Cosmic Fantasy 2 Review (Turbografx-CD, 1992)

At one point in time Cosmic Fantasy was a popular RPG series. You wouldn’t know that if you’re living in North America like me. For the longest time the franchise was left untranslated in Japan. There was one installment that made its way west. Working Designs, best known for being one of the most interesting publishers of their time, took a chance on the second installment. They both translated the game into English, and released it in North America. Unfortunately it came out only on the Turbografx-CD. You know, the add-on console that no one owned. In my continuing quest to play all interesting RPGs I managed to get my hands on it years ago. Now that I have finally been able to play the first Cosmic Fantasy I decided to give this one another look. So how does Cosmic Fantasy 2 stack up? It’s okay. Let’s take a look.

Cosmic Fantasy 2 is a direct continuation of the original game. This sequel takes place several years later in the same universe. You wouldn’t know it, at least in the beginning. Cosmic Fantasy 2 takes place on a planet far removed from the setting of the original game. This time we’re focusing on a planet called Idea. The protagonist this time around is a youth named Van. He lives a quiet life on Clan Island with his childhood sweetheart Laura. Life gets a whole lot more complicated for the two when a nearby village is attacked. When Van goes to investigate Laura is kidnapped by an evil Wizard for delivery to a dark entity named Galam. Our hero sets out to rescue his love, and eventually gets swept up into a plot to save the planet.

Key story sequences are told via several fully voices animated sequences. These were really impressive for their time. Sure, they use a very generic anime style and fall into several tropes, but they’re really neat. Working Designs did a great job localizing this aspect of the game. The voice acting is among the best in any early 90s title. As for the story itself… it has some issues. The animated sequences are charming yes, but the overall narrative is a bit lacking. It sounds much more interesting on paper. You have space pirates, cosmic hunters, time travel, etc. Unfortunately the dialogue is a stiff, and the plot often goes long spans of time without any advancement. Major plot revelations are often limited to a few lines of text. On the plus side you do get some significant ties in to the overarching story, and some characters even return.

With the plot out of the way let’s dig into the gameplay. Cosmic Fantasy 2 is a traditional Japanese style RPG with gameplay loops typical for the genre in the 90s. You traverse a world map from a semi-overhead view. Contained within it are towns, dungeons, caves and other points of interest. While on the world map, and within dungeons you’ll encounter enemies at random. The game has a really limited transition with a head on view of enemies that pop up, but with no special backgrounds or scenery. You don’t even get a black screen. Instead they just overlay on the map. From here you simply enter commands for each character in your party, and watch the actions be carried out as enemies strike your team. Combat does have a few unique twists. For one thing you can select the order of your party member’s actions.

I haven’t seen any other role playing game use this mechanic. It’s not very significant, but I did find some instances where having other characters perform actions first came in handy. Another thing I really like is the fact that when a character runs out of hit points you can revive them simply by using recovery items or spells. There aren’t any phoenix downs to be found here. Later boss encounters are made significantly less frustrating by this fact. Any revived character can also perform an action on the same turn they’re brought back into play. I found myself taking significantly more risks in the more challenging boss encounters simply because the barrier for bringing them back to life is so low. This changes battle strategies in some interesting ways, and I felt like I wasted less time healing because of it.

I’m thankful for these atypical features of the game because Cosmic Fantasy 2 is fairly challenging. There aren’t a lot of times I find myself forced to grind experience points even in classic RPGs, but this was one of them. Some of the dungeons are long, and especially when your party size is limited you’ll find healing items to be scarce. Gaining levels and increasing your stats has significant effects in this game. Gaining even just one level has a noticeable effect on both your attack and defenses. The sense of growth is immaculate here. The same thing goes for finding new equipment. Your life gets a whole lot easier when upgrading weapons/armor. It also gives more reason to search every nook and cranny in towns and dungeons for fear of missing new equipment tucked away in treasure chests.

