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Satisfying RPG with Good Battle System

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: November 01, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I love RPGs but I can't stand the turn-based battle systems. Summoner 2 combines all the great aspects of RPGs (leveling up, collecting treasure, upgrading armor and weapons) with real-time battles making it a very fun and satisfying role-playing game.

Although the story itself was a little too complex, the characters themselves are great to play. There are at least six playable characters, not counting all the beasts you can summon. They fit nicely into standard RPG roles such as archer, magic user, healer, and fighter. Although you'll find yourself favoring one, you'll inevitably play them all at one point or another.

Many battles will require you to switch characters in the middle of a battle in order to get through the fight. That really allows you to build a strategy rather than just smash buttons.

I completed all the side quests and spent about 60 in-game hours on this RPG.

Couldn't get into the game

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 2
Date: December 13, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I got this game used for $6 bucks plus tax at Electronics Boutique. My expectations weren't high, and I bought it partially based on other reviews I'd seen online.

I like RPGS and I like fighting games, so I thought for sure this would be a hit with my tastes. Instead this game manages to take the worst of both genres and combine them into annoyance and frustration. I dislike RPGS that make use of a ridiculous number of buttons and menus, and I hate the cheap-out combos in fighting games.

I didn't get too far into the game, only into the second location area. The battle on the ship was ridiculously easy, to the point where I wasn't taking much damage if any. Then on the jungle island there are these weird plant things on both sides of the path that shoot these energy balls sort of like those little enemies missiles in a shooter game. There are a lot of them, and they slaughtered me. I turned into this big Summoning demon-thing that looks intimidating, but managed to kill only one plant-thing before tons of little pollen energy missiles led to a 'game over' (for both my characters).

Can't recommend this game; it isn't as good as some PS1 RPGs. The controls are clunky and the action elements weren't fun.

Bah toe

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 8
Date: September 26, 2002
Author: Amazon User

its a ok game but theres betta games then this like FFX or even kingdom hearts

Bad sequel

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 8
Date: November 02, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I played the original three times and did every side quest. This new one I played for a couple of days and got fed up with. I just cut the CD into little pieces. Frustrating controls. I'd never have bought this for the console if it were coming out on PC but no such luck. Way too complicated in the control department if you want to make use of all the fighters abilities. I don't have time to memorize that many different combinations for that many characters. The voice acting sounds like a bad British stew and the Goddess Reborn has a big wide booty and looks really strange jumping around. I wish you could rely on a sequel to be mostly like the original. Played the battle in the Imperial Sepulchre a dozen times and still couldn't beat it. This game is meant for somebody with younger fingers than mine.

Not even worth renting.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 7
Date: May 21, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I'll admit it. I was excited to play Summoner 2 at first, it being recommended to me by my cousin. After the first time I failed the first mission, I decided that I didn't want to admit that the camera angles sucked[were bad]attempts later, i was incredibly frustrated that I had died so many times due to simply the jerky camera. This aside, the anime like graphics and unrealistic attacks, I almost felt forced. And I thought comboes made you vulnerable for a moment! The final guy on the first level with the flaming sword attacks me with a double combo and pauses so as i go into attack he unleases the third part of the combo. The game is jerky and inconsistent. Summoner fans, I beg you not to play this game, or you will be spending the next few weeks in a dark corner of your room, wondering where your game had gone.

Destined To Be Lost In The Shuffle

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 5
Date: January 31, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Would be a pretty fine game, if not for the fact that in the last year I beat Lord Of The Rings: The Third Age and Champions Of Norrath. S2 is okay, but I would start elsewhere for your RPG needs.

The set-up is your basic hack-and-slash game. Run around, pound pound pound on enemies and find items that help advance your quests. Gameplay allows you to equip characters without too much hassle and switch among characters (a necessity!) with ease.

My big hangup with gameplay were the summons. Due to the way spell points are set up, you can only summon once in a great while. But the creatures you summon aren't noticably better than just using the main characters, and they take FOREVER to conjure. Several times, I saw enemies ahead and cast my summon, only to have them dispatched by my other characters by the time the summon worked. For a game called "Summoner", this is unforgiveable.

Graphics are average, but so what? Gameplay should be the reason you choose games, not pretty pictures (with a few exceptions). If you are a fan of the hack-and-slash and haven't tried this game, I'd have to recommend either Balder's Gate title or Champions of Norrath first.

Sooo many sidequests. . .

