Legionwood 2: Rise of the Eternal's Realm - Director's Cut

As a fellow RPGMaker enthusiast I truly wanted to be able to give this game a favorable review. But for every enjoyable part, there seemed to be an unequally annoying part that made me forget it shortly after. I often felt that I was playing a contest entry NOT a published product. Enjoyed: -------------------------------------------------- - The simple, but well thought class/job choices. (One of my annoying list was slightly mitigated by the ability to sub-class everyone as a Cleric.) - The availability of a multitude of items, with actual utility. (making up for possible bad class choice in battle, and when out of mana.) - A reasonably believable story line. (Much less suspension of disbelief is necessary to enjoy it, unlike many JRPG stories.) - Competent map making. (A little boxy, but for RPGMakerXVA default tiles, the attention of variety is acceptable.) - Market pricing. (It is nice that the price of goods and acquisition of money are relatively painless, but not excessive.) Annoyed: -------------------------------------------------- - Complete lack of any quest log. (It's nearly impossible to keep track of side quests without writing them down on paper.) - Painfully linear game play. (Everything, including most over land map access is key-to-open, without any reason to return once completed.) - Long winded and RAMBLING dialogue. (To each their own, but after the third 500+ word story sequence, with dramatic pauses and area transitions to boot, I had to FORCE MYSELF to push through them without quitting. Your story is NOT bad, a little cliché but not bad. Do yourself a favor and try not to spell out every detail in WORDS. Leave some of it up to the reader to intuit from setting, animation, and music. It reduces the tedium of reading it, and respects their intelligence at the same time.) - WTF Difficulty curve!?! (I realize that you added a difficulty slider to the options menu, and it works, but the difficulty goes from laughable on CASUAL, to randomly deadly on NORMAL, to survival? ROFLCOPTER! on PURIST. It seems that you are using a random troop member replacement script for battles, and that results in some battles where you MUST escape, or die. Period. And if you aren't using a random replacement script, you must enjoy pissing off your customers. -- While I can accept this in a scenario where battles are visible, and I have at least a chance to 'chose' them, the default random battle mechanic makes it downright infuriating at times. Ex: The difficulty spike, in NORMAL, inside the second dungeon/cave was enough to finely make me rage quit for the day.) - What? That was a puzzle?!? (At least a few times, I was left to assume that I was looking for an item to 'pass' an obstacle. Neither the obstacle itself, nor the item I found that allowed me to do so, had any indication, in its description or dialogue, of its actual purpose. I either randomly returned, or hoped I was right in back tracking, to discover how they related.)

The only problem I see with this game is that it's beginning doesn't give justice to what is coming to you afterwards. Yeah, some down characters are buggy (the sprite will change aspect depending on the direction you go. If you use rpg maker, remember kids : never forgt "direction fix" on downed sprites :) ). Yes, there is a bug with inventory in the very beginning (but not game breaking at all and you really have to do things an unusual way to fall on it so I guess testers can't be blamed for that , believe me, it's easily missed.). But seriously, seriously , really, THIS GAME IS A GEM OF AN RPG. If like me you're a nostalgic of old snes jrpg era you'll freaking LOVE IT. The customisation system of characters is good (you can chose their class and sub-class which allows many different strategies), difficulty so far (i'm at 4 hours of play, finished three bosses) is well balanced. Beware beginners though, it's challenging don't expect to be able to bash "attack attack attack heal attack attack heal" to win it requires more strategy to best your opponents. And this is GREAT. The music....oh God the music is so delightful. It's like if Chrono Trigger's soundtrack met Secret of Mana and decided to go HD with real instruments. The storyline is classic but well put together, characters are well written so far. The mapping is good too, you have much things to find out in every area, you don't have useless items or skills, YES , state inflicting skills for once are useful! Definetely worth the few bucks required to give it a try. If you loved old Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger, Breath of Fire etc by any mean, BUY THIS. I sware you won't regret it.

Yes it's rpg maker, but the fun factor is completely through the roof to the point where the engine does not matter. I love this game, with it's thrilling battles and challenging boss fights where you actually have to THINK. This reminds me of the good old days of the difficulty of ff6 and ff4j, the game will kick your butt if you don't think of a strategy even in random battles but it's very satisfying to make a class combo with your 4 character party and see the good synergy and get a well deserved win. If dying in a random battle is enough to frustrate you instead of make you grin and say to yourself, "next time!!" then this game is not for you. And check out the first legionwood, its fun. It's FREE!

