Langrisser I & II Review (Nintendo Switch)

Review code provided by NIS America

Langrisser is a series that has had very few entries released outside of Japan. This remake of both Langrisser I and II is the first time the sequel has officially released in English.

A Sacred Sword

In Langrisser I you are the Prince Ledin of Baldea who is forced to flee the castle for his safety. Shortly on he finds that the Dalsis Empire is up to a greater evil and goes to stop then. While in Langrisser II (set many years later) you are the traveler Elwin, who saves a girl from being kidnapped by the Rayguard Empire that has similar motives as the villains of the first game. In both games you’re given a personality quiz that’ll give you different stat additions.

Fighters for Hire

I’ll be repeating myself a bit from my demo impressions as I wrote it best then. As far as I can tell the combat system is largely if not entirely the same in both games. These are SRPGs but they have a couple major mechanics that differentiate them from others.

For one, your commanders hire mercenaries from certain unit types before battle (this is based on the commander’s class and your budget). Any kills they make give your commander experience. Enemies themselves have led units but killing the commanding officer will make their subordinates disappear (and vice versa). So while it’s good to kill the other units for experience, you’ll also want to position yourself to cut them off at the source. One thing I like about these games is the varying enemy types such as harpies, mermen, lizardmen and more. Some have advantages in different terrain such as water, or have other weapons like how the elves are archers.

Taking Command

You can control these units the same as a commander or set their AI. So when you end your phase any unused fighters will move themselves. Your mercenary units can be set to attack, defend, charge or standby. Keeping them on attack they usually would surround their leader sometimes busting out to start a fight. While I would give a few particular commands to pick off enemies when it came to moving I’d let them do it themselves as the maps are pretty large. The only problem with that is they’d stick close which sometimes meant being further away as there’d be a wall or object obstructing them.

There is an option to auto-format what mercenaries get hired so you don’t need to plan them all out and that works well enough. Though I would usually swap out the monks, as with some exceptions they weren’t too useful to me. In the first game I would use less than the maximum units to save money.

Magic Can Wait

Usually you’ll move then attack (as attacking ends their turn) but magic has to be done first and you can’t move afterwards. At first this is quite irritating but eventually you’ll get used to positioning them as needed. Their spells are good for taking out specific enemies and their buffs help take down bosses.

The maps will often have a couple of sparkly spots which hold gold or items, usually quite far out or in a dangerous spot. Fliers are super helpful for getting these but sometimes a scenario would end before I could pick them up. I’ve had instances of ally units getting in the way of them.

Rising Through The Ranks

Your commanders earn class points at the end of battle (if they weren’t defeated) these can be spent on promotions. The path between different classes is shown so you don’t have to worry about accidentally going the wrong way and not getting the strongest class for them. Or you can ignore it entirely because there’s no way you’re grounding your best flier. As commanders level up and get promoted they’ll unlock new magic, and equippable passive skills which are stat boosts.

You’ll need to equip your commanders with the best items using the gold you earn at the end of a successful scenario or find on the map. Whenever a new commander joins your team they have nothing equipped, which can be troublesome if you just jump into the next fight.

At the start of either game you can choose to have an easy start which gives you more money and class points. If you played the demo you can get that bonus which is more of the same. In Langrisser I, I used the demo bonus and didn’t have any money trouble until the last two chapters, while in Langrisser II I decided to go without.

Tragic Tactics

Some of my comments in this section might not ring entirely true for others as I did not do every single path. In the first game I wasn’t really impressed with the seeming lack of difficulty. Most of the maps only required me to defeat the main commander, protect villagers or escape. While in the second game my choices led to me having scenarios where I was fighting an uphill (or chokepoint bridge) battle, with a raging fire or turn limits pressuring me. Scenarios with sudden reinforcements felt like they were more common in the sequel.

