Vandal Hearts II

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Vandal Hearts
Developer(s)	KCE Nagoya
Publisher(s)	Konami Corporation
Release date(s)	August 7, 1999 November 30, 1999 June 30, 2000
Genre(s)	Tactical role-playing game
Mode(s)	Single player
Rating(s)	ESRB: Mature (M)
Platform(s)	Sony PlayStation
Media	1x CD-ROM

Vandal Hearts II is a Japanese tactical role-playing game developed by Konami for the Sony PlayStation.^[1] It is the sequel to Vandal Hearts, also for the PlayStation.

The game centres around the protagonist Joshua, from the village of Polata, and follows his life story from childhood until the end of a civil war in his home country.^[2]

Contents 1 Gameplay 1.1 Combat 2 Plot 2.1 Characters 2.2 Joshua 2.3 Adele 3 Critical Response 4 References

[edit] Gameplay

Vandal Hearts II uses the same basic three map lay-out of an over-world map, town map and a battle map as its predecessor. The overworld map remains unchanged from the original game, featuring a basic map of the country with dots to mark the location of points of interest. Players travel over the overworld map by clicking on the points of interest and thereby automatically moving towards the location they have chosen.^[3]

The dots on the overworld map have been divided into two sections, battle maps and town maps with all but a select few maps being re-vistable. Some locations open up only for story advancing purposes.

Town maps are a rather basic screenshot of the town with locations of interest selected from the menu on the right of the screen, once again this remains rather unchanged from the original game featuring prominently the local Tavern, shops and rather little else except where the story deterermines otherwises.

Battle maps also remain similar to the previous installment.

Vandal Hearts II boasts over 120 different weapons and armour combinations and the game features non-set classes unlike many other RPGS I.E. Warriors can be changed to Healers without any penalties. This is achieved through the armour and weapon systems, skills must be learnt through equipping weapons and earning enough points to master them, while armour determines the characters Hit-points and Magic-points as well as movement rates and defence.^[4]

[edit] Combat

Combat in Vandal Hearts II is done using a new Dual-Turn System, stated as being an Active Time Battle system for Strategy RPGs. The dual turn system permits both the player and the computer to move one unit on the battle-map at the exact same time. This system has caused some complaints among the newer players of the series and was criticised by IGN as being even more time-consuming than it needed to be.

[edit] Plot

Vandal Hearts II's plot takes place in the country of Natra and follows the life-story of Joshua from childhood until adulthood following his progress through the Civil war that tears his home-country apart.^[5] The early stages of the game introduce the hero and his childhood companions and acts as a prologue to future events in the Hero's adult life and also shows how Joshua was manipulated into killing a rather respected member of the artristocracy thereby forcing him into the life of an outlaw with a prejudge against the nobility.^[6]

The adult-stages of the game shows the country of Natra emersed in a civil war with both warring factions having foreign backers. Joshua's renegade band of outlaws effectively gets pulled into a plot to throw up a third non-foreign faction to end the war and restore normality.

[edit] Characters

[edit] Joshua

The protagonist of the game. At the start of the game he is only 13 years of age, a farmer's son in the village of Polata in the country of Natra. An orphan at young age his real parents died in a squabble with nobles and thus he is raised by his Uncle Kordif. Due to the mayor Kossimo's progressive education system he was allowed to socialise with Adele a scion of the aristocracy. Both became extremely good friends bordering on romance.

Joshua ends up being manipulated into killing Kossimo towards the end of the prologue resulting in his forming of the Red Wolves bandit group. However he eventually falls into the company of Baron Pratue and the two men begin to shape and influence the country during its civil war.

[edit] Adele

Adele was the chatelaine of the House of Bryon, laird of the Polata village. Although early on in life she spent a lot of her childhood with Joshua even developing feelings for him, circumstances resulted in their parting. In her adult life she was manipulated by a religious cult to become their head public figure.^[7]

[edit] Critical Response

Vandal Hearts II is generally considered vastly inferior to its predecessor,^[8] and is considered sub-par in comparision to games such as Final Fantasy Tactics and Suikoden II.^[9]

General criticsm of Vandal Hearts II has mostly to do with the storyline in itself. IGN considered the story lacklustre enough to not even "remember it", CNET also agrees considering the storyline to be one that most people "won't care to follow". GIA on the other hand believes that the game lacks the variety of its predeccessor with standard "kill everything" missions.

The controls and battle system was also criticised for being stiff and labourious and the story as long and as twisting as it was being extremely linear.^[10]

Its character design and background has been called unrealistic, espicially in comparison to the designs found in its predecessor.

However despite its criticisms reviewers all generally agree that the game has some unique features and moments and that it is a solid game that while not an epic in the way of Final Fantasy Tactics was strong enough to hold its own.

[edit] References