izigame.me

This is a very conflicted recommend. The Crossbell setting and the core team is absolutely awesome. There are some truly heartfelt moments. The story ties together all the lose ends of the first game and then some. And the sheer length of the main story, with all the twists and turns, is impressive.

However, there are three big drawbacks. The first and smallest is that the combat is essentially unchanged from the first game, but you need to start over from scratch. There is the addition of master quartz, but that's minor. It's basically a copy paste of the entire first game's combat, except with bigger monster with more HP and higher damage. Halfway through the game, I was bored.

More importantly, the two remaining issues are in regards to the plot.
The first is that the game tackles some truly horrifying themes. War. Murder. Terrorism. Trafficking. Child abuse. Brutal betrayals. And the outcome of each and every one of these things is........ nothing. Lloyd Bannings, or more correctly referred to as Jesus Christ, holds a speech and then forgives people. But here's the thing.... Lloyd is NOT Jesus. He has no right or mandate to forgive anyone of anything done to someone else. But he does. Repeatedly. "Oh, you murdered X people? But you had a rough childhood? It's ok buddy, I forgive you. Just listen to my sermon first." It is SO preachy, and has nothing to do with being a police detective.

The second and bigger issue is in regards to the final plot reveals in the end game. As usual with Falcom, there is an endless amount of over the top glorious nonsense. Which only the 18 year old junior detective can fix, of course. Fine. That's alright. And there's endless, repetitive dungeons with like.... 7 final bosses? Myabe 8? OK, fine. Whatever.

But the real problem isn't how over the top the game gets in terms of sheer nonsense. The problem is that the game falls into a really, really stupid trap of saying "It is wrong to try to change things. It is wrong to try to prevent war. It is wrong to try to prevent innocent people from dying. Why? Because we are living in the best of worlds, and we can't mess with stuff!" It's an idiotic argument from a group that runs around using super powerful magic spells, routinely sticks their nose inte politics, and tries to impose their own will on the world. It's as if the writers at Falcom never read Voltaire's Candide, where a happy idiot runs around proclaiming we are living in the best of all worlds, even as people die horribly all around him. That idiot is Lloyd.

A final note. Spoiler ahead. The most idiotic thing is that even as Lloyd strongly opposes KeA or anyone else changing reality to end wars, he himself and all his friends would be dead if KeA hadn't done exactly that. But for some reason, the game doesn't go all in and push for Lloyd to have him and his friends killed off again. Hipocrisy or stupidity, I don't really know.

Anyway. To wrap it up. I love the setting. The characters. The daily life stuff. The political intrigue. The relationships. Combat was OK in the first game, but got boring in this one. But the preaching? The idiotic last quarter of the game? The nonsensical moralizing? The lack of consequences for horrific acts? It really ruins a fantastic series of games.

But to be fair.... Falcom does the same in some of the Trails of Cold Steel games, so perhaps they just can't help themselves.