The first Cosmic Fantasy was really limited when it came to characters. There were just two of them. Cosmic Fantasy 2 goes perhaps a bit overboard with this. Your party size is not only increased to four characters, but you’ll constantly have new people coming and going throughout the quest. Some of these guys only hang around until you make it to the next town. One thing I didn’t like is the fact that a few of these characters re-join at later points in the game, and neither their equipment nor their levels carry over. At one point in the quest there’s a twenty year time skip. You don’t get to hold on to any items, or gold you’ve acquired. It makes little sense to me. It means that a lot of the benefits of grinding in the early parts of the game are completely lost. This is disappointing.

I found the dungeon designs to be a bit lacking here. I was willing to give the first title a pass on this, but it seems like the developers learned very little between installments. There are almost no puzzles to speak of. Furthermore your trek through these is padded because of the number of dead ends. While exploring will net you extra treasure chests the actual items contained within them barely make it worth the effort. It isn’t until you are near the end of the game that you’ll find meaningful weapons and armor tucked away inside of them. One of the early, and especially poorly designed dungeons, actually requires you to reach the end, return to town, and then start all over with it. This section of the game is downright annoying in my opinion. I’m not sure who would think that was a good idea.

Easily the biggest problem in Cosmic Fantasy 2 however is the encounter rate. I grew up with classic RPGs, and still play them regularly. I can handle frequent battles. Cosmic Fantasy 2 goes absolutely overboard with this. While exploring dungeons it’s not uncommon for battles to start every three steps. I found myself frequently frustrated. What’s more is that many of these sections of the game have several dead ends. I had to take frequent breaks just to keep my sanity. The world map is a little better in terms of encounters, but even these become too much after just a little exploring. While traveling between towns you better have a good idea of which direction to go, because if you don’t, you’re probably going to get tired of playing this game real fast. I’m genuinely surprised Working Designs didn’t fix this issue during localization.

But wait, there’s more. The interface has some serious problems as well. The big issue is the fact that you have no indication what items do. Some are self explanatory. Case in point; healing herbs. These recover your hit points, and anyone who has played any RPG ever can figure that out on their own. Pretty soon though the game starts introducing various stones. There is almost no indication of what these actually do in your inventory. The same goes for equipment. The only way to tell if a piece of armor or weapon is better than what you have is to equip it, and then check the character status menu to compare attributes. Considering the fact that many role playing games on the NES weren’t this clunky it’s kind of forgivable. There’s no way they ran out of space for this feature; this is a CD rom after all.

Speaking of which, Cosmic Fantasy 2 is a surprisingly short game. The main quest can be completed in around twenty hours, and there’s almost no side content to speak of. Despite the questionable length there are very few story revelations as well. Considering the fact that this was one of the first RPGs released on CD it’s more than a little disappointing. Unfortunately almost all of your time here will be spent in battle because the insane encounter rate we covered earlier. The animated sequences are impressive for their time, but there isn’t nearly enough of them to fill an entire disc. Without these I’m sure the game could have easily fit on a Hucard. It just seems to me like Cosmic Fantasy 2’s length is padded, and even with the time sinks it’s a very short adventure.

Even with the aforementioned issues I still consider Cosmic Fantasy 2 to be one of the best Turbografx-CD RPGs. Sure, there isn’t a lot of competition, and this one has its fair share of problems. By the time the credits rolled on this play through I fell in love with the franchise. It just has an indescribable feel to it that I haven’t experienced in any other role playing games before. Other franchises, like Phantasy Star, did the sci-fi RPG thing better, but there’s an undeniable charm here. The battle system appears rather simplistic but by the end of the game you’ll find there’s fair depth to it. For example you don’t want to just use the strongest weapons. Sometimes the abilities with weaker offerings make it easier to take down crowds of monsters.

The graphics are kind of strange. Cosmic Fantasy 2 balances the line between 8-bit and 16-bit in terms of visuals. Many of the character sprites look a bit washed out. They are also lacking black outlines. The scenery itself is okay, but it’s clear the developers were really limited on the number of different tiles they could use. The colors are also a bit drab which is disappointing. The real kicker is the animations. Character sprites while walking around look fine enough, but battles feel far too static. You have some very basic spell animations, but these are hardly impressive even for the era in which it released. It’s a shame because the cinematics are really good. These animated sequences look great in motion, and are better even than in many Sega CD titles. The soundtrack is upgraded to mostly redbook audio which is nice. Unfortunately the compositions are boring.