Fuga: Melodies of Steel 2

For months after finally getting around to the original Fuga (and enjoying it quite a bit) I waited for this and Fuga 3 to go on sale again- and it was worth that wait (and frankly, would have been worth the original release's as well, but I'm glad I got the fast tracked version). When I played the first I mostly enjoyed it, and only had a few gripes with certain mechanics and some of the writing- being that I could gush for hours about the most minute of things in this title, which has immediately skyrocketed to becoming one of my all time favourite RPGs after just a first run, it's better that I just go over the tune ups, as everything great I mentioned about the first still applies. Immediately, we get a deeper story, one more intimately involved with the setting. We get more fleshed out character dynamics, more meaningful link events, more time spent with characters both on the Taranis and elsewhere, and everything is so much the better for this. Where the first game sometimes failed to draw me into the fray, I was hooked from the beginning here and found it genuinely hard to stop playing- looking back, surprising even myself with finishing this in only 4 days. While the story itself is still not anything revolutionary, the game picks its battles much better, and keeps the player strung along by focusing more on the internal struggles of the children, their reactions to the conflict presented, and how they mesh with each other as a unit- rather than relying entirely on the larger strokes of the plot, which may have left it feeling rather expected or flat in some instances. You're so engrossed in the characters themselves that you hardly have time to notice that yeah, maybe you've seen some of these themes and archetypal characters before, maybe there's some similarity to the first game regarding some of the story beats. You barely have time to think about what might be the only conceivable "flaw" I could level on this one. The game had its hooks into me so effectively that by the end, I found it was one of the few times in my life that an RPG actually managed to make me cry. Perhaps the greatest change when it comes to comparing Fuga 1 and 2 and how they manage the horror of war and loss, and present this threat to the player, is that the Soul Cannon mechanic is now completely out of your hands- instead of being a "I admit that I lost the game" button, its now a crisis mode: take too much damage, let things become too dire, and your tank will select a random child and load them into the cannon for you, giving you a small window of turns before they're killed. Given the increased focus on the children and better development in this installment, it becomes an extremely effective threat- rather than feel like resetting the few times it happened to me, I was instead steeled to do everything I could to finish the fight in time. Not many games can claim to have made me so desperate to avoid a character death. While it is true that no game can escape the problem of "just reset if you screw up", this struck a much better balance than the first game, as now you couldn't just decide to avoid ever considering the option. Other than this "selling point" mechanic, the rest of the combat has also been more finely tuned from the original. Enemy formations are now much more intelligently designed, often times leaving you without "golden options" to effortlessly deal with them under the proper strategy. Character skills and roles are now refined and more strongly defined, making each child feel like they have a proper use instead of just being "S Tier Cannoneer, A Tier Cannoneer", etc. This combined with a tighter balance overall- fewer resources to be had, stronger opponents, and what felt like a more fragile Taranis- made for truly engaging and challenging combat at every turn, without ever feeling like things had gone overboard or gotten frustrating. Overall it is shockingly good- not just the best game I've played this year, but one of the best RPGs I've ever played, period. The love that the people at Cyberconnect2 have for the characters and the world they've created practically oozes out of it at every turn, as does their beautiful art, fantastic music, and skill at creating engaging and strategic gameplay. I said last time that I felt proud about CC2 wanting to be ambassadors for furries in the gaming space- now that feeling is multiplied, not only am I proud, I'm filled with hope that we don't have to be held back by biases or anything else- we can clearly stand toe to toe with the best of them- and do better.