Since I wrote about the previous one, I really won’t write that much here. I thought of the previous game more as multiple ADVs with a side of RPG. That feeling was kinda of reversed for this title though. By mere virtue of AT 2’s RPG side not sucking, it now feels like the ADVs were added to the RPG part. The funny thing is, besides being non-sucky, it’s actually pretty good.

The battle system is much improved from the last iteration. The battle system is like a fusion of Valkyrie Profile, Tales Of and… something else which I can’t think of. When it’s the player’s attack phase, each vanguard character (the characters that protect the reyvateils) are assigned buttons (square for the top one, X for the bottom one. Pushing those buttons makes those characters attack, much like VP. Unlike the aforementioned game, you are not limited by a certain number of attacks each character can perform, but limited by the total time given to you for the attack phase.

Unlike VP, and more like Tales Of games, each character has more than one attack. Each character has four actions, each one corresponding to a directional button. Each direction has it’s own purpose. The up direction increases the harmonics level, which allows you do execute more powerful attacks. The down direction increases the sync level of your reyvateils, which allows them to perform combo magic when maxed out. The other two directions do.. other things. The game doesn’t actually explain things very well, so it’s just best to experiment. Of course, you could also read the manual, but who does that?

In the defense phase, the vanguard characters must protect the reyvateils from each attack by timing block correctly. More specifically, you have to push the corresponding characters button (square or x again) at the specified times (usually more than one) for each enemy attack. Unfortunately, one of the technical problems that this game has is framerate drops, sometimes, during battles. This is a bit annoying when you have to time your blocks and the “speed” changes. It usually only happens for bosses, so it’s not that bad.

There is one other major technical problem, though, which is actually game breaking. One of the last bosses in the game (3rd to last I think, ish,) has a game breaking bug. When she uses a certain attack, the game will freeze. And she always uses the attack on her third turn, which means in order to advance through the game, you have to do defeat her in your first three attack phases. It’s pretty doable, if you pick the right attack magic, but it’s kinda annoying. The weird thing is, the JP version is devoid of this bug, it was introduced during the localization.

There are also more minor localization issues: misspelled words and a line untranslated (thankfully, it’s not a important line at all and easy enough to read: if you romanize it, it’s really just “Cloche-sama”…). It’s just kind of insulting that the game was as thoroughly checked as it could have been. I mean, that line can occur up to 100 times during the game. Or, that they let a game breaking bug get through. Hopefully, future games won’t have the same problems (I still need to get the next Mana Khemia game.

All in all, I really enjoyed my experience with the game and was pretty sad when I finished it. If you found the first game to be terrible, I would still give its sequel a try.