XBOX 360 REVIEW: MAGNA CARTA II
BY JENNIFER M. CONTINOFor the past few weeks if you've been on XBOX Live during the day, you probably saw me playing a game called
"Magna Carta II". The game, which reminds me of everything I love about fantasy, anime, manga and role playing games; has been a whirlwind of action and adventure since disc one. But … is it worth the price of admission? Keep reading to find out what I think sets
Magna Carta II apart from others of its kind.
First I never heard of
Magna Carta or knew anything about its history and legacy until thee release of this game. I am a big fan of RPG type games. I like everything associated with the genre; whether turn based or not. So, when I heard this was supposed to be an "epic" type RPG game, I wanted to check it out as soon as possible.
What surprised me the most when I got a copy of this to review was that
Magna Carta II contained a Disc One and Disc Two. I've played sixty or so XBOX 360 games and never received one that came with more than one disc. I didn't even know such a concept existed until I got this game.
So, if you want to play this game, you have to go into it knowing it's a big commitment. This isn't just some run around, kill a few things, go on a few quests and be done with it. This is the kind of game you can spend hours, days, weeks trying to uncover every single nook and cranny of before you're done.
This is the kind of game that takes a commitment and isn't for the casual RPG type player, unless you just want to do the main quest and ignore the sixty or so side quests that can also net you treasures and bonuses.
I don't mind a commitment to a game. I like playing every single bit of it to the fullest of my abilities. As someone familiar with the RPG format, it wasn't hard to get into the game and figure out what was going on. Unlike some of the RPG type games, it isn't so much turn-based when you're fighting as it is the ability to use each of your characters until he or she runs out of Kan, the thing that passes for energy in this game. It's up to you when you're fighting if you want to exhaust someone or if you want to jump around and use characters until they are on the brink. When someone is in Overdrive or exhausted he or she is easier prey for the nasties running around this game. But pushing a character to his or her limits is the way to initiate a "chain," which gives you a greater strike type, and is also necessary to get an achievement.
There are six characters you might have access to at any point in time to make your way through the magical worlds in this game. There are countless weapons and protections that can be purchased to help keep your characters safe. Many of the items of protection and battle can be swapped between your characters and the weapons can be upgraded with these magical jewel types that give you everything from a greater striking ability to more gold, skill points or experience when you're leveling up. There are a multitude of items that can be used to upgrade your weapons, each one will do something different and each new weapon offers new opportunities to explore the limits of what it can or cannot do. I like being able to customize my weapons. I like having the chance to add things to make it a battling beast or make my characters level up faster.
This game, like a lot of RPG types, gives you a main story and offers you the chance to go on many side quests. The animation of this game reminds me of something you’d see in a Pixar movie mixed with beauty and grandeur of the most beautiful Japanese animes. It's a pleasure to watch all the cut scenes, although, unlike a lot of other games, you have the option to skip all these "dramas" if you're all about getting to the action. There are also a lot of scenes where characters have dialogues to help you understand what's going on, or something you have to know for an upcoming battle.
If you press "A" the whole time and fast forward through something important, don't worry, there is a review section that lets you see how to do certain moves or how to beat a particularly tough foe. The review section also reminds you which quests still have to be completed and will give you other details. I think that section is a really great bonus to have in the game. A lot of times, I forget what I'm supposed to be doing in games as big as these, unless I write things down. So, having that as a reminder is a great tool.
Something else that is great is the ability to swap out your characters even in the middle of a battle or even after one of them is killed. Although there are revive potions and other things to bring a character back from the great beyond, in this game, you can go to the menu and change the formation at any time. So, you don't have to use your revive or other items unless you're at your lowest point. Also two of the characters have the ability to heal. IF you leave them on AI settings, they will see to it most times that your heroes are kept healthy.
There are three settings for the other characters in your party when you're in the midst of the game roaming or battling a creature. You can have the character attack your target, attack things around them or just be really aggressive. It helps in the middle of things to know these characters are able to take care of themselves.
