Just finish the game, My internet connection betrays me lately and I spend my weekend by finishing this game on offline mode, so don't mind about "1 Hrs of Playtime" while in fact, I play it around 6 Hours.
I will try to compare between Chains of Renegade and Second Assault. Since those two games actually set on the same World, the Aereon Continent. (minus Mon Island, but we got Elyria now which is way better than Mon I guess)
Let's start with the positive things, shall we?
1. The things that surprise me the most is how the developer decide to re-create the map/area on the Aereon continent, when I first arrive at Vaskia and enter the world map, at first I was thinking about "meh, the developer probably gonna copy-paste the map from the first game" but I was wrong. (welp, not 100% wrong since Yadava Mount, Nao Cave and Seashore Cave are from the first one) but other than 3 Dungeons I mentioned before, all the areas are re-done.
No more long, straight and boring map like in the previous game, Now the pace is really great. the devs also including quick transfer warp (or whatever they call it) from each end of the dungeon which is helping most of the player.
The game pace definitely improving, It's cut unnecessary long walk like in the first insurgence. Remember when you need to walk "manually" from Place a to b in First Insurgence, and only "Unlock" the Quick Transfer feature after you complete the main quest on certain area? yeah, that was very annoying. But the devs now understand if that is annoying and decide to overhaul the pacing and of course the map.
2. And now let's speaking of the mechanic, Now this game has some real battle mechanic, unlike the first game where you basically mash the enter button, now you have to equip right skills and weapons to exploit enemy weakness, just like in octopath traveler ( I strongly believe the developer are hugely inspired from that game ) but with extra twist "Skill Equip" where you can equip your character with skills set so now you can have double attacker or double magician or whatever you like, and to make it more spicier, now the game has some sort of skill level up, where the more we use the said skills the higher the damage and lower the TP/MP cost. This makes the battle actually very enjoyable.
I really hope the developer put this battle mechanic as a special update or something for the First Insurgence. since let's be honest, the first Insurgence battle is quite boring.
3. The Alchemy, Cooking, and Smithing feature are okay, not great, still feels rough. But still nice, I mean better than nothing. since you don't get the cooking and stuff from the first game.
4. Story-wise it's nice (more on that later)
5. English Translation quality is really improving compared to the first game. I mean REALLY IMPROVED.
6. Music is really nice, Reminds me of Ar Tonelico and Atelier series, wait... WAIT A MINUTE... IT'S KEN NAKAGAWA WHO COMPOSE FOR AR TONELICO AND ATELIER SERIES WHO COMPOSE THIS GAME MUSIC? HOLY HELL
7. Art is really polished, animation and area asset/tilesets are from the first game but still feels really polished.
Okay, I am done with the Positive, now let's talk about the negative and/or things that need some improvement.
1. Balancing, this game needs more balancing, especially the element weakness, I believe there are too many enemies on this game who weak to Fire and Arrows, making other skills sets kinda useless... (Please fix this on next update)
2. While the story it's good, but as a game "featuring stories from two different points of view." the game itself is heavily on one side, so it still feels like one different point of view with quite a large portion of the other side perspective. I play this game for -+6 Hours, and the "other side stories" are like... 45-55 minutes long? and heck, you can't even change the "Other sides stories" characters equipment.
3. The quest system here, while it's nice to have, but definitely needs some improvement. No Quest Log, No way to cancel a quest when you stuck or no way to take more than one quest on the same guild.
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In the end, I still highly recommend this game. Great Music, Great Battle Mechanic and now with English that the player can easily understand.
