Magna Carta 2

Magna Carta 2 is actually the third game in a Korean RPG series, but don’t worry, we’re not the sequel-numbering police. What matters is that you don’t have to dig up its predecessors to fall for the vividly beautiful storybook world of Lanzheim. In fact, clichés abound here, so you probably know much of the plot already. A paradise of magic and prosperity torn apart by periodic civil wars. An amnesiac protagonist out to avenge the death of his best friend. Sound familiar? And while the characters are endearing and the conclusion satisfying, even the coolest narrative twists are pretty darn familiar.

You might get sick of wading through predictable dialogue, but the combat system’s real-time blend of action and strategy rocks. Your active party of three jumps seamlessly into battle mode with a flick of the left trigger. Tap A to crack skulls and generate Kan energy, X to spend it on skills, and the D-pad to swap characters. Simple enough, right? Hang on. To make it past the harshest towering baddies, you’ll have to do much more than just pound buttons.

Exhaust your stamina, and you’ll briefly enter a powerful Overdrive mode, but end up overheated. However, swap in an ally, crank out another intense Overdrive beating, and cap off the sequence with a skill move, and both breathless warriors recover immediately. It takes a bunch of practice to master the timing, and the jarring screen-wipe transition between characters doesn’t help the process at all. Still, walking the thin line between a full party of fresh fighters and one in which two-thirds are sucking wind gives every battle some vital tension that makes hours pass like minutes. Add in two skill trees for each character, a simple crafting system, and many-socketed weapons, and RPG veterans will willingly skip reams of exposition to get back to the brawling.

Newbies, on the other hand, should probably steer clear altogether. While most modern RPGs let players save pretty much whenever they like, Juto and pals often must brave the better part of an hour and excessively long nature walks between save points. On its own, this is just a pain in the ass, but when you face lengthy battles against up to three bosses in a row, it can take considerable willpower not to snap a controller in half.

Okay, so Magna Carta 2’s not a meticulously crafted masterpiece. But as long as you go in knowing what annoyances await, you should have a pretty good time kicking monster butt.