A look back at: Dual Orb II

Well, looks like I'm gonna be alright after all. Didn't have a whole lot of activity for a full week, wow. But anyways, I finally got done with Dual Orb II, and even though my review of it is pretty darn neutral on the whole thing, guess what? I HATED this game. And I'll list all the reasons why. Massive spoilers, although most of you wouldn't care or something.

1. One thing I at least loved was the intro, showcasing two people as if they were pretty good scientists, just willing to send one back to avoid a potential apocalpyse. Both Alex and Serra in this case seem to be pretty decent characters on onset, except we will barely be seeing much of this intro make sense until much later in the game. Lame. And yes, one of these characters you'll know for too much, and then the other you'll barely even make of at all. We also get to see a FF6-like opening of a priest wandering in the snow with a baby. I at least came in expecting this to NOT be a ball buster, and it obviously isn't, but that intro honestly gave way to some false hope.

2. I've already said it before, but man this game has too many cliche parts to it. Just look who we got for characters, a generic mysterious girl, a generic bard, a generic thief, a generic rebellious princess, a generic demi-human companion, and a generic pirate. And that's just the secondary characters that you get later on. The two main characters you see are two fantasy-style guys, one swordsman, one spearman. Look at their styles. One is a blondie, while the other has silvery hair. Take a good guess which one turns traitor later on in the game. Not to mention there's an evil empire, with an emperor, a mad scientist who's more evil than the empire, forgettable generals, and your average everyday eldritch big bad. Oh yes, you have one orb in this game along with three jewels to use it, along with some "spirit nucleus" thing that isn't an orb. Let's also not forget, those three jewels have "guardians". And there will be castles, dungeons, jails, mountains, towns, harbors, and floating fortresses alike.

3. Aleth is a silent protagonist in a game I firmly do not believe should have a silent protagonist. I don't think I need to say much else here.

4. Well, at least the hopeless fights where you're supposed to lose are done a little bit better in that I don't HAVE to lose. But I never was a fan of them. The opening fight between you and Lagnus can actually be won, which is a nice accomplishment, while the first fights against Gilzath and Organa you can just last a few rounds before it ends. The penultimate boss of the game plays it straight though.

5. Gameplay-wise, there's a lot of issues. Most notably, all that grinding I do is boring. And I do it mostly for money, even though the level gains are nice, well, I'll leave that for another list item. But damn, many of these items and weapon upgrades get expensive. Sure, the prices of weapon upgrades mellow down, and one optional town is cheapest (though you gotta remember, the town is optional and you might miss it), but when enemies don't give out the big moolah until the very VERY end of the game, something's gonna be rather annoying with the grinding. It's thankfully not on the same level of Dragon Warrior though.

6. But then you realize, leveling up your characters doesn't seem to change a whole lot. You're only doing a tad bit more damage, your stats are growing just a tad. It all boils down to what equipment you can have that can allow you to disk and take more. Sure, the character's HP counts will hit the thousands, with Aleth's HP being the frontrunner, but the rest of the stats need some work. I mean, I can overlevel my characters to high, high levels (not on purpose, because I mostly grinded for money) but there will somehow still be enemies faster than me speed-wise.

7. And then we get to the matter of damage itself. You see, if the damage isn't 1 or a miss, you and your enemies will be doing triple-digit or quadruple-digits numbers usually. A character can bite it at around 4 hits, even with the best armor and level available. Your enemies also have high health but your damage output is just like theirs, so you can just storm through encounters when you need to grind.

8. But then again, when you want to get through the game, that's when the random battle system decides to just swarm you with encounters. Wonderful. Like I didn't have enough on my plate already. A full treasure room could take me minutes because I run into ten battles or so because the random encounter rate is excruciatingly high.