Magna Carta II is the kind of game you can really get lost in. You can take as much time as you like to explore an area, get to know the characters, get upgrades or just grind on bad guys to gain levels. With each new level, you get more skill points. Each character has two types of weapons he or she is proficient with. With the skill points you can add bonuses to those weapons that will allow your character to be more dangerous with the weapon.
However, if you want to get all the achievements, it will be tough to do that with the skill points. You'd need 1500 or less for each character to fill both trees. That's a problem when you only get 10 to 15 skill points on average for each level. Unless you want to spend hours and hours and HOURS raising your levels, which a lot of people might not want to do. So, you can save the skill points and spend them after you have enough to fill one skill tree, get the achievement, then get out before saving. But, you might need to fill in a little of the trees in each weapon in order to have an easier time in the game.
Speaking of saves, when you save the game, your characters are restored to full health and any ailment is removed. You should save a lot! In this game, whenever I battled a big group of monsters or foes, I always backtracked to the nearest save point and saved, even if it took me a few minutes out of my way. It's easier in the long run to save a few times then lose a lot of progress. In games of this type, it's important to save your progress generously. I've had the game freeze up on me three times so far, but each time, I had saved a few minutes before. However, I would have been crushed if I'd been through a great battle and lost all that progress. So, make great use of the save points.
Most of the battles are easy to get through, provided you have your characters well equipped with the weapons, protection items and other things they are able to use. There is an ability to save before just about every major battle. If you think you're getting near a big battle, you might want to go back and save just in case. Also, there are several save spots available for the game. If you are nervous you missed something or didn't do everything in a given area, just save in a different spot so you can kind of check your work.
There are dozens of treasure chests and items to find. Most are available on the second disc if you miss any on the first. But it's fun to look around any given area to find something that might be missing. Usually if you look on the map and see dead ends, those are where some of the treasures might be hidden.
Some of the characters go off on their own quests during the game, so it's important to take important items off of the characters when you swap them out of formation or save in a few spots before you enter a town. That way if you see you lose one of the characters you need for a particular thing or had an item of interest equipped upon, you can go back out, restart and make sure you unequip the item before you enter the town.
Everyone will have to work out his or her own strategy for playing this game, but if you're a fan of the genre, this is one of the best games in it that I've played in a long,
long time. If you want to get all the achievements, you have to talk to just about everybody. On the game map most people of interest will have a green exclamation point by their names, and a red checkmark above them when the quest is complete to help you along the way. But a few of the quests are tricky and require you to go out of your way to find the person you need to talk to and the quest itself.
Some quests happen whether you talk to someone or not, but there are over 100 quests and many are easy to miss. So, if that's important to you, talk to everyone and explore EVERYWHERE. Or you could look online for a list of quests and the places to find them. There are a lot of great places that try to help you out.
About the only thing I dislike are the achievements. They are easy enough to get, but the game offered downlodable content when it came out. You can't get a perfect game score in this game unless you download the paid content. I don't like that. You should be able to have a perfect score, without buying outside content. I like the option of buying more content and then having the new achievements to get. But this way, you can get all the achievements from playing through the game and still not have that perfect gamer score. That's a small caveat, but worth mentioning.
This is a really breathtakingly beautiful game. It reminded me of what I loved best about the original
Final Fantasy games and
The Legend of Zelda. It was hard to take your eyes off of the scenery, the mini scenes and other items scattered throughout the game. You can tell a lot of time and effort went into making this game amazing. It's for the single player, which is a shame, because I would have liked to play this with some other anime or RPG fans. There also is no LIVE version, which is also a shame. It would have been fun to have some kind of deathmatch online where you could team up with three other people and bust heads of villains or bad things.
But, those are small criticisms. I've been having so much fun playing this game, I'm going to be sad when it's over. I haven't felt that way about a game in a long time. I only hope the end pay off holds up to what I've been experiencing so far. I can't wait to see what happens next.
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