Alundra 2

Product Details

• ASIN: B00003W865
• Media: Video Game
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #12,649 in Video Games (See Bestsellers in Video Games)

Product Description

Product Description
An epic struggle between good and evil ignites the kingdom of Varuna as the peaceful realm falls under the control of a sinister baron. You are Flint, a renegade swordsman seeking revenge on the pirates who killed your mother and now flourish under the new regime.

You must wield your sword through this land of unsuspecting danger and adventure. Can you successfully explore and survive this intricate story wrought with bizarre characters, brain-twisting puzzles, and wild games? Beware! An even greater evil is about to be revealed.

GameSpot Review
Few games reek of the grasping, guileless profiteering that goes on in the game industry as much as Alundra 2 does - it's a sad, uninspired attempt to turn a mildly popular game into a mildly popular franchise. Lifeless exercises like this game are cooked up when companies are concerned merely with name recognition and branding, and quality comes in a distant second to marketing. While it's definitely playable, it's mediocre in almost every way and begs the question - why would you even consider it, with the plethora of titles on the platform? In this new adventure you'll be playing as Flint, the typical disproportionate, red-haired, cute-faced anime hero of whimsical RPGs. Pirates have killed his parents, you see, and there's a price on his head. You'll meet up with a dashing princess, the weasely pirates, and the oddly green and malevolent Mephisto, a sorcerer bent on world domination via the bizarre method of inserting clockwork keys into people and animals, turning them into android killing machines and slaves. Alundra 2 dispenses with any and all ties to the original game. This time around, Contrail - creator of the Wild Arms series and Legend of Legaia - has the chief creative duties on this game. Of course, the term "creative" is used very loosely here - because Alundra 2 isn't particularly original. Basically, we have a by-the-book experience, the endless banality unsuccessfully obscured by inane minigames. Gone too is the title character, Alundra, and any graphical, artistic, or thematic references to the original game. The gameplay, too, is absolutely nothing original or inventive. The game employs endless standard action-RPG methodology - you have a sword, and you must smack things with it. Of course, magic is on the horizon as well. The control implementation is not the best either, and Flint will overshoot his targets in a desperate leap and get smacked upside the head in the worst scenario. Of course, getting smacked upside the head is more common than ever in Alundra 2, because Activision's almost flawless localization is marred by the increased "normal" difficulty level. The enemies do otherworldly damage in this mode. Thankfully, they have left "easy" - the original difficulty level in the Japanese version. Alundra 2 dispenses with its prequel's 2D graphics, which while basic, were functional. Instead we've got hapless pointy, jagged, and seamy polygons flickering and clipping their way through a universe of warped and pixelated textures. This game would've been graphically mediocre in 1997 - but for the occasional decent texture map. Soundwise, Alundra 2 is much more reasonable - while the music is fairly derivative of the work of such mainstay fantasy composers as Final Fantasy's Nobuo Uematsu, it's handled with complete competence and serves as a desperate, valiant background to the floundering mechanics and jagged graphics. The character voices are lively, and the text is grammatical, occasionally amusing, and pretty natural - Activision's localization team has done a great job. It's a shame that this effort was wasted on such a mediocre title. Hopefully, the company's marketing department will see beyond branding next time and acquire a more interesting game. Alundra 2 suffers most from the fact that there is no real reason for it to exist. Fans of the original adventure will surely be disappointed with this one: Being suckered into buying a game that's a purported sequel and then receiving a product that bears no resemblance to the original is a frustrating experience. This game sold extremely poorly in Japan, so the prospects of a true Alundra sequel are dim at best, unless it's a smashing success in the USA. While it's true that almost all games are created as profit machines, some transcend - Alundra 2 is an unkind reminder that pulls us back into the base clay.--Christian Nutt--Copyright © 1998 GameSpot Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of GameSpot is prohibited.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Going against the approval tide, April 12, 2000

By A Customer

Durability:5.0 out of 5 stars Fun:3.0 out of 5 stars Educational:5.0 out of 5 stars 

I love RPG games and have been playing since they 1st came out. This game would have rec'd a 5 Star rating if it wasn't so very frustrating. It 'loads' so often its annoying. Its easy to figure out the puzzles and most are fun but just as you have put an hour into the game (with no save point in sight)it puts in a easy puzzle but an impossible to do in less than another hour or more - skill to learn. If you don't learn the skill and get through it you must lose the last hour or more you put into the game. I am halfway through the game and will probably not play it to the end. The current skill I'm on is to leap to a box which lights another box and the one you are one disappears. Not so hard to figure out, but almost impossible unless you accidently land in the right place at the right time facing the right direction to go more than a few blocks before you have to start all over. Again not unreal to do just long and frustrating. I play to be challenged and the feeling of accomplishment at the complition of a difficult skill and I have NEVER shut off a game so often and been willing to loose all my progress rather than get upset. So, 3 Stars is all it deserves in my opinion. This could have been a great game.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Miss the SNES and Genesis days?, January 6, 2001

By A Customer

A solid but unspectacular action RPG. Gameplay is very similar to 16-bit games much like Beyond Oasis, Zelda 3, and Light Crusader with inventory management reminiscent of Y's 3. Basically just an old school hack and slash adventure with a block puzzle thrown in from time to time. Short of the occasional FMV and the 3D graphics this game could have easily been done years ago on older systems. Graphically it looks quite nice, but the camera angle is a little difficult at times. Overall a decent game that doesn't really live up to modern standards. Fans of titles like Soul Reaver and the PSX Final Fantasy games would be better off to look elsewhere.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Terrific Action/RPG with not so terrific graphics, April 10, 2000

By A Customer

Durability:5.0 out of 5 stars Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars Educational:5.0 out of 5 stars 

This game rocks! Its rare to find a game so well balanced between RPG and action elements. The difficulty level is not too tough, and they even have an easier version for newbies, but I recommend playing the more difficult one.

The only downfall to this game is the graphics. After playing graphic masterpieces like Final Fantasy VIII and Legacy of Kain, I have come to expect games not to be so grainy. The textures in the game are really ugly up close, plus the beginning of the game has one of the most blocky "FMV" sequences I have ever seen on the playstation(which, from what I understand, was made especially for American audiences to clarify the story. I found this unnecessary, plus all of the images are taken from the game itself)

If one can get past the not so clear graphics, the game itself is incredible. I recommend it to all Action/RPG fans.