tinkerbell. Snarks a whole bunch, is sassy to boot and a touch vain. Nico narrates the opening scene to each forest plotline & the games' opening. She's also the main breaker of the fourth wall throughout the title with winks and jokes to the auidence.

Nico gets a bit less irritating over the course of the game as she becomes friends with Kahu. Solid voice work once again but like Kahu I don't particularly like the character... or at least she takes a good while to grow on you.

Levant

Yup the hero from the first game is back! Except he's much older and voiced seeing as he's an NPC!

Thanks to the events of the first game he's now over a hundred years old (Yet looks only 30) & He can't die due the dragon Spirit Kemuel residing inside him.

Using knowlege from the scrolls of Gehenna he created the Beast Amulet and founded the Beast Hunters with the help of Kikinak to defeat the Kalma (Intelligent divine beasts) that have been appearing in the forests.

He helps Kahu try to break the curse put upon him, learning how to use Riketz's dark lute from the first game to preform a dark summoning and pull the Kalma out of Kahu with the help of the 4 orbs.

His voice work suits him quite well, there's a teensy bit of world weariness to him and I quite like his arc through the game. Probably the best character in the game to me.

Kikinak

He was a minor character back in the first and he's still pretty minor here. However his personality has completely changed and I have no idea why they did that (Well I do... the in game reason sucks though). His voice is bad and it doesn't fit in the slightest from the very cheery and carefree guy he was in the first.

There's also the Sweet Knights consisting of: Vanilla, Choco, Cinnamon and leader Cocona. A four woman beasthunter squad and idols whom are part of the Earth forest storyline.

Dr Gil, a bumbling academic, who's part of the Air forest storyline.

Nam, a hot headed Beast Hunter, & Wu , an older philosiphising Beast Hunter, whom are part of the Fire forest storyline

and last but not least Cure, a freaky fish monster-girl, who is part of the Water forest storyline.

There are a few other characters but they're just either the Beast Hunter's (whom all wear masks), the shrine maiden's Ra & Mu or the bird people. These all have a fairly simple one note characterisation though and are pretty unimportant for the most part.

Gameplay

Well I said in the story section I think the game has more of a gameplay focus... So you're probably wondering what this like?

Welllp controlling Kahu (whom doesn't have tank controls thankfully unlike Levant) you either spend your time in the temple of Kemuel with it's, and hold onto your hats folks, 5 areas (The Shop, The Lobby, The Arena, The Chamber of Life & the Throne Room which are accessed via teleporter) or you're trawling the forests for those pesky orbs!

The temple of Kemuel is ridiculously tiny. All five areas are important mind.

The shop... is unsurprisingly the shop where you buy and sell stuff.

The lobby... is where you get side quests and talk to your fellow beast hunters!

The Arena is where you complete advancent tests to improve your amulet with more slots or fight for Yan (Money) and reputation (which is used to take more advancement tests at certain points)

The Chamber of Life is where you merge your divine beasts or keep your spares.

& The Throne Room... is where you talk to Levant and access the four forests.

The forests meanwhile play out in a bit of a randomly generated way or having a bit of a dungeon crawl kinda quality to them.

Whilst the layout of the floors stays the exact same every time, the ogrevines (rooms if you will) all have random innards.

The first one perhaps you'll find nothing, next one you come across you'll find a Beast Hunter and have a battle for a medal and a chance at secret/rare goodies, the one after that giving you a much needed recovery item, only for the next to contain a kalma and defeating it giving you a seed beast for merging whilst the last could contain (if you're on the fourth area of each floor at least) a boss!

Each Forest having four levels or floors and 4 sub areas. (1-1, 1-2, 1-3, 1-4, 2-1, 2-2 etc) You can't choose to start at a different sub area though... You can only start at the beginning of each floor.

But you can chose to leave anytime using the beast amulet at least.

Combined with the limited bag space (15 min, 30 max) and the randomisation elements you can see why I said it's a bit dungeon crawly or maybe even a very VERY lite rogue-like with runs through the forests being quite different despite the same layout.

Plus as I mentioned Kahu can actually get side quests/tasks from the lobby!

Most are usually get an/number of items from the forest but you'll get things like raise this beast, beat this person ... etc. S'not much but it's decent.

Only bad thing is Kahu can only take 1 measly mission at a time and they're randomly generated for the most part.

Course the real meat of the game is the battles. You'll get into these a lot

The above video shows the basic gist with the Beast Amulet divided into four sides (Fire, Air, Water & Earth) with all your monsters in battle at once with up to 3 monsters attacking each turn with the beasts not in play at the moment recovering mp.

Need healing? Switch round to the Water side.
Wanna attack? Trust in the Fire side.
Debiltate with Poison, Blind and Sleep? The Air side has your back.
Bulk up your Defense and Attack? Earth'll do the trick.

