> Elemental resistance and weakness plays a minimal role in combat > Frequent, long cutscenes (combat feels like a brief interlude between cutscenes) His collaboration was a big influence in my purchase of this game. Nobuo Uematsu is an amazing composer of video game music, and has worked on many famous games. The subsequent "I, Kopin" series of cutscenes was pretty comical as well. I thought the "Intermissions," short conversations held with your party members after a battle, were clever and entertaining. LA2 has an interesting, compelling plot, if not a particularly fresh one. It's an easy system to jump in and use without prior experience. The order in which combatants move is displayed at the top of the screen, along with clearly indicated buffs and debuffs. There are no unnecessary complications to the combat system. It really made the characters come to live and kept me engaged in the story. The voice acting was one of my favorite things about this game. > Beautiful music composed by Yasunori Mitsuda > "Intermission" provides interesting & entertaining background on the characters. Luminous Arc 2 is a fun, average-quality turn-based strategy rpg. it earns about as many stars as it loses. I give it 3 stars because it's a worthy but flawed effort. If you're a niche fan then you should definitely get it, but if you're a casual gamer then by all means skip it. There are too many things holding this game back, but I would sincerely look forward to a Luminous Arc 3. This is a game that deserves and wants to have 5 stars but just can't quite make it. If you can somehow manage to forgive these things, which were probably only done out of ignorance and naivety, the characters still have their nuances and personalities. The biggest problem with this game is that the villain at the outset of this game is named Fatima and is dressed as a whore, which is an insult to the family of the Holy Prophet of Islam. This was present in the first game but to a much lesser degree this game unfortunately tips the scale too far, venturing into the realm of misogyny with its constant objectification of the female body. The final issue with this game is hypersexualization of the female characters. If you're a strategy RPG gameplay junkie you'll want to get Fire Emblem anyway. Even though this one is the better -game-, neither manage to top their genre in gameplay and need to rely on their story value the original Luminous Arc is the real masterpiece. If you had to pick between this game and the original, then get the original. In sight of these blunders, the game still has that sense of humor I mentioned earlier as a saving grace. One bad thing is that this game has too many characters, and they have awful dating-sim type personalities, not to mention their names are stupid. If Luminous Arc had a great, unique story and cast, Luminous Arc 2 plays off as hacked and cheesy with more cliches and stereotypes thrown in (because the writers were incompetent or lazy), like a Disney straight-to-video, low budget sequel. In this way, the first game was much better than the second hands down. Both games are driven by the plot-actually playing the game is secondary to acting out the story and enjoying the characters and dialog. The characters are little more than lame clones of those in the first game, except the characters in the first game were more lovable and charming. While the gameplay is essentially better, the story line suffers a lot. If you thought the first game was fun to play, you have to get this one. Neither game is particularly challenging (more like SRPG-lite), but they are still fun, and this game even does a good job at tackling the rigid linearity of its predecessor. In terms of playability this game hits the nail on its head and refines the first game to an appreciably better system. The gameplay is definitely better I would call it a huge improvement. I appreciated the fact that this game came with a soundtrack CD, which is short, but the tunes are respectable.Īs a sequel, there are ups and downs. The characters are lovable, lively, and the voice acting is great, maintaining a sense of humor and parody that make Luminous Arc delightful, entertaining, and unique. The English voice acting was some of the best I had ever seen in any game or anime. Needless to say, I was unexpectedly surprised and thoroughly pleased by it. I picked up the original Luminous Arc a couple years ago at an electronics store thinking it looked interesting and different enough to buy, and hoping on the off chance it was good I was eager to get a strategy RPG for the DS at that time.
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