Part 2: The Crabby Woods

Chapter 1 – The Crabby Woods

The majority has decided that our main character shall retain his default name, Lang. He will be a Cocky Hero, not afraid to brag and call his enemies names, but also not a complete asshole to everyone he meets.

This changes little about the choices I made in Chapter 0, so there’s no need to go over all that again.

Where we left off last time, Galvan was just about to show us the ropes in Hunter’s Wood.



Galvan won’t even let us leave the woods until we’re done with the tutorial.

So, on we go, but we don’t go far before…



Now Playing – Fragments of Soul

We run into our first enemies.

They’re called “Klaw Ants” but they should really be crabs. You’ll figure out why in due time.




And thus Galvan starts our tutorial.

However, rather than simply detailing his tutorial, I am instead going to take the opportunity to detail the gameplay for you in my own way.

Combat

As this is an RPG in the style of Final Fantasy and others like it, most of the actual gameplay takes place in random battles.

Like other RPGs, these battles play out in turns, where you pick what your characters do for said turn, and the enemies also pick their actions. Like most other RPGs (man I’m going to be saying this a lot), whether your characters act before the enemy is a matter of whether their statistics are higher than theirs. Sometimes this can mean the difference between killing and being killed.

What’s not like other RPGs is how you preform attacks in Legaia 2.



Your primary means of attack is this system. You pick directional attacks (up, down, left, right), and the character will swing in that direction for their attacks. It’s difficult to adequately describe in text.

You are probably wondering what the point of the different directions is. First and foremost, some enemies can only be hit with certain directional attacks. Encounter a flying enemy? Downwards strikes don’t connect. Encounter a particularly short enemy? Upwards swings go over their head. Some enemies are so short left and right swings won’t even hit.

In Hunter’s Wood, this doesn’t matter because no enemies you encounter can’t be hit with all the attacks, so you won’t even realise this until you get later into the game. Galvan doesn’t explain the possibility either.

You might think you can just constantly use whatever attacks hit the enemy in question, but you’d be wrong…

Arts

In the image above, you can see “Art Blocks” mentioned. That’s because the real purpose of these blocks is to let you perform “Arts”. They are essentially special attacks that do more damage than regular attacks.

In the first tutorial, nobody even uses any Arts, and Lang doesn’t have enough Blocks to do them. However…



Lang gains a third Art Block upon levelling up. You can see the pattern here; you gain Art Blocks by levelling, and thus can perform more attacks in one turn.

We are quickly given the chance to use our new abilities.



We run into some “Bloody Wolves”. This is our second tutorial fight, where Galvan introduces us to the concept of Arts.



Our first Art is “Blue Moon Buster”. See, if we were attacking certain enemies, the attacks in that combination might not hit, but we’d still need to perform them to use the Art. I can’t remember if certain Arts can miss too, but we’ll find out.

Blue Moon Buster Demonstration

That video should give you a good idea of how attacks work in general, as well as how Arts work as a concept. Every time you learn a new one, you get the “New Art” cut-in.



Moving on, we are introduced to “Super Arts”. As expected, Super Arts do more damage, but also consume AP. No AP? No Super Arts. So the basic formula becomes performing regular Arts to build up AP, then executing Super Arts to deal more damage.

Sandstorm Demonstration

All this is really quite unique as far as RPG battles go. Of course, the whole system is lifted from Legaia 1 with a handful of touch-ups. At first, one might think it’s an interesting and innovative way to do battle, and you’re not wrong…at least at first.

The problem lies in the fact that the novelty of the system wears off. Eventually, the flashy moves become repetitive and you just want to get through the battles faster. As you get stronger, you unlock more Art Blocks and perform more Arts as well as longer Arts. Right now, the enemies are easily dispatched, but as the game goes on the enemies will require more effort to beat. Not tactical effort, but sitting through long Art chains until they die. It’s even worse if you don’t know the right tricks to boost your damage output.

All in all, the Legaia combat system has its moments, but in the scheme of things, it will start to bore you.

Here’s a general video on what to expect from encounters.

Now I want to take a minute to talk about something else…

Voice Acting

If you checked out those demonstration clips, you’ll have heard both of our current party’s voices. Everything in a battle instance is fully voiced in Legaia 2. The Arts, the grunts, you name it, it’s voiced. As you might have noticed, the characters also say things for certain actions, like;
-At the start of a battle.
-Defeating an enemy.
-Delivering the final blow in a battle.
-Getting knocked down.

