Fuga Melodies of Steel 2 is the direct sequel to CyberConnect2’s gripping war drama set in a world run by anthropomorphic dogs and cats. Being a full sequel, it adds many features that worked in the original, but adds a few extras to raise the bar for an already successful strategy RPG. The new additions mitigate the difficulty spike felt in the original while adding new flavor and mechanics to the adventure.
Our game picks up where we left off in the first place. He is one year after the giant, devastating tank Tarascus was defeated by the Heroes, a ragtag group of young children in tanks Taranis. They are recalled by the local government to uncover the inner workings of the Tarani, but half the group becomes trapped inside the Tarani as they begin a destructive path across the countryside piloted by a mysterious individual during their investigation. . The remaining children have no choice but to jump into the villainous Tarascus and give chase to save their friends. This game lets you dive right into the story really quickly, but fortunately it includes a full recap of the first game for those who need a refresher.
At its core, Fuga Melodies of Steel 2 is a tactical RPG. There are many pieces around, but the base is the battle. Tarascus tank he has three main stations. Each of these stations can be attended by her two children in the group. This serves a synergistic purpose, but more on that later. There are also his three color-coded weapons: a cannon (red), a machine gun (blue), and a grenade launcher (yellow). Color coding helps distinguish when an enemy has a weakness to a particular weapon. Enemy weakness is important for damage, but it’s also important for timeline purposes. During combat, a turn order timeline is displayed at the top of the screen. Exploiting an enemy’s weak spot pushes them further back in the timeline, creating opportunities to attack first and more often. Special attacks have various properties to remove armor worn by enemies or delay turn order on the timeline. Enemies have different weaknesses and can come in multiple waves, allowing you to switch character positions on the fly.
Combat begins on a moving battlefield system. Highways will have designated events such as combat encounters, health refills, and rest breaks. It’s mostly linear, but there are occasional branching paths to increase your loot at the expense of more difficult combat encounters. Some of the new features include the ability to airlift to return to a specific point on your path or choose a different route for more loot and story, and to damage combat encounters before entering combat. There is also an airstrike function. Another important part of combat is Soul Cannon. This can kill any enemy group or boss encounter in one shot, but using this will randomly sacrifice one of her children in the tank, and their souls will be consumed as ammunition. will be This can have a negative impact on the story, as it will permanently eliminate that part of the team and leave the rest of the group reeling under the weight of that decision. It’s a fascinating mechanic with very powerful implications. I thought it would have had more of an impact if I had forced it to use it, but it will be firmly involved in the story. To compensate for this heavy movement is a new feature called Managarm. This is a similar her one-off move that only stuns her one of the members instead of killing them outright. While this seemed like a welcome option, I still felt uncomfortable using either ability to hurt the team in that way.
One of the key points on the highway of war is rest time. These are the tank’s basic social and maintenance periods. You are given a certain number of action points and can control one of his 12 children on the tank. From here, cook meals for your buff, upgrade parts of your tank, fish for loot, explore side-scrolling mini-dungeons with her crawler, and interact with other kids. You can Talking to your tank buddies creates social bonds, and over time, it generates cute visual novel-style cutscenes and perks that fit right in between the two characters. This is an aspect of synergy by assigning her two members of the group to tank her position. It doesn’t matter what kind of weapon they have, it matters how strong their bond is, which equates to a hero’s ability or damage increase. Character relationships are integral to how they engage with the game’s combat mechanics. The problem was that with a cast of 12 teammates (plus supporting characters), I often lost track of everyone and didn’t really get their characters. This may be because I got too deep into the first game and didn’t like my kids, but newbies may have connection issues similar to mine.
The story itself takes a very grim view of war and its effects on its participants, in this case children. Despite the cartoonish art style, each encounter leads to trauma and loss of innocence. The game presents a truly contradictory atmosphere in which dog and cat children forge the bond of friendship while facing the brutality of war. Despite the inconsistencies in whiplash tone, Melodies of Steel 2 generally works as a whole. Character relationships work in harmony with combat. Your success depends on how your team works together. The first game’s character interactions carry over in ways that can interfere with the overall experience. This is exacerbated by the fact that there are so many other systems out there that simply feel like an afterthought. There’s also a 2D side-scrolling dungeon crawler side activity that feels strangely out of place, and a moral system based on choosing between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ during dialogue. These decisions didn’t make much of a difference to the story, so it was questionable whether they would be included.
Fuga Melodies of Steel 2 is a very solid strategy RPG. It uses an intricate system of character interactions that seems absolutely meaningful to the progression of the story and combat. What keeps it away from the higher tiers of similar games is its reliance on having played the first game, the large number of characters that tend to blend in together, and additional mechanics that almost feel out of place. Fuga is trying to do a lot, but it just needs to focus on what really works. Despite its enormity, the game boasts a short but pleasant 20 hours for him to complete in his 100 hour game world, and there is something to be said for a short but pleasant experience. As the game progresses, it’s a lot of fun to play and has a compelling, if not overwhelming, story to get started with. Despite the dark and brutal war-torn world, Fuga Melodies of Steel 2 offers a glimmer of hope in the tactical RPG space.
