Beat. Of course I died a few times before finding the first save point. Looked at the river and thought it did not look that deep; nope drowned. Went poking around in a stone building and was 1 shot by spike traps multiple times. That really disencouraged searching for secrets. In the first game the spike traps were so slow that I would have to deliberately try to get hit. I then ran around avoiding enemies trying to find the save point, but still had to check a walkthrough. It was my bad for missing a side part but the save point should have been right at the beginning impossible to miss, maybe even with a tutorial message pointing it out. The combat was significantly different from the first game because enemies were no longer stunned upon getting hit. No longer was the best strategy to attack as fast as possible, rather I found it better to wait for the stamina bar to fill completely to maximize the damage for each attack. Still circle strafe around and move in and out of melee range, but it was much more difficult to avoid damage without that stun. This kind of combat really needed a player controlled defensive ability other than movement (like a block/parry/dodge), and the stun effect from the first game kind of counted for this. So the combat was a bit of a downgrade but I did like the larger variety of enemies. The plants at the beginning could only be hit from the front but a properly timed attack would interrupt their attack. Some other enemies could have their attacks interrupted while others could power through and hit me anyway. There was no free healing early on so I relied on buying herbs for cheap. I did try the inn and was glad to see that it restored mana, but I never needed it.
I was not impressed with the more abstract map and was feeling this game to be worse than the previous. Until I found the pixie map, which was a proper auto map and much better than the static maps in the previous game. Other than herbs early on the only thing I purchased was a crystal flask, which helped out quite a bit since there was a very long time between finding the first flask and the next. I found a morning star early on, used a battle axe a couple times for skeletons, and soon upgraded to the sweet capricorn sword; that thing was a beast and I even used it for skeletons late game because of its high blunt damage. I used the holy morning star on those puppet enemies because it had much faster stamina recharge and I think that meant higher dps. I used the blood star a lot due to its life steal, but the long wind up on attacks and inability to cast magic with it equipped made it slightly awkward. I kept notes for locked chests to come back for and places I had not been yet. I got killed by a trap in the death place (after the snow field) and figured I might have been going the wrong way because I still had to do the dwarf cave, elf ruins and palace of wind. Checked a walkthrough just to get back on track. I thought I needed wind magic to get in that palace, but that was the place to get wind magic. Turned out I just needed more than 0 wind power to get in. I upgraded to the water sword, then the maxed out crystal sword, and then the water katana after the crystal sword had to be used for the quest. I used whatever armor I found that was best (fire mail + gauntlets for fire enemies, otherwise I went for physical defense) until I got the dwarf to make promeus armor. I had 4 pieces made (chest, boots, shield and gloves) but never bothered to go back for #4 because by then I had the full set of ultimate armor from the elf ruins dungeon. Then I did the death dungeon, which was a huge pain with the multitude of traps and secret doors. I managed to only die once while trying to run past spear traps. I should have teleported out after getting the treasure but I was confident after not getting hit on the way in. Overconfident it turned out. Then I got the triple fang sword, which was even better than the maxed out crystal sword, which I maxed out again in the final dungeon. Got the moonlight sword and used it to kill the 2 final bosses. I did look at the stats of the dark sword looted from the king but figured the dark dragon would be weak to the holy damage on the moonlight sword. I never even used a full mana bar of healing or any potions. The king was much easier than Necron. Seath was tougher but only because he moved faster than me, so I kept having to sprint. The fight was thus more involved than the final boss in the previous game, but was over much quicker with less damage taken.
End stats: level 39, 115 power, 5 wisdom, 134 light, 110 fire, 104 earth, 104 air, 89 water, 45k gold. Full Ichrius armor, 2 green bracelets (attack boost).
I used those bracelets for most of the game, only switching out for the silver ring for poison, or globe amulet for hp regen. There were some accessories that I had no idea what they did. I do not know what needs to happen for items to become identified and I could not find out the stats online. Like the previous game I mostly used magic for support rather than nuking, and never even tried most of the spells. Healing, antidote, blessing (to cure dark or paralysis) and resist fire. I never found a use for missile shield since there were no archer enemies. Early on I used fire ball and fire wall for out of reach enemies and a few clustered groups. Haze one shot some of the wall heads and I used flash to kill those guard ghosts near the end when they flew up too high. I only used the bow for the 1 wall head that was weak to arrows, which I knew because I used the mirror of truth on each enemy and zone. I never used the better bow or light arrows.
Despite this game having a bit worse early game than its predecessor, I overall liked it better. The level design was better and the world was more fun to explore, with less backtracking. I appreciated the descriptions for items and spells, even if they could have been better written. The conversation log was a great touch though I did not need to use it. The combat was slightly worse without that reliable stun, but it at least made the game a little different from the first. It still had the problems of obnoxiously slow turn speed and the npcs looking like creepy faceless dolls. The story and character interactions were on the weaker side but this series is more about the raw gameplay, and that is among of best of its time.
9.0/10
