It's always interesting (for me, at least) to see how these games with really huge sprites turn out. I mean, I expect a game with oversized characters to control a little... unusually, so the risk of disaster is constantly present within the "genre"; but I often end up enjoying such titles, and in a variety of ways. Sometimes, I'm lucky enough to stumble upon a Veigues Tactical Gladiator, an effort that actually plays pretty darn well and proves itself to be legitimately good. Other times, I encounter China Warrior types, games that are definitely flawed but built on solid enough systems to make for occasional pick-up-and-play enjoyment. And then there are the horror shows like Sword of Sodan that are broken in so many different ways that I can't help but have fun by laughing at them.
Having fun is the common denominator in all those cases, and I was hoping it'd be the end result when I picked up Rastan Saga II. I didn't expect RS2 to be a quality effort, and it certainly didn't seem to be smooth or solid in any particular way, so I knew it wouldn't be making colleagues of Veigues and China Warrior. But the possibility of it being a kitschy favorite a la Sodan didn't seem remote.
Unfortunately, RS2 is not amusing at all. It's just slow, clunky, and, well... dumb. The designers seemed to be on the right track with the enemy designs and stage graphics. But the beasts are feeble and score hits only because your character is so slow to act, and the backgrounds often consist of a single mountain or tree trunk drawn over and over again. This is a disgusting example of awful, awful concept execution.
Taken on their own, the enemies are quite easy to deal with.
The bosses might seem cheap at first, but once you figure out the proper "tactic" to utilize against each, you shouldn't have any problems at all... except that there's a stupid time limit for each stage, which actually encourages rushed, mindless hacking rather than shrewd planning.
The sections where you're supposed to proceed carefully are absurd, as being "careful" with RS2's poor controls is out of the question.
That stuff is all annoying, but perhaps the thing that annoys me the most is that this supposedly badass barbarian reveals himself to be a blubbering baby in between stages.
Even something as simple as picking up a new weapon apparently causes him great pain.
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