Game REVIEWS
Magna Carta II Review
Developer: Namco Bandai Games
Platform: Xbox 360 Category: RPG
Available Now
“Magna Carta II”, developed by Softmax, translated and released by Namco Bandai Games America, is a sequel to 2005’s “Magna Carta: Tears of Blood”.
Legends tells of a hero, Strass, who sacrificed his life to end the Great War that had left the world in barrens and ruins. There were no words that could express the gratitude that people had for him, for bringing peace and leaving behind a gift: wizardry. One thousand years later, the peace was disturbed with a new war. The Prime Minister of the Kingdom Lanzheim, Schuenzeit, has assassinated the Queen and imprisoned the Queen’s daughter, Princess Rzephillda. One day Rzephillda manages to escape, fleeing south to the city Abazet. She, with Alex, the ruler of Abazet, created the Southern Force Army to fight against Schuenzeit and his forces. During one of the most important battles, Zephie (Rzephillda) and her bodyguard Rue confront a battle-hungry-ruthless-general named Elgar. They fought against Elgar and he lands a critical blow on Rzephillda, almost killing her. Rue, in last minute desperation, cast a spell turning the tide in the fight. The fight has long since passed; the northern forces have had the advantage thanks to advanced wizardry and the help of living weapons known as “Sentinels”. Thus, the game begins –
On a small island, away from the fighting and in peace, a young swordsmen, Juto, who has amnesia, was found and raised by the leader of the island’s military force, Melissa. She raises him, has him help her in tasks, but he is lazy and prefers not to be involved (for one reason or another is afraid to carry a real sword). The southern forces, led by Princess Rzephillda, came to the island to take a creature that could turn the favor of the war in their favor, but the northern forces, led by Elgar, attacked the island. The island was destroyed by the Northern forces and powerless Juto watched as Elgar kills Melissa right in front of him. Juto escapes with the southern forces as the northern forces take control of the island. Setting out for revenge against Elgar, he joins Zephie’s southern forces as a member of the Counter-Sentinel Unit. From there, Juto and the Counter-Sentinel unit are to compete in various missions to restore Zephie to the throne and end the tyranny of Schuenzeit.
This is one of your overly-done-basic-main-character-saves-the-world stories. It’s never a bad thing, with the right story. And Magna Carta II does it the right way. Magna Carta II adds many twists and turns around the game: making a hero with all the right reasons and bad guy, a hero who learns about his past and hating himself for it, the truth about the history of Lanzheim, and even Strass himself. The story captures your interest and changing your opinion on what’s happening, or characters, the further you go on.
The games itself, the best way to put it, reminds you of a MMOPRG without the online aspect. Everything you do is mission quests or quest based; every main objective is a mission quest and along the way on can grab quests by talking to NPCs with a “!”, that one can find on the games mini map. Each completed quest grants experience points and adds percentages to your total quests done, giving you achievements. Fighting is also very MMORPG-ish, with a twist: the action is real time, you can chose 3 out of your 6 characters as they run around on the completely open fields, with enemies that are located all around the map. With the tap of the action trigger (Right Trigger) the characters enter fighting mode. You would control one of the characters and the other two are AI controlled. They are set to fight a certain style that can be changed to your liking with two buttons: enter to the “battle menu” with Y then enter “strategy mode” and changing it to one of 3 modes available. Once in “Battle mode” each character has a bar that allows them a certain number of attacks, special attacks and combos. Once that bar is filled they enter an overheat mode. By using the control pad, each character has an assigned button: up, left and down, you can switch between the 3 to let the overheated character cool down until their next attack. At anytime in the game, you can switch out any one of your characters (even if they fall in battle) for your reserve characters, even while in battle mode. This can lead to nicely timed and powered attacks. The trick to avoid overheating is to attack until the bar is almost full and wait for the bar to empty out by switching to the next character or waiting with the character A special technique called “Chain Links” occurs when a character is about to enter overheat mode. When you use the character’s special technique, sending them to overheat mode, you should switch to another character to attack. Get that character into the same position and use their special to cancel out both character’s overhead mode.
Now we get to the negatives; there aren’t that many problems but they are crucial to the game. People say saving often helps you, in case you die. Well, all RPG players know and use that rule, but in this game there are more reasons to do so. There are 2 glitches surrounding this game that really can mess up a fun experience that need to be fixed. During your game play, at any time, one of your 3 characters will randomly disappear off the screen of the game. When you attempt to switch to the missing character the screen goes completely black. This glitch is called “Character Limbo” and the only way to fix it would be to completely leave the area you are in by entering a new map, but if you are on a mission quest it may be difficult. You have a choice of either pushing forward with two characters or restarting from your last save point. Even if you switched out characters the result would be the same. The second glitch isn’t as bad and is less common, an elevator glitch and appears late into the game. I was hit by both glitches. The character limbo hit me twice and made me lost about 45 minutes worth of game time each time it happened.
Some big names in English voice acting have been used for this title, such as: Johnny Yong Bosch (Bleach, Code Geass), Steve Blum (Cowboy Bebop, Final Fantasy VII), Yuri Lowenthal (Naruto, Code Geass), Michelle Ruff (Bleach, Disgaea), Kate Higgins (Code Geass, Nauto) and Stephanie Sheh (Devil May Cry 4, Naruto). They all lend their voice talents to play as the game’s main characters. The voice acting work is well done in the game, adding life to the characters in a positive way. The only downfall is hearing one of your characters speaking every time you enter overheat mode, trying to cheer you on or putting you down (in some characters cases) over and over.
Past the glitches, or if you are lucky enough not to encounter any of them, the game Magna Carta IIis a completely new style of gaming. It focus around an MMORPG setting, minus the MMO aspect, giving you a brand new fighting style not seen before in an RPG setting game, bringing you about 30-40 hours of game play (easily worth playing).
