3RRDC Last Blade2

Some more good old fashioned snk fighting mayhem reaches the
American dreamcast. But this is no king of fighters. This is a weapons
based fighter set in ancient Japan, 1864. Samurai most bring honor to
their clan, or die trying. The second snk port from agetec in the states
"The Last Blade 2: Heart of the Samuai", this one probably caused the
most controversy. But was it agetec's fault? And even with some
startling omissions, is this game still worth playing? Those answers
can be found at the edge of the blade.

The game's story is a little confusing for those of us who never played
the original. But apparently, the master of a clan of good guys from the
last game, has gone evil and now you gotta stop him. Everyone has
their own reasons to put an end to this man but sometimes it's not
clear. The translation is, well, laughable. Witness the story unfold with
catch phrases like "bubble butt", "If we go on your hamburger", and
my favorite "You silly fop". The serious tone of the game is hampered
by snk's sometimes goofy translation. I have to wonder why they
chose to put such silly lines into the game. 16 characters and 5 secret
ones round out the cast. A nice size, and some of the characters are
actually really cool and interesting. My personal favorite is Zantetsu, a
knife wielding assassin. Some characters seem out of place like Akari
Ichijo, a little girl who has some sort of magical creature. Honestly a
little kid is gonna go up against Mukoro, a man who is severely burned,
and I think may be dead. All the characters have a short ending of
course with one character having two. More on endings and story later
near the end.

It's an snk 2D fighter so you know it's gonna play real good. The
control stick is not used, as you have to use the d-pad (fine by me). You
have 3 basic techniques. Kick, weak slash, and strong slash. Along
with your mandatory special move called here the "Esoteric
technique". But to keep things fresh, we also can use the y button to
repel and counter attacks. This takes a little while to master but will
become essential in intense fights. You'll also find some snk dashing
and the super secret slice attack to round out the moves. To do that
you gotta fill your power gauge. Now to keep things even more
interesting each character has 3 different sword types. Power, the
attack power of your character goes up. You can also link moves to
your super secret slice attack. By choosing speed you will be faster
and can combine more attacks for faster gameplay. You can now do
"Furious the Fandango secret slices" which most be a fancy name for
a special attack exclusive to this mode. Finally there is EX mode. This
is a mix of power and speed. Each mode changes the color of your
characters sprites.

So despite odd names so far so good. What do the modes look like?
You get story mode, vs mode, time attack, and training. Bonus modes
are an art gallery with a ton of images from the last blade series and
demo viewer which lets you rewatch all the cut scenes in the game.
Very nice addition. In options you can change to hide your life bar in
mask mode. A cool addition that keeps fights intense.

Now for the sound. This is where the game starts to win some battles
and lose some. The music played in the levels is fantastic. They are all
very dramatic and especially the last 3 levels, very very good. Kind of
an epic score like soul calibur. But not all stages have music. Instead
you get to hear the trees rustle and flames burn. This is kinda cool and
I get that it's trying to be dramatic, but would a few more music tracks
be too much to ask for? Characters all speak in Japanese and sound
good. But I noticed that in fast and intense battles some of their sound
effects were delayed. Example: I slashed a guy. Now he should scream
but instead it happens a few seconds later than it should, while he is
already saying his next attack or grunt, and it sounds odd. This will
only happen when a bunch of different screams and such will load in
those intense battles.

I love 2D and this game gives me some good 2d loving. While not snk's
best 2d work, it does look better than King of fighters 98. On par with
'99. Characters look good, but are a little jaggy. The backgrounds are
another mixed bag. The first stage does not look good, the second
stage looks great, the fire stage looks good, the forest is boring
looking, and the final levels are amazing with the aid of the music. The
flames in the burning wadayama level look spectacular.

By now your thinking, well hey this don't sound half bad. True if it
wasn't nearly half gone. Huh? In the American release, a lot of stuff
was taken out. First the blood. When you slice a person they will bleed.
In last blade 2 they release milk. The blood has been recolored white
with no codes to change it to red. This is both stupid and flat out sad.
Each character has also lost their special finishing attack. And for the
character of Hibiki who most kill the final boss with this special
finishing blow to get a second ending it is sad, because if you can't do
the attack you don't get the ending so you can't see it. Speaking of
endings, did you know in the Japanese release you could watch all the
last blade 1 endings? Might have helped me understand the storyline
more. Oh yeah also in the import there was a card game you could play
to unlock more pictures for the art gallery. Guess you'll never play the
game, or see those pics. Add all of this with a downright stupid
translation and you've just pissed off a legion of snk fans.

But hey don't blame it on agetec! They said that they merely ported
over what snk gave to them. Shame on snk, probably one of the triple A
companies amongst hard core gamers, to give us such a shoddy port.
Did the blood make the game? No, but bleeding white is silly and oh so
mortal kombat on snes. Don't you already have enough attacks
already without the finishing blows? Maybe, but removing attacks
because they are too violent is also silly. Was snk worried about
getting an M rating on this? Would anyone really have gave a damn if it
was rated M? This was released near the end of dreamcast's life with
virtually no advertising. I don't expect the casual gamer to even take
interest in the game, or even know what last blade or snk is. So agetec
says blame snk and they promised not to release edited snk games
again for dreamcast owners. But shouldn't we have just been grateful
then when at the time of it's release dreamcast was on it's last leg and
snk was (then) dead and gone? You be the judge. Oh yeah doesn't it
piss you off that on the cover of this game the main character Kaede
has blood on his arm. Red blood.

But in the end can the edits and removals keep this game down?
Answer, no. It still is a fun 2D fighter, that still plays very well, sounds
good, and for the most part looks good. I'm sure hard core last blade
fans would probably shun this release and go back to their neos, but
for the rest of us, it will do. Silly quotes, milk, and all.

Note: the scores for this game would have been much better for the
original version (or the final version on import dc which I guess has
even more stuff). Add 10 to everything if you want those scores.

Review by: Orochi Sonic