Compared to the first game and the "simple" 1 on 1 affair Jade Cocoon 2 is much more strategical in it's fights. The final few bosses and especially the cup tournaments in the post game really needing well thought out teams.

The middle beast on each side of the beast amulet protects Kahu (2-5 hits to Kahu and he's kicked back to the temple) whilst the corner monsters are on two sides of the amulet for coverage and attacking.

With a number of spells, skills & attacks there's plenty of player choice.

Plus the monster's actually have 4 evolution stages in this!

No horrible hodgepodge merged monstrosity that'd make Lovecraft balk, instead you have set paths akin to pokémon.

Except your monsters cap at lvl twenty and only start with one other evo stage.

Merging in this instead adds to an evolutionary bar to each monster that is filled up with each merge you do (Merging only availible once your mon's reach lvl 15 each cycle) and once the first half is passed you'll gain the third evo's with a complete bar unlocking the fourth.

Merging also allows you to learn a completely different move, switch your move with a higher leveled version of the move you had or a learning a skill on either element adjacent of the beast's initial element (For example a Fire beast can learn an additional Air OR Earth move alongside a Fire skill but is unable to learn Water skills)

Not to mention you can have up to four pokemon-esque abilities (before Pokémon had them) granted via merging too with the oldest skill bumped off when you've got a full house.

Once merged a reset of your Divine beast takes place, booting them back to lvl 1 and in baby form to start the process over again but with higher stats and taking longer to level.

With the traversal I already talked about it makes for a very satisfying gameplay loop.

Quite different from the first game for sure. Whether it's a step down or up compared to the first really depends on the person.

To me the only downside is that unless you have no mp, your Divine Beasts will use the exact same move they have every turn (Unless it's a corner Divine Beast and you switched sides)

Design

Katsuya Konda returned once again to do the artwork. The character designs look a little softer and a little less directly aping that iconic studio Ghibli look to me but still showing the influence.

Eeeeeeexcept unlike the first there's no lovely handrawn Studio Ghibli-esque 2D animation like Jade Cocoon's nice opening. Instead it's 3D animation for all the "cutscenes" and hasn't aged as well at all 😅

There's 2D art here still thankfully.

The monsters themselves are pretty good for the most part. Some get a bit absurd or not exactly what you expected but aside from the baby forms (as the Divine beasts are in various family/genus like the Mau, Og, Leif etc and initially look the same as a baby) they're pretty well done and creative.

The character models are pretty decent if slightly off looking due to being an early ps2 game. The background models in fights are pretty bad and I prefer the prerendered backgrounds the first has.

The forests are bit uniteresting as a whole to look at as well.

The UI for the game is very clean and easy to follow with you able to choose from a number of preset colour schemes as well based on the characters in the game. (Cinnamon's cool blue is the best)

Plus as I mentioned in the gameplay section I think the merging mechanics really fit with the dungeon crawly aspect of the game.

Initially you'll reach lvl 20 really easy on the first cycle of your Divine beasts by the end the first floor of a forest but by the fifth merge/cycle you could go through the entire water forest and be lvl 7 or less.

I do believe there is one or two skills that don't quite work as they're supposed to. But this was before patches after all and no buggier then the first game.

Some of the Divine Beasts you can raise!

Sound

I unfortunately don't think the soundtrack is great at all. The composer returned from the first game alongside his wife as co-composer and it's unfortunately nowhere near as distinct or memorable as the first game.

The music has a bit more of a tribal feel to it with heavy drumbeats instead of the flute & wind instruments that featured heavily in the first but ultimately it's a near total misfire in my eyes with nothing as catchy or interesting as the first game's soundtrack. I usually mute the music and listen to my own stuff instead.

Desciple of Darkness is probably my favourite out of all the soundtrack

The sound effects for attacks and skills sound decent I guess. Not to sure how you can mess those up really.

Round up and Final Score

Ultimately I feel Jade Cocoon 2 has to be weighed against it's predecessor being a direct sequel in particular along with being judged on it's own merits.

There's definitely some good here but there's some bad as well.

Jade Coocon 2 ultimately gets....

A Mau gif out of ten

Ok 6.5/10 really. Maybe a seven if I'm feeling generous.

Pro's

• Satisying and addictive gameloop
• Whilst you can spend 40-60 hours with the main game... you could easily double that especially with the postgame content or just taking your time.
• Strategic combat that's initially easy to learn but has a tonne of depth and variety.

Con's

• Painfully unmemorable soundtrack.
• A early PS2 game with a touch of that initial roughness to human character models and backgrounds in fights.
• Characters not as engaging or feel as authentic as the first title along with the story.

Oh and like the first game there is a 2 player battle mode as well. Nothing big but it's nice to have.

(Apologies for the massive read... I can't help myself!)