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: August 21, 2006
Author: Amazon User

One of the things that makes Summoner 2 so interesting, so ultimately re-playable, and yet, at least the first time around, so frustrating is the truly bewildering number of sidequests (or "Optional Quests", as they're called here) you are assigned in this game. I'm a fairly straightforward gal. If someone has an assignment for me, I'm going to focus on it; or, if I can't, I'm going to wander around anxious and frustrated until I at least know exactly what I'm supposed to do and how to do it. Also, if someone asks (or tells) me to do something, I assume that they expect me to go and do it. Maybe not instantly, but with some degree of urgency. But Summoner 2 is full of sidequests which not only don't have to be finished right away, or even within game-hours of right away, but which are actually impossible to finish until your party has given up and gone several assignments and locations further into the story, at which point the solution or the person or the item you were told to find suddenly pops up out of nowhere. And, which is the kicker --you are never told which quests these are. So you never know if you're failing to finish a quest because you failed, or if you can relax and not worry about it until later. And the quests keep on piling up. There are some areas in this game where every time you talk to somebody, they have another assignment for you. I thought Maia was the Queen of Halassar --when did she become everybody's errand lady?

So it's a little confusing, and it's one of the reasons why, at only 13 hours and change on my first serious go at this game, I'm only giving it a 3 on the "fun" scale. The other reason is my relative detachment from the characters in this game. I started my PS2-playing career on Final Fantasy X, which I guess kind of spoiled me for character/story involvment (not to mention graphics, which I agree with everybody else that the characters in this game all have a very primitive, stiff and strange aspect to them, which is disappointing but doesn't bother me intensely). So far, while I'm interested in the story for the challenge that it's giving me, I don't really care so much that Maia fulfills her destiny or that Sangaril and Taurgis resolve their differences (okay, I take that back. I like Sangaril and hope that she gains acceptance somewhere by the end of this story. I just don't care what Taurgis thinks of her). But the various challenges, both in combat and through the never-ending sidequests, that this game throws at me are, so far, more than enough to keep me playing this game and wondering what comes next. And hopefully, it will eventually feel like more than a very complicated mental exercise. With monsters.

** And here's an update from several days later, now on 25 hours plus of gameplay: Okay, this game is t-r-i-p-p-y. My main character, Maia, is currently stuck in a weird parallel universe, which she entered through a portal in the Tree of Creation, where everyone is dressed in black robes and wears a mask. And they won't talk to her unless she's wearing a mask too. They've dismembered one of her companions and made a bomb out of her, which they say will blow up the whole of that universe (at least). They've brainwashed her mentor and combat instructor and have the rest of the party imprisoned in torture devices or on trial for their lives. Maia is supposed to save them all. On the plus side, I've found several items in this area that I've been looking for to complete sidequests since Gameplay Hour 2 or so. Now if I can only find a way out. . .

How could you give this game a 1?

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: December 01, 2002
Author: Amazon User

This game is great. Superb graphics that look like water colors, a great cast of characters, nice storyline that continues the one from the first one slightly, and an uber-combat system. What's there NOT to like about this game!?

A huge dissapointment

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 3 / 12
Date: November 05, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I really loved the original Summoner. It was a console RPG moving in the direction of the superior and more innovative PC RPG's. Combat innovations and a clever story line defined this game and made it, in my mind, the best console RPG ever in many ways.

Summoner 2 takes a step or two backwards. Combat became more action than thought and tactics, the very innovation that made the original so fun to play. Volition also tossed out realistic looking combat, replacing it with silly looking kiddie-anime moves; exagerated slashes, sweeps and hacking leaps.

The story is already known before you even begin playing, and the graphics are rather poor and as uninspired as the story.

Some parts of the game are good, but they are only parts. On the whole, the game was a move away from the innovations of the original. Summoner 2 had a real chance to grow up along with PC RPG's by building on its predeccesor. Instead, Volition threw out the very things that made the original so good.

Good Game With Minor Flaws 4.5 Stars.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: December 17, 2002
Author: Amazon User

this is a great rpg it has a few flaws but nothing to cry over the begining is action packed and finds you figthing for your life. Real time combat is a plus for any rpg this game has fairly good graphics {not FFX quality} but still good. the gameplay is good and the story is off the chart!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! not to brag but I am the rpg master and this almost almost topped FFX. Legaia 2 and Suikoden 3 are the only games that could top this awesome game.

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