Your main character lives in a town on a small island where he seems to have lost his memory. When a military group invades the island, killing the people he cares about, he then seeks revenge and joins forces with the group that plans to stop them. In the mist of all this you discover that your hero isn’t as normal as he appears and has a power growing inside him that cannot be explained. Sound familiar? Thats because its like plenty of JRPG’s that you’ve played in the past, but does it bring something new to the table or fall short as another cliche JRPG?
Now Magna Carta 2 isn’t original by no means, its story has been heard a dozen times by other RPG’s out there. Their are plot twists to enhance the story, for the most part it does what its suppose to, getting you through the game while understanding what’s going on. Characters are pretty standard as well, everything from the hero with amnesia, to the over developed 12 year old girl (note there race reaches maturity at the age of 15 to be fare), the princess, the cocky kid that despises the hero and the ogre type character. There are plenty of quests through out the game which give you money, items and experience points. This is definitely a plus in discovering new items or leveling up a bit for your main quest, however variety in the quests you won’t find and don’t really add to the overall story of the game.
The combat is where the meat of this game comes from. The combat system is real time much like Final Fantasy 12 and offers a variety of actions to do. You can control any of the three characters you have on screen in a battle while doing a limited number of attacks before your character goes into a overheat state. Plenty of techniques get introduced in the game as the story progress, allowing you to change weapon styles, use magic and chain attacks. This adds plenty of strategy while fighting various monster/enemies. There are also plenty of character buffers in the game adding attributes to weapons, item crafting and skill charts for the two weapon styles that are used for each character. The AI for the most part acts how its suppose to but must be watched after like little children as some objects on the field can block their path quite easily becoming your worst enemy.
The visuals for Magna Carta 2 are shiny and crisp in some areas. Mostly in combat as only half of the environments in the game stand out while the rest are kind of bland. Cut scenes during combat are used for techniques and magic as you advance the skills for your character which really make the graphics pop out here. The lack of in game dialogue between characters in the environment is a tad disappointing, instead are replaced with a picture overlay of them conversing and use an out of world character interaction. This is a very traditional system used in earlier games like Enchanted Arms and it sort of breaks the flow of gameplay. The voice overs in the game are surprisingly decent for a JRPG and there is a lot of it. While some characters sound the way you’d expect, at least you won’t want to rip your hair out in the process. The number of “sigh’s” and “…” used as dialogue in an RPG has always intrigued me to say the least as well.
Overall Magna Carta 2 is a solid experience for this sequel of the PS2 game. Many instances may feel like they drag and don’t add to what already has been seen in the past. However a decent amount of characters, skills and quests help this game reach its whopping 60+ hour gameplay that can be had. Visuals get pretty at times, lots of audio and combat that will make you use a little strategy to get ahead make this game. This will give RPG fans alot to do on there Xbox 360.
Overall = 7.7 / 10
