Simple tactical rpg set in a fantasy setting, plus anime-style waifus. Do you feel like engaging in this battle?
Tactics & Strategy Master 2:Princess of Holy Light is a budget tactical game, the second of this type from this dev. It is definitely better than the previous one but there are some balancing issues (and more).
The story puts you in the shoes of an amnesiac protagonist who is quickly involved in a grand adventure to assist princesses in saving the world. Well, there is an opening movie (pretty well done) setting the background first. There is something about seven kingdoms, seven princesses, prophecies, missing officials etc. Not a terrible story, but don't expect anything really sophisticated from a budget game. There are two endings and seven available marriage endings. Good enough, I guess. However, the English translation makes comprehension challenging at times. Certainly, I've seen worse than this, but I can easily count that as a flaw. Gotta save money somewhere, right?
Moving on, the gameplay is pretty standard but there are a few less common elements. After the first three battles, you gain access to a map with several buildings representing various features:
-Guild- currently available missions (one story and one bonus mission)
-Training Camp- you can train characters, gain some skill points and items
-Pub- recruit assistants
-My Team- organise your team
-Blacksmith- craft weapons
-Skill Store- upgrade skills
-Sacred Tree's Cave- touch waifu
-Cave Seeking- mini game with materials to win
The core of the game are battles. All very limited and simple. You fight on flat maps with some terrain obstacles. You can't place your troops manually, all set when you start your mission. Just move and attack.
Princesses have two active and two passive skills to set and use; assistants are limited to one of each you hire them with (random combination). Additionally, each character has a specific class: warrior, mage, thief,and healer. You can only assign one assistant per princess in your team of four and they have to have the same class as the princess. Not much customisation here.
The difficulty is very uneven. Most battles are way too easy but there are a few that can pose a serious challenge if you don't level up characters a lot. Not a natural/fluid difficulty progression. Well, you can level princesses fast through the touching mini game so you can skip the lengthy grind.
A bit on customisation now. Each class can be upgraded once you hit level 20 (twice). Every class upgrade presents you with two choices, so you have some flexibility in how to grow your warrior princesses. Every upgrade also unlocks assistants sharing the selected class, which you can then hire in the pub. Moreover, aside from the entry class, you can only equip weapons assigned to a particular class. You can only change princess' weapon, not assistants'one but you can hire various tiers instead (gray, green, blue, red). Hiring ones with better stats can be way too costly, though. It is often better to just hire a cheaper one since stats difference is not that significant. As for weapons, you can get/upgrade them for gold and materials. The cost of upgrades is way too high here. It is impossible to max out more than one weapon (if at all) in one playthrough. I had to play twice to just upgrade two weapons to level 5 (+other two to level 4). You get way too little money to upgrade them.
Skills require a lot of points to max out, but you can grind those from the training option at least. Takes time to make them useful, though (most at least).
The whole game can be done in about 20-30h. New game allows you to keep gold, skill levels and weapons, but you will need to level up characters again. I spent way more time grinding than necessary, so it took me a bit longer than that. As mentioned earlier, I consider this title as better than Tactics & Strategy Master:Joan of Arc. For the price asked, it is good enough, in my opinion.
Character art is pretty good. All princesses have colourful and detailed art. In the touching mini-game, you can experience some nude versions, unfortunately, the patch provided has not worked for me, so everything was censored with a white light. The battlefields during missions were pretty basic, but still an improvement over the previous game. You can also watch short skill animations during battles, which you can turn off in the options. For a budget game, visuals are fine. The opening movie is probably the best in terms of art this game has to offer.
The music implemented here is ok. There is some variety, but most battles have the same track, so they can become a bit monotone after a while. Too bad there is no voice acting during the story. The opening movie is the only part with any voice.
Lastly, let me mention the technical issues I encountered. First, the game crashed several times after using the self-healing skill for some reason. It crashed at random other moments as well, multiple times. Mission 11 has a game breaking bug causing the game to freeze frequently (characters on top of each other). It is still possible to complete it but you might need to try more than once. The warrior class upgrade mission can be succesfully completed despite defeating all trainers.
To conclude, a simple tactical rpg with uneven difficulty, a badly translated story (in English), decent anime art and ok music. For a budget title, it is decent enough despite some technical issues. I sure enjoyed it, but my expectations were not particularly high (especially after the previous tactical game from this dev). I can tepidly recommend it to genre enthusiasts who like budget games: 5.7/10