9. Ah, these spells are totally mixed. Just look at these healing spells. The standard Revive revives someone at ONE HP. That's not gonna help at all. The status spells are worse, as they usually are, but unless it's Earth Shake you have almost no way of telling what you just did when you use them. The buffing spells barely make any noticable difference in stat gains. The attack spells? Aleth and Serra only get ONE EACH, although they are both good ones, while Saladin and Lagnus get plenty of them. Notably though, it seems the spells gained by leveling up aren't really in accordance to the levels gained. Why is it that Darkness Arrow, a spell gained by Lagnus at level 9, so much better than every other spell he gets in the levels afterward? The same with Saladin's Stone Lance and Nova, although those two are gained at much higher levels usually, then again it seems that Saladin is always gaining new spells with each level up. But what's with all the marginally WORSE spells gained after these ones? And if you are wondering if elemental spells will take a part with weaknesses, not always the case. Sometimes, trying to exploit one isn't gonna be much of a difference.

10. Oh, and there's status effects, yes, but they are forgettable, and they will always be cured at the end of battle. What harm will Poison do if it is cured immediately after battle? And the confusion/charm spell is supposed to keep control of the person, but here it can be broken out of with a physical attack as if it was a sleep spell. Lame.

11. So the vast majority of enemies you face aren't really amazing at all. A good chunk of them are actually completely human in fact. Most of the enemies include the ghost-masked thieves that actually look well graphics-wise, the soldiers, the annoying karate girls that always go first. All of these human enemies do the same thing, physical attack. There are very few magical enemies, who can actually be a lot tougher, like the Jeldollies and their Wind Cutter attack along with a few late-game ones, but by then I am overleveled enough to beat them usually. But wait, what's with these technology based enemies in a predominantly fantasy world? What's with these weird monster trucks? Floating laptops? Large desert tanks? Weird hypodermic needles that heal enemies? There's not a whole lot of sense in enemy creation, but Dual Orb II didn't seem to have a proper sense of direction.

12. When I find a weapon, it's always gonna be unknown until you actually equip it, and then you sometimes realize it's a cursed weapon. Pretty basic, but it's mostly a hassle having to train up certain weapons with boatloads of cash to ensure you are killing the bigguns. There's a few times where you'd want to choose a best weapon for a character. Rapier or bow for Karina? The Ice Fang for Saladin is surprisingly his best choice, as the Kill Wing later on is crap at the higher levels. Meanwhile, the Dragoon spear is something that will basically never leave Lagnus once you equip it.

12. Oh Lagnus, you mischievous boy you, always getting into trouble, it's a shame that the most interesting character in the game has to save your sorry ass from stupid thieves that think you're perfect kidnapping money.

13. Really? Making Cassius leave before our first real dungeon? Way to make a crutch character there. Cassius was decent early on due to him being speedy and having a good weapon level, but making him leave is gonna make it much harder, since characters that rejoin don't seem to be trained up for later battles. I mean Final Fantasy Mystic Quest did that. Mystic Quest trained up characters that would later rejoin the party.

14. Serra's whole role is seriously easy to figure out. Amnesiac, mysterious waif, apparently being considered a goddess even though she isn't. Making things even stupider is the game lets out a fact she isn't a human. Well, she may have Sailor Moon-esque hair, but her entire personality is that of a human. And yes, expect her to get kidnapped once. She at least has a unique weapon, but the drawback is it cannot be modified better.

15. Hardwick upon first seeing Serra will immediately say "just my imagination", and then when you lose Serra later on, he's all like "don't you remember me?" Just no.

16. The boss fight against Torath is an example of why I hate this game's boss fights. Either it's just a battle of attrition like most, a hopeless boss fight that ends in a few rounds, or like this, it's a gimmick fight in which it shows Lagnus his newfound abilities. Yet, it's not made entirely obvious.

17. It amazes me that Saladin is amassing these two women like he's Glenn Quagmire as a thief, but joining the party and staying for the rest of the game puts something into perspective. What about those women, huh?

18. I'll give the Colodus arc a lot of credit, it's definitely a good plot twist. But it is pretty much ruined by the cloaked figure next to Seldam which pretty much means that the whole thing is obviously a farce. I mean, you can see it a mile away.

