Vasteel 2 [バスティール2] Introduction -- PC Engine CD

Original Air Date: November 11th, 2009 So... I had this game for many years now and always wondered just how generic it was. I picked it up in a retro game shop and the first bad sign I had was that the manual was in Black & White. It is one of like three Japanese games out of hundreds that I own with a B&W manual. In fact, the only other game I can think of off the top of my head is my Japanese Mega Drive version of the original Phantasy Star (which was more than a big letdown). Of course, I'd seem like a bit of a jackass if I solely judged the quality of a game on its packaging, so another sign was when the first game was released outside of Japan by Working Designs, but not this game. Having never owned or played the original Vasteel, I scoured the net for videos, pictures, and information. The resources are incredibly finite, but what little I found showed that the game at least LOOKED superior to this game, and this one was made about four years later... can you say "we barely produced a sequel"? The game is developed by Human/Hunex who also developed the somewhat popular Relationship RPG game, Blue Breaker. You can see a few remnants of this in the way certain segments are animated and the looks of some characters. This game is a Super CD-Rom2 game that even utilizes the Arcade Card, but so far, I have little idea where the hell all this "upgrade" power is going, aside from the more seemless nature of cutscenes, which is a nice touch (you'll know what I mean if you watched cutscenes in this and then watched our Final Zone II vids). The soundtrack is admitedly much better than what I've heard from the original, as are the cutscenes, but this game does not look like the product of four years of work, and perhaps not even the product of one. The game seems to ditch all the "Arcade-Style" action that WD boasted about in the original, instead opting to make the game a more pure hex strategy game, which is all fine and good, except there are better hex strategy games out there (cough*Military Madness*cough*Neo Nectaris*cough). The cast of characters are fairly stereotypical. The main character, 25 year old Voice Knuckle, is a young man seeking revenge against Agares Andras, an evil dictator who wrecked Voice's home planet with lethal weapons and a space armada. Voice is aided by his companion/love interest, 19 year old Diggy Norton, who seems to always be tagging along affectionately. Different characters utilize different weapons and the main draw of the game is simple strategy and following directions. If you do not follow directions, you will find yourself as a pile of scrap pretty quickly. It's not a remarkable game really. It's not as bad as I thought it would be, but I think it's pretty subpar for a hex game, sans the great soundtrack. I'll end this with a funny Engrish segment from the manual: "Voice Knuckle become registance and come back with his people to take revenge on the dictator Agares who had destroyed their homeplanet. Voice Knuckle & his people hane kept on fighting against Agares. From that day on.the war become "holy battle for Voice Knuckle." Basic Format: Super CD-Rom² (Super CD-Rom2)