Interesting combat mechanics make the majority of the game fun to play, but the run of the mill story keeps it from being excellent.
I'll start off this review by stating I did not play the original Magna Carta on PS2. I avoided it due to some negative reviews, and then by the time I decided I wanted to check it out, it was a little tough to locate locally. Having played Magna Carta 2 now, though, I doubt I'll see the need to go back and play it. Not because I find Magna Carta 2 to be exceptionally bad though, I actually think it's a pretty decent RPG on the 360, and one that I hope people don't tend to overlook. There's nothing about the plot or characters that's going to excite genre fans, it's pretty run of the mill storytelling fluff, but the combat system is actually interesting and involving, and far more fun than I suspected. I doubt that the original Magna Carta stacks up to this, and I'm going to continue to avoid it for that reason.
If you're unfamiliar with Magna Carta, it's a newer series stemming out of Korea, using some fairly, uh, robust character designs that at first glance seem like standard manga or anime stuff, but in reality they're somewhat distinct in design and easy to tell apart. The original Magna Carta had some issues with somewhat androgynous characters, which isn't so much the case here, so already the character design is headed in the right direction. It's a solid looking RPG on the 360, and while it's not going to turn heads or wow any tech fiends, it's got a solid palette of color to it, and stands out as something reminiscent of earlier 360 RPG titles like Eternal Sonata. The game engine is based around Unreal, but it doesn't seem to suffer so much with loading time and texture issues like The Last Remnant did, which I thought was worth noting.
Like I mentioned, the story is basically throwaway stuff, so I wouldn't suggest picking up the game on that merit. If there's a generic RPG plot point to be found, you'll easily come across it here. The hero of the story is an amnesic ex-warrior that now resides in a sleepy island town and lives out his days as a bit of a lazy good for nothing punk. The town ends up getting into the middle of a war between Northern and Southern forces, and the hero awakens his old power to join the fight with the Southern forces exiled Princess. Once his town is left devastated, he leaves to fight with her against the tyrannical Northern Army, and the story kicks off from there. Like I mentioned, it's a pretty standard set of events, so once again, the story is hardly exceptional. Likewise, the voice acting is pretty mundane too, there are a few decent attempts mixed in with quite a few irritating characters, so the whole presentation is a mixed bag.
The combat is what I really enjoyed about Magna Carta 2, and while it does take an hour or so to really get to the meat of it, once you hit that I think it'll draw you in for the remainder of the game. Your team consists of three characters on the field, going from map point to map point as the story progresses. There's not a lot of open exploration in the game, mostly set map pieces with different paths to navigate, with various side quests that pop up on your mini-map in the form of exclamation marks, which is very World of Warcraft like in appearance. Enemies exist in real time on the field, so if you see an enemy you can run up to it and attack it, transitioning between combat mode and explore mode by tapping the left trigger. In combat mode you walk around with your weapon drawn, and tend to walk slower. It also changes a few of your menu options around, allowing you to use special attacks with the X button, provided you have the charges needed to use it (which are gained by performing successful normal attacks). The standard attacks are really basic, allowing you string together a series of either physical attacks or magic attacks depending on the character you're controlling. The other two members of your party are AI controlled, and you can give them little sub-options to dictate how to fight, like conserve magic, attack what you're attacking, or attack the nearest enemy. Its not as involved as something like the gambit system in FFXII, but at least they have a few options available.
The real stand out in Magna Carta 2 comes from the chain attacks. Each character has a stamina bar attached to them, meaning that every move you make eats away at your available stamina. Once it's filled, you can do one single powerful attack, and after that you're left exhausted, unable to move until the meter refills (or actually depletes in this case). However, the game introduces a method to keeping your characters from getting exhausted and useless, provided you can get the timing right for the attacks. Once you fill up your stamina gauge, and you're ready to hit that overpowered attack, if you opt to do a special attack, it'll give you the ability to switch characters and initiate a chain between the recently exhausted character and the one you just switched to. If you perform another overpowered special attack with the new character, you can instantly replenish both stamina bars for both characters, allowing them no lull in the action and to be instantly refreshed. It's a core mechanic of the game, one that can be a little tricky to pull off but becomes instantly necessary for most of the boss fights, and it's this particular mechanic that makes the game interesting to me. It might not be much to sustain my interest in an RPG, but the overall combat is really satisfying and fun in my opinion, and I can't think of another title that makes use of a similar set-up.
One last thing to note, I really enjoyed Magna Carta 2's soundtrack as well. It's the only real presentation based aspect that I really enjoyed, but it's extremely well done at every point, and worth seeking out by itself. If you're a big fan of game music, then check this one out. Besides that, I think Magna Carta 2 is worth a play through for any RPG fan, there are enough unique things done with the combat system that makes it actually fun to play, as opposed to just tapping menu options mindlessly. It's not particularly hard or challenging, but some of the boss fights will give you a run for your money, especially if you're having difficulty with the timing of chain attacks. All together, I really enjoyed this release from Namco, and I hope to see a third game in the series sometime soon. Well worth checking out, and certain fills the gap between big RPG releases in the coming months.
