The story, though pretty classic (boy joins the resistance) is one of the few strong points in the game since like Phantasy Star 3 or SaGa Frontier 2 it spans over several generations. Graphically the game does not shine at all, the original looked way better, heck Tactics Ogre on the Super Famicom even looked better than this. But the worst part in all of this is the artwork. If you're expecting any anime-like art then you are strongly mistaken, what you're gonna get is art which very much ressembles Suikoden's US box cover, horendous to say the least. As for those portraits you're treated to while a character is speaking; i swear KCET just walked around their offices with a Gameboy Camera in hand and took snapshots of their staffers. Let pass on the game's music altogether as i would probably end up writing a whole page on how uninspired it is.

On the gameplay side, its pretty much your classical "talk, battle, repeat" style. The only innovation KCET tried to bring to the game is the "Dual Turn" battle system, meaning that when you move your character the computer will move one of his characters at the same time via a split screen. Sounds interesting but ends up only damaging gameplay further as you often target an enemy which will move at the same time as you resulting in constant and frustrating misses. As for the class system, which was one of the original's cooler features, it has been totaly remodeled this time around and for the worst i must say. Now members of your party change class simply based upon what weapon you equip them with (sword=knight, bow=archer,etc...) which seems too simplistic and inapropriate for this type of game.

And finally, if you thought some sort of cool intro would help the game save face you're wrong again as the game will just sit there on its ugly title screen til you hit a key. All in all the game wouldn't be that bad, if we were still in 96 that is, but since then games like Kartia and the heavenly Final Fantasy Tactics make KCET's latest effort seem like a joke.

To resume it all, Vandal Hearts II has poor graphics, poor music, poor gameplay, poor design and isn't even worth the CD its printed on. After the very dissapointing Gensosuikoden 2 (too much of the same) and now this I have only one word of advice for Konami: stick to Beatmania and don't make anymore RPGs unless you're prepared to invest a lot of time and effort into them.

· · · Gemini