Introduction

Hello Again!

It's time to take my newly repaired eyes and start another LP, this one a direct sequel to a game I previously LPed:

Developed and published by Kemco, Sword of Hope II/Selection II was released in Japan in 1992 and in North America in 1996. The NA release date put the game at the later end of the Game Boy's development cycle, which might have contributed to SoH II being overlooked by a lot of people. I owned a physical copy of the Sword of Hope, and I never even realized there was a sequel until years later. That said, we're looking at a fairly advanced RPG for the time.

The box art isn't exactly an attention grabber, although I suppose it could be worse...

Compared to Japan we definitely got the better end of the box art stick. That hair is utterly 80's.

The Story So Far

Starting a new game results in giving us a rehash of the setting and an explanation about this whole Sword of Hope deal. If you want a further explanation, I'd suggest going here: The Sword of Hope LP

In case those words didn't quite reach you, there's also a lovely depiction of the mural. Sword and all.

Since Theo sealed away the Dragon of Darkness. Since then, the kingdom has flourished. Until... one day,

Long protected by the Collin Clan

Unusual for an early 90's Gameboy title, there's actually an animation of a beam of light shooting out of the temple. It's not worth a video capture.

LP Concept

When I LPed the previous game, I intentionally went with a stylistic choice of trying to make it sound like a fairy tale. That seemed to fit the narrative of the game, but this one is much more like a typical JRPG and I'm inclined to treat it as such. It should be noted that I've never actually played this game before, so this will be a partially blind LP. There might be some amusing errors along the way. As per usual, you can expect 2-3 updates from me a week until this is all said and done. Real life might speed up or slow down this pace.

Our Cast

Theo

Our first character, Theo, is the previous star of The Sword of Hope. He's gotten a bit out of condition in the intervening 5 years, and at 21 years old he's practically ancient by JRPG terms. He's got strong offense and defense, a good selection of weapons and armor, and learns magic to boot. As the leader of our eventual party Theo has a selection of unique spells that can be extremely useful.

Mute

As you might expect from a member of a clan of mages, Mute is our magical powerhouse now that Theo's somehow forgotten all powerful spells he used to know. Mute gets most of the spells Theo gets and a few more besides, specializing in magical mayhem. It makes him tremendously useful, his tendency toward monologuing set aside. A hero or a future supervillain, that's our Mute. Note that as a child mage he falls squarely within the standard RPG competence zone.

Nina

20 pounds of useless in a 10 pound sack. That's Nina. Rescued from a sandworm and coming with us to search for her father, Nina has terrible attack power, lousy defense, and can't use magic. Luckily the enemies don't seem to want to murder her as hard as they want to murder Theo and Mute, which is probably the only thing that keeps her alive. To make things worse, she doesn't really have much character beyond wanting to find her father.

Bogi

In direct contrast to Nina, Bogi is a physical fighter who's actually good at his job. He's got a physical attack second only to Theo, and he's nearly as fast as Mute. The only downside is that Bogi doesn't have any magic, but we've got that pretty well covered already. He's also completely awesome in concept, being a person whose entire dream in life is to kill a Fire Dragon just for the hell of it. The only problem is his sense of direction..

Layl

Our final party member is Layl, who has a connection to Bogi that's better seen than described. You can tell she's important because she has MP, and she fills in the final role in our trio. Layl primarily learns healing and support spells, but the fact that she hits like a bad-tempered truck saves her from becoming a staff chick or heal bitch. She's also faster than Theo or even Mute as levels go up, meaning that she's got an excellent chance of stepping in first with much needed healing magic. All in all a solid character.

The Let's Play Archive

Sword of Hope II

by ddegenha

Introduction

Table of Contents