PRESS ‘A’ TO SKIP CUTSCENE. OOPS, YOUR CONTROLLER’S CAUGHT FIRE.

Once again we hear from Korean Developers Softmax. After a surprisingly successful release of MagnaCarta: Tears of Blood for the PS2, the series continues on the 360 with MagnaCarta 2. This is a interesting take on your usual Japanese RPG. The main character is a mysterious young man – Juto – who has lost his memory. And within a matter of minutes his relaxed lifestyle has been turned upside down and he finds himself on a quest to revenge a fallen comrade, help a princess regain her throne, and destroy the powerful usurper and his army. Cookie cutter you say? Perhaps. Wanna see how it all pulls together? Click on this thing down here…

Graphically MC2 is pretty attractive. Characters have a decidedly odd feel to them. Famous Korean artist Hyung-Tae Kim has done a good job of keeping them interesting but not weird. Being an artist myself, I did find myself constantly analyzing and appreciating his style. Voice acting is better than anticipated which is nice. Softmax has made the tired combat system more interesting with a free roam take on battles – not unlike a Zelda game.  You walk around and explore with the usual setup. When you want to battle you enter ‘combat mode’ by pulling the left trigger. Once in combat mode your stamina meter appears at the bottom. The challenge during a battle lies in entering the game’s overdrive state and not overheating. Overheating renders you useless for a short time – a short time that feels like ages when you can’t even move for a few seconds. You have to learn to back off to be successful. Initially this is infuriating because you have to limit the number of attacks you do, giving even basic battles a drawn out feel. But later on you have party members (three in a party) that you can swap out. Swapping around party members to chain skills in your overdrive state is the bread and butter of battles as you’ll see a huge amount of damage done. I do have to say that overall this system makes combat a lot more interesting as you progress – but getting there can be a bitch.

The things that keeps MC2 down are the same things that plague the middle-of-the-road RPGs. A saturated genre cannot have a par for the course story, par for the course controls and par for the course gameplay and expect to stand out in a meaningful way. And unfortunately for MC2 just about everything here has been done before. Combine that with the frustrating initial learning curve, dialogue/training sessions that drag on for sometimes agonizing periods of time and you get a game that may turn off people before they get to the good bits that make this title worth playing. And that would be a damn shame.

Overall MagnaCarta 2 is a by-the-numbers JRPG that tries a few new things to mild success. If you’ve never been a fan of these games then this won’t change your mind. However, if you’ve been waiting for another involved story to get into with some interesting action, a slight change of pace and good depth, then by all means pick this one up. And say goodbye to the outside world for a while.

[A copy of the game was provided by the publisher for review purposes.]