19. Najiri is easily the least popular character for the party due to his NPC-controlled tactics. And it's not in a potentially fun way like FF6's Umaro either. It's just straight up boring. You can knock him out and it wouldn't make much of a difference. But you know what I really hate? The fact that I wasted a LOT of money to buy one Guriguard, an item only he can equip, only to find out it's not only NOT his ultimate armor, but the Shell Armor, which is his best armor, is the armor I get in the dungeon JUST BEFORE reaching Najiri. Yeah, what a complete fluke that was. I know it's a black market and all, but still, come on.

20. Gilzath's main entry comes with a semi-hopeless boss fight, then Saladin shows off his cool spells at this point, which he never did up until that point. Good job there, preventing me from using such awesome spells until now. Now he's gonna grow those spells like crazy. I'm actually not mad at this per se, but I AM mad that Gilzath still gets away with Serra despite being stopped.

21. While it's nice that Cassius comes back around this time and gives his actually interesting backstory on being a spy and why he hates Kardosa, remember what I said earlier. And hell, he's not gonna be in the party that long anyways either. His king is also a huge idiot when siding with Kardosa and it obviously becomes apparent later on.

22. The whole prayer scene in Claydon made no sense. How come neither Cassius nor Lagnus were transported with Serra, Saladin, and Aleth? All I can think of is to make room for more party members but that's a lame excuse. Let's also not forget to mention Hardwick's hatred of Aleth by looking at his eyes. God, I hate it when that trope is used.

23. The middle arc is thankfully not so bad. Sure, more royals in danger of being kidnapped, more characters join, the drunken guy in the harbor tavern seems like he could actually be of nominal importance, and we get to see an actually interesting evil general. Not to mention Bargan is gonna be our token good pirate. Of course, he's yet another crutch character due to how short of a time he's in the party, but he was okay at the very least. Still though, that horn thing seemed like a weird way to avert a hopeless outcome from Organa, and to make things more blatant, the story of Bargan's daughter is just clear as day exactly who Lina really is.

24. The bickering comic relief between Saladin and Karina ends up being pretty textbook. And of course, they will hook up at the end as you can EASILY expect. Guh. I would like Saladin more if he was actually a thief for crying out loud. Despite showing shades of it with a few lockpicking scenes, he's used for comic relief way too much. At least Karina gets a family, wait, when exactly did her brother end up being a scientific prodigy again? That came out of the blue. So did the Cadmus island being a mobile sea turtle. I guess the kicker here is that it actually cannot be controlled.

25. It was worth it in the end, but again the grinding for the money was just so boring. I had found out that the fight against Gilzath was gonna be 100% magic-based, so I had to buy three Guard Talismans (one is in the Time Ruins, making four for each). Unfortunately, those aren't really useful anywhere else due to having zero physical power. And even then, Gilzath uses Nova which still does thousands of damage, it's a good thing he falls quick due to my high levels of grinding. Hey, I also grinded so I could get five Magic Chains (one for each of my party members and for Bargan later on), and a Body Suit (for Cassius later on). All in all, over 300000 gold which took me days. I don't feel like grinding for THAT long again.

26. Of course the mage society is gonna be reluctant to join. They at least can be credible because they KNOW their power is so great it can be used for evil. Too bad that the evil empire IS gonna force them to do that later on.

27. The whole family moment involving Marilyn, Saladin, Elena, and Gilzath honestly made me cringe more than I honestly would. So exactly how did Saladin wind up away from Gassa, from his sister Marilyn and mother Elena? Well, he got teleported by Gilzath, Marilyn's teacher, who's obviously stupid dream of immortality was never gonna come. Naturally, we also get Elena coming in at this point to help, along with those three jewels, the last just picked up. Not to mention more and more exposition dumps. Poor Elena at least had an interesting backstory centered around her forbidden spell usage as well as Gilzath's stupid ambitions.

28. That mountain village arc is just stupid. I hate everything about it. The initial greeting was creepy enough, the rest of the NPCs just tell Aleth he isn't somehow the high priests son and that they created him. The tower is almost as bad, all of a sudden, our silent main swordsman is the clone of Alex, a guy who's clearly from the future. The only good thing about him is that he was a good guy anyways. So if civilization was actually destroyed and saved by Alex's use of the Orb, how the heck are we in more primitive times? I always like to ask this particular question.

