Axial Disc 1 and Disc 2, a double game in this modern era.
It would be inaccurate to say that Disc 2 is a sequel, because it is more literally a second disc that completes the story. Much like the older era of PS1 games (looking at you Final Fantasy) where you had two to three discs for a single game.
While Disc 1 does not have a bad ending to it, it does feel somewhat incomplete. So you could still get a rather good experience and story all from playing this free game. That's right, Disc 1 is free and it is Disc 2 that costs money. I would also like to say, for a free game to let you try the game out and see if it is your liking, and only getting the complete story by buying the second half of the game, brilliant. It is almost like Disc 1 is more of a demo disc, but it is still packed with a lot of content.
I beat both discs in about 24 hours of play, but even then there's still side content and post-game content that I did not get to. But I can say that I definitely feel like I got my money's worth for a variety of reasons.
Firstly, the music is kickin', hands down. There's a number of themes in both games that I really enjoyed, and honestly just the main menu music when you boot the game up is kind of chill to listen to. Map design is also pretty awesome, especially in some of the dungeons where you can see very cool or dynamic backgrounds that help play up the feel of the area. There's also plenty of puzzles that require you to use abilities from the party to traverse through, making rotating your party not only viable but encouraged.
Combat is rather nice where it is broken up into commands and subcommands, where you can use one to two actions per turn, based upon what you do. Plus, there's some commands you can do with two characters that create a combined attack for more damage. I had some fun with trying to figure out which ones do this, while also just doing some goofy strategies with some of the later characters.
Combat can be the biggest drawback though. While nothing is wrong with the combat in particular in regards to mechanics, it is definitely more of progression of both early and late game characters level and damage wise. Sai, who has a major glow-up in Disc 2 in multiple ways, feels rather under powered in some instances in early Disc 1. Even more when he does his first solo mission where he's already a bit under leveled and squishy, to where a random encounter that counters attacks will one shot him even with his buffs to negate some damage. This means running away, and losing some $$, is better for moving the story along even though you lose more $$ the more you run away. This ends up hurting you even more later in Disc 1 where you have another solo Sai section, combined with when the party is back together again, he's a significant amount weaker compared to Oli and Amara right before the climatic fights with both Chip and Swed.
Much of this seems better paced in Disc 2, thankfully. There are a couple of boss fights in Disc 2 late game, that just feel a little unfair, especially if you don't have the best party for dealing with them. Since I like to keep my party in a close level range of each other, I ended up fighting two bosses with less than ideal party compositions. This did hurt and made the fights take longer, but I still beat them first try.
Finally, story wise the combined story of Disc 1 and Disc 2 is wonderful. There's actual character growth with much of the primary cast. I say primary too, because there are party members who I feel like don't get a lot of development, but at the same time they feel rather already complete to where they don't need it compared to the main four of Amara, Chip, Oli, and Sai. The story also has some themes dealing with regret and having to find closure on your own versus having someone give that to you, as we see with some characters deciding that they simply just need to shoulder it and keep moving forward. There is even some of forgiveness, as there is a moment where two characters are pretty much stating "I forgive you but we will never be friends." to each other before working together for the rest of the story.
All in all, I score Axial Disc 1 and Disc two a combined score of 4 out of 5.