It’s impressive that they put this much voice work into the game, especially considering this is definitely a low budget title.

As for the voice quality, however…

-Lang’s is fine. The actor sometimes wavers between a more youthful sound and a deeper voice, but it’s certainly not bad. It just so happens it’s Cam Clarke that does his voice, and I can barely tell.

-Galvan just sounds so goofy. I can’t even tell what the voice actor was going for with him. It’s hard to take the character seriously, imagining any of his lines with that voice attached.

As in all things with Legaia 2, the quality will wildly vacillate from here on.

Anyway, back to the game, maybe?

The tutorial battles are easily won, but before going any further, we can actually leave the forest now.



In Legaia 1, you had a traditional world map to move over, with random battles as you went from one place to another. Legaia 2’s is much simpler, where you just automatically move between locations on the map. No encounters happen, you just move to the icon on the map and click to go in.

For now, all we can do is go back to Nohl, where we can buy more items, maybe some new weapons and armour.

Either way, one must eventually carry on with the game.



Galvan introduces us to our main mission: culling the local population of Klaw Ants.



We spot one down the trail. It runs away…



Leading us into a terrible ambush!

I’m just kidding. These things don’t do anything unless you touch them. Each Ant represents a battle with 3 Klaw Ants, so we kill 9 total.

When all the Klaw Ants are beaten, we are expected to go find another batch of them elsewhere. We decide to goof off a bit instead.



Along the way, we encounter the only enemy not to show up in a tutorial: the “Flytrap”.

These things take more than one round to kill, and can poison you, so they present a mild stumbling block compared to Klaw Ants.



We find Dein standing around here.

”Well I don’t see YOU doing any work, Dein!”

Dein: ”That’s because you’re too green to notice I’m keeping watch for Marcus. Hmph!”



”Damn, imagine Dein turning out to be full of it. What a surprise.”

We leave Dein and Marcus be, and go find the rest of those Klaw Ants.



This time, we find 5 groups, meaning a total of 15. But no matter how many are present, we easily beat them all.



Galvan brings our adventure to an end for the day.

As we all know, this is the point in any adventure where we calmly go home and nothing significant happens, right?



What a twist!



Marcus: “That thing…! Never seen…anything like it!”

“Shh. Don’t talk now. He’s in bad shape.”

“Lang! I’m going to bring Marcus back to town.”

“We’ve got to get him some help right away. Or else…he isn’t going to make it.”

“Dein’s still somewhere in the forest. You look for him. When you find him, bring him back to town.”

”Now hold on a minute. I know I’m pretty awesome, but this thing just took on two of our number and left them for dead. Isn’t it better if you, the supposedly most powerful here, go make sure Dein’s okay? I can take Marcus back.”

”That would make more sense, wouldn’t it?”





“Eh, whatever. I can probably take this thing. It’s not like beating DEIN is impressive.”

We are left alone to go find Dein. At this point, we can still encounter enemies.



We must fight alone now, but it’s not too hard. The game tends to hand out healing items generously in Hunter’s Wood too.



Dein isn’t far away from where Marcus was found.



“Marcus is hurt really bad. Galvan took him back to town.”

Dein: “So that’s it, huh? Went off and left me, did they? It figures…*cough*”

“Dein!! Here, lean on me. Come on! I’ll help you back to town.”

Dein: “Leave me alone! I don’t need your help! *groan* *cough*”

”What was that? I couldn’t hear you over the sound of your near death experience.”

Dein: ”Shaddup! You’re so green, you can’t even tell I’m just faking it!”

All of a sudden, something is watching Lang from the tree line. A cacophony of sounds erupt: shaking trees, birds chirping wildly.



”Dein, that’s not true. You’d be holding me back even if you weren’t hurt.”

Dein: ”HMPH!”

Dein: “Save yourself, Lang. Get away while you still can!”

Lang simply turns to face the noises.

Dein: “Hey…! What are you…? What do you think you’re doing? Cut it out!”



At first, all we see is feet. Then it slowly advances on Lang.







Now Playing – Inevitable Fate

We must now do battle with the mother of all crabs.



In this phase, it primarily attacks with its claws. Until…



Lang slices off its right claw with cutscene power.

It is reduced to slapping us with one claw, but it’s far from toothless.



Venom can cause the poison status, of course. It’s pretty trivial here, and I don’t even cure it in my demonstration video.



Lang hacks off another claw. This is actually bad for us, because now the Gather Crab will only use Venom, hitting harder than its two claw combo.

It will also start doing this…





When I called it the “mother of all crabs”, I wasn’t being metaphorical.