29. Oh yeah, and it looks like the people of the village have fulfilled what they needed to do, which is merely to "guide Aleth to find the truth", they pretty much cease to function, and then they turn into dirt. Not stone, but dirt. It's a worse implication, honestly. Why doesn't the dirt blow away in the wind I wonder? Why do I get the dirty thought that these people have literally turned into what could actually be considered poop? Guh, this is just unbelievable.

30. Oh yeah, and we finally get an airship, only that it just so happened to be where it all began. It's not entirely clear where to advance the plot next, but apparently it's back in Hilandia, where a deus ex machina occurs just to get the Hilandia king and princess out of commission, the latter only temporarily. Not to mention the romance blossoming, the eventual takeover of Lagnus's body by Chandler, wait, Chandler? That's the main villain's name? And I thought Carltron from Secret of Evermore was a lame villain name.

31. Kaliban should have had more character to him, but alas, he's just another political figure that runs away after you defeat his mooks. But he's never even seen again afterwards.

32. Okay, it's a heartwarming reunion that eventually leads to the final act for both Bargan and Lina/Organa, but what happens afterwards. What is Claydon doing here all of a sudden if its reactor malfunctioned by Kardosa's hands? It sure wasn't there before!

33. And speaking of which, I actually found a way to completely break the game. If you park the Lindblum airship behind Nisa, meaning above it, you cannot reach it and are stuck forever between Hardos and Nisa. See, when you leave a place, you're always under it, and there's only one spot above Nisa, so by entering Nisa (also you cannot immediately reenter the Lindblum while standing in it, to my knowledge), you effectively doom yourself from completing the game.

34. Dammit, Dual Orb II, level Cassius up. I have been toting three level 70 characters due to grinding for the best weaponry and he's still around level 15 in comparison. He's completely useless to the party by this point. Even if I were to train his weapon up, what's the use?

35. This game sure has its annoying bosses, especially Organa's second fight considering how people have developed strategies for it. But there should have been strategies for Sindra too. This guy hits physically for about 3000 HP which is certainly a lot, while he also can hit everyone with spells too. The real reason he's annoying is he has a healing spell that heals him for 9999 HP, and subsequently made him the most annoying boss in the game.

36. Okay so I do beat him, and his desperate backup plan? Nuke the reactor he's next to, which is on a slow control platform above some crazy void. First of all, you're not just killing your enemies, Sindra, but also the mages that are powering the floating fortress you are trying to get into the sky. Not to mention Hardwick, Odorath, and Chandler, who are also encountered after Sindra, are in the castle as well. Nuking everyone is gonna screw up their evil plan. Cassius sacrifices himself to kill Sindra, which I don't like either, but you know what? Cassius practically saved Sindra from his own stupidity by killing him that way.

37. Yeah, would've loved a nice buildup to fighting emperor Odorath considering how he's pretty much a cool-looking bearded emperor. But not only is the endgame focused on Hardwick and Chandler more, but Odorath just HAS to act like he's not human anymore. All that buildup to fighting a big bad emperor and he turns out to be practically automated. Come on.

38. Their showmanship of the power of the floating fortress is obviously not gonna sit well politically. Yeah, let's cleanse the earth by killing every human down there and endangering the species for more evolved humans, which are obviously gonna be way worse.

39. The ending battles are at least okay in the sense, one becoming hopeless, brought to light with the utilization of the orb, and a cliche but not too terribly done wish to bring Serra back. Also Lagnus dying as himself, mumbling as if he was still in the openings of the game.

40. Well, I'm not a fan of the epilogue. How did Bargan and Lina/Organa survive their cave-in? When exactly did Aleth and Serra decide not only to fall in love, but be the new king and queen? Where's the love between Saladin and Karina, and the subsequent rebuilding of Hardos and Hilandia? Sure, at least some characters are happy, but unanswered questions are unanswered questions.

And that pretty much summarizes why Dual Orb II is not a good game. I think #36 is my favorite marker here, considering how much I thought it would just really make the whole plot feel so much worse.