So after beating Nice Day For Fishing, I started playing Fuga: Melodies of Steel 2, which I picked up a while ago when it got a massive discount on the PS store, probably in a attempt to drum up some interest for the third game in the series which came out this year.
This game takes place a year after the events the first game where a bunch of anthropomorphic children cats conveniently found a massive war machine in a cave when a bunch of anthropomorphic dogs, the Berman Empire, invades their country and takes their parents prisoner. Obviously, the kids kick the Berman Empire's arse and peace is restored. The kids get invited by the military to help them with their investigation of the massive tank, called the Taranis which I'm sure is not in any way an attempt to reverse engineer how the thing works and build a load more. Anyway, some of the kids get trapped in the Taranis, which promptly takes off with them inside leaving a trail of destruction behind it.
But all is not lost, the military has conveniently also been researching the Tarascus, the enemy war machine which was defeated by the kids in the first game. So the remaining kids jump into that and chase after it and fun times ensue.
The game plays pretty much the same as the first game, the only way I can describe is a turn based JRPG meets a runner style game. Your tank, the Tarascus and later, the Exo-Taranis moves from left to right with little imput from the player, stopping every now and then for events and combat, collecting supplies for upgrades and health/SP as you go. The combat is a bit more interesting, you have three basic attacks, cannons (red), grenade launchers (yellow) and machine guns (blue). The colours of the weapons are important as the enemies come colour coded and if you hit them with their coloured weakness, you can delay their action, giving you a chance to do more damage. You can switch out the kids so that you have the optimal combination to defeat the enemies, machine guns are used for stripping away armour or taking out flying enemies, while the cannons are used for damage with the grenade launchers sitting somewhere in the middle.
There is also the Soul Cannon, which is basically the "Fuck You" option and will wipe out everything. In the first game, it was completely optional to use as it came at a cost. It needed one of the children to use as ammo, basically using them as fuel to turn into a massive blast of energy, so it should never, ever be used, YOU MONSTER! In this game, if the tank takes too much damage in battle, the tank's AI will decide to take matters into its own hands and randomly select a child to load into the Soul Cannon. This will add a ticking clock to finish the battle as you now have 20 turns before it fires. Thankfully, there is a secondary option, a second "Fuck You" weapon to use if things get really desperate, which will just render one of the kids unconscious and lead to you getting no experience from the fight.
At certain times during a level, you will get intermissions where you walk around the tank, making upgrades, farming, talking to the other kids which leads to "Links" which give you access to powerful attacks in battle. As well as sleeping which heals anyone injured or knocked out during battle, which happens if the tank takes too much damage. There are also chances to explore ruins and honestly, these are not great. They are puzzles that are pretty simple to figure out and serve as an opportunity to get rare supplies. They are functional if nothing else.
I like the game as a whole and I like this game more than the first, despite them being pretty similar. The writing seems to be less angsty, though it does get that way at times and some of the more annoying characters (looking at you Mei, you were my first choice for the Soul Cannon if it came to it) are less annoying. In fact, you do actually get attached to these kids which makes it harder when they do get chosen as ammo. The game is gorgeous, it reminds me of Valkyria Chronicles with its hand painted water colour style graphics. Also, strangely, Metal Slug with the creative designs of not only the Taranis and Tarascus, but most of the enemies too. Also, the way it moves with the tank bouncing as it moves along. The sound design as well, the tank rattles, clanks and hisses as it moves with steam and sparks shooting off of it. The soundtrack swings between whimsical and dramatic based on what is going on, again reminding me of Valkyria Chronicles, taking an influence from one of my favourite games of all time does go a long way.
If I do have one issue with the game and it is one from the first game too, is there is no English language option for the voice acting, the choices being Japanese or French for some reason. I don't speak Japanese and the voice acting does grate every now and then, but I feel this is a me problem more than the game, it does come with English subtitles, so you can follow the story. But other than that, I have been enjoying my time with this game and have written far more than I expected to
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