See why the ants should be crabs now? They’re literally born from a crab! Not that I know what kind of crab this thing is meant to be.

Eventually, Lang Sandstorms the Gather Crab into submission.




Click the image below to watch the Gather Crab Boss Fight


Note that the above is an example of me playing very inefficiently. I needed to get fresh footage for the boss fight and neglected to prepare for it, resulting in a very long and difficult fight. It is possible to make it much easier, but this video proves you can win even if you rush into it.

Moving on…



The game sees fit to remind us that the Gather Crab is dead.



”Damn, if I didn’t know any better, I’d think you needed my help, Dein.”



Lang starts carrying Dein away.

Dein: “But let’s get this straight, Lang…You listening? *cough*”

Dein: “*groan*…Don’t go thinking I owe your or nothing!”

Dein: “I could have taken that monster if I wanted to. Easy! *cough*”

”Sure, buddy. Now let’s get you back to Grandpa Hawke so he can fix all the new holes you made today….”



We find ourselves at home with Dein and Galvan.

“…First Marcus, and then even Dein…”

“Hey Lang, that big monster you were talking about…did you really take it down yourself?”

We can either answer “honestly” or brag. Of course, we really did take it down alone, so is it really bragging?

We are cocky, so we choose to “brag”.

“Leave it to me! I can handle a monster that size!”

”I didn’t even buy any of Haddam’s gear to do it! Am I awesome or-“



Galvan slaps Lang down for his arrogance.

“Don’t let your ego get the better of you, you little punk!”

“You were lucky this time, but one small mistake and you could be dead meat!”

“But I’m glad you escaped with only minor injuries.”

“Good work, Lang. Keep it up…now go to bed early. You have to do it again tomorrow.”

”Damn right I’ll do it again….”

We are now free to roam Galvan’s house. We can actually go outside, but nobody’s around at this time of night. All doors are locked.



Marcus” “Before I knew what was happening…How’s Dein?”

”He’ll live. But I won’t let him live this down.”



Aston presents us with another opportunity to brag.

“Yeah! That thing was huge!...No match for me, though.”

Aston: “…Well, then…You should still be careful.”

”You all doubt me, but it’s a true story!”



“Is it true you took down some huge monster?”

We get to brag. Again.

“Heh! Amazing, huh? I did it all by myself! Alone! Just me!”



”What!? No! He wasn’t even there! That bastard, trying to steal my thunder….”

“Don’t get cocky, Lang. You’ll get hurt that way.”

“…Now go to bed. If you oversleep again, I’m not going to help you!”

”Okay, whatever, I’ve had enough of you doubters. Lying bastard Galvan….”

We finally go to bed. But we do not sleep soundly…



Could it be the effect of the Gather Crab’s toxin?

Now Playing (Sorta) – Repressed Past

(I swear the above track isn't quite the same as the one that plays in game)




Has Lang been transported somewhere?



A mob is gathered around someone. Someone they just killed.

Mob: “Kill the Mystics! They’re monsters!!”

Mob: “You Mystic!! You cursed creature! Foul monster!”

Mob: “Everybody! There must be some still left somewhere!! Find them!!”




Lang sees a boy next to him. A boy with a mark on his hand.

Mob: “Hey! Look at the mark on his chest!! He’s one of them! He’s a Mystic, too!!”

They noticed the bo-wait, no, the boy’s mark is on his hand…



They’ve seen Lang.

Mob: “Aaaah!! Get him! Kill him!!”

”Pfft, bring it! I killed almost 30 Klaw Ants, 5 Bloody Wolves, a Flytrap and a huge crab today! I can take you guys!”



”You guys can teleport? That might be a problem…”




And then everything goes black.

“Lang!!”



It was all just a dream.

“What happened? You were thrashing around.”



I think the game gave Lang a “jerk” response here because it interprets taking all the bragging answers as being an asshole. This is despite picking all the options to be nice to Nancy. The dialogue choices are pretty arcane to work through, and you can’t be sure which response gives what outcomes.

“Someone’s in a good mood!! You were probably remembering what happened today and cowering!”

”You mean today, where I killed a giant enemy crab all alone?”

“Go to bed! If you oversleep tomorrow, you don’t get fed!”

After Nancy leaves, Lang ruminates on what just happened to him.



He sees someone that we didn’t see in his dream….or did we?

Lang tries to make sense of what he just experienced before passing out.

And that is where I shall leave this update.

Join me next time, where Lang’s dreams come to life.