Fuga: Melodies of Steel 2 once again offers precise, challenging tactical combat and an endless barrage of emotional gut-punches. The child protagonists of the first game may have found peace at the end of their first journey, but cruel events lead them back to yet another monstrous tank they can use to battle some new enemies. As you guide them in that fight, you'll have to weigh every decision with care once more. A single misstep can still mean ruin. Maybe not at first, and maybe not until the very end of the game, but your every single action is vital if you want to help these children survive yet another ruthless war.
The children who survived the relentless battles of the first Fuga have been called to help with an investigation of the battle tank they used throughout the first game, the Taranis. This goes as poorly as possible when several of the group of friends get trapped inside the Taranis as it goes haywire. The remaining playable characters hop in the Tarascus, the enemy tank from the last game, and give chase. This leads them through a conflict that will be fraught with danger and loss, once more asking how much these children can take.
It'll likely leave you wondering how much you can endure, too, as you battle cunning enemies in your tank. Fuga: Melodies of Steel 2 has a turn-based combat system where you'll be running three separate firearms on the tank. Each gun can be piloted by up to two children, with the first kid dictating the weapon type and the second adding some sort of useful bonus. It feels exactly the same as the first game, but with some tweaks to the abilities and powers of each position that make things a little bit easier. Well, a teensy tiny bit easier.
Before I get into that, I want to talk about the general flow of combat. You have three types of firearms: cannons, grenade launchers, and machine guns. These are ordered from least accurate/highest damage to most accurate/lowest damage. Not only this, but they are color-coded, as you can delay an enemy unit's turn by shooting it with the right-colored weapon. Slowing enemy turns is crucial as you can get ripped to shreds with only a handful of mistakes, so paying attention to the color weaknesses is integral to getting anywhere.
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Screenshot by Siliconera[/caption]
With combat being as hard as it is, it's nice to have some new helpful elements. One of those came from the Judgment System in Fuga: Melodies of Steel 2. This ties into a narrative mechanic where decisions you make throughout the game will unlock abilities in combat. You can choose between Empathy or Resolution in the various decisions you make throughout the game's story, and these will reflect in certain plot moments automatically later on. They're not good or bad decisions, but more reflective of being focused and cold versus showing a strong sense of kindness and compassion. At any rate, these unlock abilities that will randomly make you take extra turns, make enemies miss, and more. Which ones you get depend on the kind of person you are throughout the game.
The game also has a Hero Mode where characters will unlock temporary special powers that last five turns. These are incredible, letting you blow through enemy armor (some enemies have armor stacks you normally have to use special powers to eliminate one by one, but this removes armor in one shot), double heal, get free attacks after using skill powers, and more. These powers become available based on each kid's mood, which you can improve during intermission moments between battles, and can also increase during the fight itself. They really feel like they turn the tide, and it adds so much excitement to a fight when the ability activates right when you need it. Better be sure you treat the kids well between battles.
Intermissions happen while you move through the various maps in the game. As you explore the world, you'll move through simple maps that have a variety of nodes. These contain battles against unknown foes (these indicate how many fights you need to survive, just not the combatants involved), healing points, items for pickup, story beats, and intermissions. During intermissions, you can carry out tasks around your tank that improve its capabilities, but you can also make the various child protagonists talk with one another. If you do certain things during these Intermissions, you will improve a given child's mood, which makes it more likely they'll activate hero mode over the next few battles.
This might sound like war is exhilarating for these kids, but it's not. Fuga: Melodies of Steel 2 can also see the children become Depressed, which takes away their ability to use special attacks until they've been spoken with during intermission scenes between fights. This can cause a huge disadvantage, and this comes from regular damage and being wounded in combat. It adds some fear to taking a hit, as you might lose more than just your health if you take a few good shots in a row. As if these fights needed any more stress for your child combatants.
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Screenshot by Siliconera[/caption]
If you played the original game, you may remember you always had a trump card: the Soul Cannon. In a game where all of your characters were young children, you could permanently kill one of them to wipe out an enemy force and win the fight. It was extremely powerful, but as children are your gunners and combatants, it comes with a high price. That and, well, you're killing a child to use the weapon, creating a staggering emotional cost to using the weapon. I was utterly incapable of using this weapon myself, but it was always there to give you that last resort if you desperately needed it.
Well, maybe that weighed on you a bit too much. As such, Fuga: Melodies of Steel 2 gives you the Managarm instead. If you fire this cannon, it will deal huge damage to your enemies, but you won't gain any experience points from the fight. Also, this cannon simply incapacitates the child you load into it, and incapacitated kids can be healed during the next intermission. You might have to play through several fights in a row before you can heal this status, so it's still a tall price. Plus, if you're not gaining experience, then your crew is that much weaker for the next fight. You really want them constantly gaining levels, getting stronger, and improving their abilities. You'll want to avoid this weapon if you can.
But can you avoid it? While I found this game a bit easier than the previous one, that isn't saying it's that much easier. Your enemies have many highly damaging abilities. If you're not constantly delaying their turns and taking them out, you can get wiped out fast. I found I would be coasting along and feeling like a genius commander, but one or two bad calls would see my health getting chewed apart. Kids would be getting injured and taken out of the fight. If you like demanding strategic combat, this game has that.
Also, if you start to screw up really bad, the Soul Cannon is still there. This time, though, it arms itself without your input. If your health gets below a certain threshold in Fuga: Melodies of Steel 2, a child will be chosen at random and loaded into the Soul Cannon. If you don't want them to die, you HAVE to finish the fight in a set number of turns before it fires. You'll win the fight, but at the permanent cost of a character if it goes off.
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Screenshot by Siliconera[/caption]
This weapon made me sick to my stomach in the first game, so I chose not to use it. Here it will be forced on you. A random child will be picked. Now, simply getting to low health is cause for alarm, as the game will just kill one of your kids and MAKE you use it if you do poorly. Watching the icon randomly selecting from your crew of kids is genuinely heartbreaking to watch, and gives you an incredible drive to keep the weapon from firing. Even so, your stomach will be churning as you watch that countdown. It's so unbelievably stressful during these moments, and as enemies get tougher, it starts to happen a lot.