LogFAQs > #984629373

Ok so quick review.

Man, this game is a mess.

When it's good, it's pretty good. Act 1 is probably the best start in the series. I wasn't joking when I said it was better than Sky SC. The Finale is also solid, albeit it suffers because the game isn't willing to explain what is going on to avoid future game spoilers. But the entire 5x final boss sequence and the boss rush before it are good stuff.

Divertissement is fun, Epilogue is better than I was expecting, though the final dungeon could be removed and the game would be better off. It would look like the end of FC, which is ok!

Act 2 is AWFUL, though. After all the excitement of fighting enforcers and then unlocking ogre mode and then getting a new ship, the game grinds to a halt. All the plots feel like sidequests, because Albarea and Rogner are side villains who don't really matter. And the reconquest of Trista is very underwhelming, both when it is announced as an objective and when it's done. This arc continues to suffer from the fact the school setting is just way less interesting than what older games did. I'm tired of hearing "we are students so we can't do much". No! Do much! You are RPG protagonists, I want to see you daring Impossible odds! I don't hate the fact threy are students, but I hate that it is constantly used as an excuse to make the plot less interesting.

Also retreading older areas works even less than the usual because you already did that in Act 1, and the fact you can fly anyway is an invitation to avoid walking as much as you can, so the side quests end up feeling boring too.

SC's first half was weak, but it was harder to notice because that game was a crescendo. You didn't initially fight enforcers, just got introduced to them. The stakes then got progressively higher and you only started fighting the main bosses in chapter 7. In CS2, you fight enforcers, then you are asked to go deal with second tier nobles and their generic henchman bosses, as well as the ILF has-beens. It's deflates hype. This game plot doesn't know how to handle its own hype.

The plot is fun, the civil war is done well enough, but the lack of a proper conclusion makes it less satisfying, so this doesn't rank high in plot either. The party is solid. Those characters are overall more likable now that their teenage issues are mostly solved, even if many of them don't develop further. They are just fun to have around. Rean is still bad, but he has a decent arc now. He is just inherently not very likable himself.

Gameplay wise this is ok, feels a bit like a toned down Azure. You have to abuse cheesy mechanics a lot to beat it on Hard, but the game just provides way more of it. The difficulty curve is clunky because most battles are a complete joke with a few being very hard, but TOCS 1's hardesr fights were way more difficult than the ones we got this time.

Mecha fights aren't great. But they aren't terrible. They need to be faster and to have a less abusable healing system.

Overall, I had fun, but I was bored as hell half the time. The last time I felt like this was Sky 3rd. This game has better highs than that one, but it also suffers more due to the length.

I'm somewhat hyped for TOCS3 since it's apparently the best of the four, and I'm interested in seeing the story continue. But I look at the premise, see "school" and just cringe. We'll see.

Zero > Sky FC > Azure > Sky SC > CS1 > CS2 > Sky 3rd