I really don't know how to feel about this game. Neutral, I guess? I don't really know whether to recommend or not recommend, honestly. I guess based upon the fact that I've played for 10+ hours and haven't thrown in the towel would count as a recommend. This game has a lot of flaws, so play at your own discretion. [h1]Pros[/h1] [list] [*]A class and sub class option. Nice. I've never seen this. This essentially gives you the power to have a character major in one class and minor in another one. Good when you can make all of your characters clerics if you want. Makes me feel like I can play God a little bit. [*]Encounter rate is decent. It's high.. but not insanely high. Which is good, because you do battle a lot and it can be tiresome if you're actually trying to make some decent progress. Or, if you're in trouble and you're trying to escape. [*]Dungeons are all a respectable and comfortable length. Not too long.. not too short. This makes it easier to retreat to town if you need healing or items. You can go back in and retrace your steps pretty quickly and make progress at a good pace. [*]You can save any where and at any time. Phew. This is a real life saver. They didn't take a page from the ol' "save point" book. [*]Most tihngs are inexpensive. Reviving your character from the dead is costly, but it's relatively easy to avoid this when you can buy large quanities of items for cheap to help you restore your mp/hp. Inns are also cheap. With all the enemy encounters, you'll also have a hefty amount of cash to buy new equipment in each new area. You have a lot of opportunities to heal/improve yourself BEFORE you die, saving you a headache while also saving you some cash. [*]The music is pretty solid. [/list] [h1]Cons[/h1] [list] [*]Your party's hit rate is atrocious. This is a real problem. Seriously. Even my incredibly speedy Rogue character misses every other turn.. and that's with no added debuffs or status effect. This is frustrating and makes battles more drawn out than they need to be. It doesn't seem to matter your stats, what class you are playing, what equipment you have.. it's just a whole lot of missing for no ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ reason. [*]Little to no warning when you're about to run into a boss. This can be remedied by saving frequently.. but come on. [*]No quest log. Another serious problem. This makes it really difficult to track quests. There's not even any point in doing them because it's so easy to forget. A real shame.. I feel like side questing should play a big part in RPGs. [*]Takes forever to level up. This seems to be a weird scaling issue they didn't fix.. because you fight a RIDICULOUS amount in this game. [*]There is no "warp" option (so far) to leave an area quickly. This makes traveling/exploring really quite painful. I mentioned above that dungeons aren't terribly long, but it is still a pain in the ass regardless when you have to drag yourself out of the dungeon instead of using a simple spell, item or ability to get yourself out quickly. [*]There are a lot of unique sprites, which is nice to see... but what's lacking is portraits next to dialogue boxes when sub or side characters are speaking. This bothers me. All the main characters have portraits next to their dialogue (as they should), but not a single other character has one. Ever. Would it have been so hard to add in? It really puts a hamper on the story telling aspect when they make every other character seem not at all important. [*]Unpredictable character pathing. When you're in towns, for example, NPCs can box you in and there's not a damn thing you can do about it. Sometimes they don't even move, or don't move in a direction that gives you room to get out. [*]No voice overs at all. You have to read all of the clunky and extremely drawn out dialogue. Most of which, over time, you could care less about. I understand this game was most likely a low budget RPG maker type of game to come from an independant/small developer.. but having it read aloud would really make the experience a bit better. [/list] Now, unfortunately my computer's hard drive died and I lost my save data.. so I never got to finish this game 100%. It wasnt worth restarting just to finish and see the ending in my opinion, nor is it something I'd seriously recommend to a friend. However, I've seen some pretty terrible RPG maker games out there, but this one at least tries a lot of unique things and makes an honest effort. Try it if you're curious. It's middle ground: there are better, but there are also worse.

