Asdivine Hearts 2 (Android) Review

Those stumbles are evident especially early on. The first hour of Asdivine Hearts 2 is its biggest downfall, and only the gamers who persist and venture past it will find a fairly enjoyable, if not somewhat mundane, RPG. A word of warning, though: a lot of the backstory will require you to have played the original game, though it does a good job of not entirely alienating its audience.

The first big problem is the controls. Whilst a joystick interface can be turned on, it's about as receptive as expected, having seen them before. It's also not the controller the game tries to sell players on. That distinction goes to "touch to move" controls, and they are frustrating at best. A spot must be tapped to move the character, but if there's anything between them and the destination, they will just walk into the object and stop. This acts almost like a puzzle game, as you try to manoeuvre around each room. This might be okay if it factored into the gameplay, but it's just annoying.

The other big problem in the first hour is that, in an effort to apparently continue the story of the first game, players are started off at max level. This is eventually removed when you enter another land, but it makes the first hour not only confusing, but too easy to be good. Monsters will fall to the blade with no effort, and at first it seems like you'll be overpowered the whole game. Don't fret; no one already played the game for you, but do be aware that the first hour is just too overwhelming to enjoy.

Then the game begins to get good, in that you get to explore, fighting deadly monsters along the way. Combat is very simple, just requiring selecting enemy targets and then executing commands. There are side quests to complete, including a garden that is reminiscent of the one in Plants vs. Zombies, that has players planting seeds. The rewards are exciting, but it's an odd gameplay choice.

Truth be told, Asdivine Hearts 2 is, from a gameplay perspective, just very underwhelming. There's nothing here that cannot be found in a hundred other RPGs. While things like combining attacks between party members might seem somewhat unique at first, the game really would only satisfy the itch for a good old-fashioned JRPG - which might be enough to entice fans of the genre, considering how bad the story is.

Okay, so the story's not that bad, but the characters range from unimpressive to outright annoying. The lead character, Zach, who ticks the boxes of every JRPG hero trait ever, is easily the most obnoxious. He's condescending, and his initial cohorts, Stella and Uriel, are just more of the same cliché traits everyone has come to expect from JRPGs. Other characters, like Pugsly, just feel like joke fodder, of which there is plenty.

The jokes will occasionally strike up a chuckle, but they mostly miss the mark. Of course, this will vary from person to person, but the jokes seem largely derivative of every RPG "joke book." It's really the biggest issue Asdivine Hearts 2 runs into. It just doesn't feel like anything new. Of course, the graphics, being the standard pixel art, don't look particularly interesting or unique, either. In short, Asdivine Hearts 2 isn't a bad game, but it is largely the exact same game any JRPG fan has played before.