Activision Lost Kingdoms II (GameCube)

CNET editors' rating: 3.5 stars Very good
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Gamespot editors' review

• Reviewed by: Greg Kasavin
• Reviewed on: 05/23/2003
• Released on: 05/21/2003

A year ago, the GameCube desperately needed a role-playing game, and Lost Kingdoms--from quirky Japanese developer From Software--was the answer. Now history is repeating itself, as the sequel to this fantasy-themed game has arrived amid the GameCube's ongoing RPG drought. Like its predecessor, Lost Kingdoms II is an unusual and original game, in which you don't battle with swords and arrows, but with magical cards that summon forth powerful creatures that fight for you. Lost Kingdoms II, like a good sequel should, expands on the gameplay of the original, improves the production values all around, and is a generally better game that will please both fans of the original and anyone looking for an action-packed, RPG-style game for Nintendo's system.

Lost Kingdoms II takes place many generations after the original. Now Katia, the heroine of the first game, is remembered as a legendary queen. Instead you'll play as Tara, an attractive yet reserved young woman who is traveling with a band of thieves, trying to make ends meet in a dangerous and unfriendly world. Tara is an outcast even among her allies, yet they grudgingly accept her company, because Tara--like Katia from Lost Kingdoms--wields the power of the runestone. This giant jewel slung across her back is the secret to Tara's ability to use powerful magic cards in battle. The game's plot pits Tara and her allies against a pompous king and his army of magical, mechanized servants, though the story isn't fleshed out much, and isn't quite as engaging as it could have been.

The game plays out like a third-person action adventure, as you control Tara directly in a variety of enemy-filled environments. But Lost Kingdoms II also incorporates some of the strongest elements of RPGs and collectible-card games: Tara gains experience levels as she defeats foes using her cards, and even the cards themselves gain experience, so they can later be upgraded into more powerful forms. There are a couple of hundred different types of cards to be found (half of which are new and half of which Lost Kingdoms fans will recall), and these represent an imaginative variety of creatures, many of which are mainstays from conventional high-fantasy settings like Dungeons & Dragons or The Lord of the Rings.

The biggest difference in the gameplay of Lost Kingdoms II compared with the original is that there are no random battles in the sequel. The first game worked like a typical console RPG--you'd sprint for a little while and then a random battle would interrupt your progress, forcing a transition to a combat screen. Now there's no such transition, as you'll instead see your enemies roving the environment in search of prey (though they'll sometimes materialize to ambush you). This may seem like a minor point, but in practice it helps Lost Kingdoms II's pacing quite a bit and alleviates the sense of tedium that nonstop random encounters often give an RPG.

Other than that, Lost Kingdoms II plays similarly to the original, but with a few notable new features. There are new categories of cards this time around, as well as numerous card combinations that can be unleashed, and Tara also has the ability to power up any card in exchange for double the magic points the card would normally require to cast. The default controls work pretty well. You run Tara around using the left analog stick and control the camera with the right. You can always reset the perspective behind her with the left shoulder button, but the camera movement could have been more responsive overall, so you'll find yourself wrestling with the camera every now and then. As Tara, you're mainly trying to keep yourself out of harm's way and get in close enough to your foes to use your cards and then retreat and regroup--a process that's made tricky by the game's collision detection, which doesn't always look right. The GameCube controller's face buttons are mapped to four out of the up to 30 cards you can bring with you into a level, and pressing the corresponding button uses that card. Cards are dealt randomly, but you can send ones you don't need to the bottom of your deck by pressing and holding the right shoulder button. Lost Kingdoms II's combat system is esoteric, but it's actually pretty easy to pick up.

Different creatures have different elemental affinities, so there's a rock-paper-scissors style of balancing at work here, in which some types of cards are particularly effective against certain types of opponents. A new category of mechanized creatures has been added to the mix, which complicates the standard pantheon of earth/water/wood/fire-based creatures. As in Lost Kingdoms, the main categories of cards include weapon cards, which cause a creature to momentarily materialize above Tara and attack once; independent cards, which conjure up the depicted creature to support Tara and her other minions on the battlefield; and summon cards, which call down particularly powerful and drawn-out attacks. There are also helper cards, which are similar to independents but are more defensive in nature. And there's a new category called transform cards, which cause Tara to take the form of a powerful monster that can be controlled directly.

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