Legionwood 2: Rise of the Eternal's Realm is an epic fantasy Role Playing Game (RPG) in the classic style reminiscent of older RPG hits. Playing as an elite imperial soldier trying to protect their homeland, you'll get to explore a massive, fully detailed medieval empire filled with daring adventures, outlandish treasures and dramatic conflicts. Along the way, you'll have to contend with the likes of political corruption, zombie hordes, the onset of war and a game world that changes depending on your choices and actions. Get ready to pick a side on the stage of history. Will you be the one who saves Legionwood, or will you be the one who dooms it to an age of darkness?

dev says this games difficulty is modeled after the first three final fantasy games. i disagree. on hard the first battle is wiping my party every time. having played the all the final fantasy games up to the playstation and never once getting a tpk, i cannot agree with the dev's assessment. i am all for hardcore rpgs, but when a game does not let you play because a healing item is just a waste of a turn, every enemy goes at least twice as fast as you getting 2x turns to your 1, blocking has no apparent effect on how much damage you take, "speed up" has no apparent effect on how many turns you get, the mobs invariably get at least one turn before you do and hit you for almost half your health, changing classes is moot because the attribute penalty occurs immediately but you do not get techs right away all add up to make your warrior have to be a dedicated healer and your rogue be dead before you win. update: i just got to the first battle inside the Forum in town, now there are 3 mobs against two and they are individually stronger than any party member and still get two moves to my 1. so even with the dedicated healer (warriors are wasted as healers) my weakling rogue cannot kill them fast enough. the best way to stay alive in this fight is to have both party members heal with items or techs exclusively, but that means the mobs do not die. but if you do not heal then you do not get to hit them more than twice. final fantasy and other old-school rpgs were hard but beatable. this game gives you lots of practice at loading saves. so save often if you play it. but my recommendation is to not play it. dev - check your balance, hardcore should still be beatable. you say this game is about strategy and tactics. well there are not lots of tactics or different strategies to employ with two characters with a single heal and a single damage skill between them. after using "speed up" the rogue just hits things. the damage spread for mobs is way too large to be reasonable ~15 to ~60 without crits counted. oh and 60 is half the health of the warrior at level 1 so if both mobs attack the same character in a turn there is a good chance that character dies. and the next turn the player gets has to be used to heal the mostly dead character, then the mobs get to go again, and again. ohp dead! and that is with just two mobs. your game needs some serious rebalancing. if you want to promote strategy give the player some clue as to which enemy is which in the turn-order indicator. have the red skulls there is great but, players need that information to make good choices of who to hit, their life may depend on it.

Good game, it's got a cute style and decent storyline. Only complaints are that death ends the game, leaving you to restart completely or from your last save point. It's good for ramping up the difficulty of the game, but saving in the wrong place at the wrong time can also completely ruin your file and trap you. [Had to restart twice due to doing this]

Finally beat the game! Well, one of several endings. I have to say that this game is an exceptional turn based RPG. Here are a few reasons that I personally enjoyed the game: The class system is way more balanced than Final Fantasy ever achieved. With the right combination of skills and equipment, you can make every class a useful one. Every character can be developed however you see fit. There is a lot of replay value in just trying out differently developed characters. There are a lot of side quests, but nothing that you have to devote hundreds of hours to complete. The story line is fantastic. It's not over saturated with juvenile snark like most modern games in the genre. Its a story that grabs you, and compells you to keep playing. Apparently there are several endings, and decisions you make can affect the endings and storyline. That also adds to the replay value. The difficulty is hard, but reasonable. You have to apply thought and strategy to get through it, which means it doesn't get very repetitive (except for later dungeons, where the switching mechanisms can drive you nuts!) But not so nuts that you throw the controller and give up. A lot of people complain about the difficulty, but if any of you remember playing final fantasy 1 and getting off your ship at the wrong port, or playing Dragon Warrior 1 and crossing one too many bridges, the difficulty doesn't even come close to those days. The soundtrack is really good. I'm not a musical person, but I appreciated the variety of background music. It set the mood for the different scenes very well. I'd give this an 8/10, and I personally can't wait to see another Legionwood game.

Worked 10 hours ....then get new party member .....says in menu its supposed to say party...this is where you choose who you want. Iv seen screen shots but mines not there....also sometimes takes 2hours for an item to register into my inventory........i just wasted so much time.....done.....

The main story is difficult without grinding. Unfortunately, the grinding isn't fun at all and the story is not interesting either. Player's hir rate is very low in battle, most of my attacks are evaded or miss and it makes me really pissed off. I rather not playing anything rather than to continue playing this game.