The original apparently had perma-death, something that was taken out entirely, meaning when I did finally start losing leaders (not until halfway through either game) there was next to no consequence. The first game only got slightly difficult in the very last quarter but not by much as I could beat some maps with only three commanders left. That was when the magic casters finally got their time to shine as using their attack buffs meant I could kill a boss within a hit or two. Meanwhile in the second game I was given tactical advice throughout something the first could have really done with.

Branches of Fate

I beat Langrisser I in less than ten hours but there are at least five different paths. There’s a couple different ways to get them all. As you can go back in the story branch with your current items, levels and equipment and go from there. With major branches taking place halfway and three quarters through. The conditions to go another way aren’t listed until you’ve finished it (most of the time) but they aren’t hard to guess. A few are simply to not let certain enemies or allies get defeated. The first one I ignored solely because I wanted the experience points.

Once you’ve beaten it there are a few different new game + options. You can keep your items, levels and equipment and start again, or play challenge mode. This challenge mode becomes harder each time you finish it making room for plenty of playthroughs and you can choose to not carry over your things. This gives you the choice of hopping backwards to diverging points or beating each route with extra difficulties piled on. These routes are an addition to the first game as there were none beforehand.

Der Langrisser

In Langrisser II you’ll be given many different choices as it was part of the original game. In many scenarios you’ll be given a tactical choice at the start which determines what the ally units do. Something I consider a welcome improvement as the AI aren’t the brightest bunch. You have the choice to join different factions which will end up with a change in commanders as your previous friends leave you. Further on you’ll be given dialogue prompts that impact the path you take. This shakes up the story way more as you have the choice to join the “bad guys” and then have to defend your reasoning. In II there are at least thirteen different paths, some of which might branch just before the last two fights.

The story in both is basic but the second game has a bit more depth. As with the various choices you get to see the morality in all sides. Vargas who might be your enemy most times is shown as the loving father of his newborn daughter in another route. The characters themselves have a lot of banter, making them feel more personable.

Ch-ch-changes

I didn’t play the originals so my knowledge of the differences is based on what I’ve found on the internet. There’s quite a lot of differences such as the addition of branching paths in the first game and overall placement and balancing. Now in combat enemies both fight at the same time meaning archers don’t have an advantage (as they could previously attack someone next to them and fight first so they might pick an enemy off without taking damage). There’s also some HP inflation and damage changes. Likely there are quality of life improvements like the shown class paths. The new game + and ability to go to past chapters are new additions.

Classical Remaster

You can choose between Classic and Remastered art, with the option to apply this to only characters or the maps as well. The character art changes only applies to main characters. Mostly the characters look similar and in some cases more or less revealing. Others look drastically different such as Leon in II. If I didn’t have to review this I would have stuck with the classic look entirely.

Sadly this does not change how any of the units look on map. Which is my main gripe with the appearance. The battle screen backgrounds are still the modern art even with classic on. It has quite a mobile game look to it yet the units are nothing like the Langrisser mobile game currently available.

You have the option to pick between the original or remastered music. Both are fine but I preferred the original versions. The soundtrack has a fair bit of electric guitar, pan flutes and that style of music. The songs will change based on either who’s fighting or in a later stage of the battle. Often I found that the enemies got the better music tracks. There is only Japanese voice acting.

Most cutscenes are have character art pop up with text even the old style has face animations. With the new remastered art some cutscenes will be represented with nice looking still images. Playing with classic on, the image either isn’t there or is blurred, presumably so they didn’t need to draw them in the older style. Playing with the classic style maps on I can see that the maps are much more detailed in the sequel. Though some stages still looked nice in the first.

Technically

I had no bugs and the because of the basic appearance the game works fine in handheld. The initial loading screen to load into your game is long but the others aren’t too bad. There are some late game spells that made the frame rate take a short dive, which was odd.

While you can auto skip battles (or manually do it) I would’ve liked the ability to skip entire enemy turns so I wouldn’t have to wait for every one of their units to move. As I spent an awful lot of time looking away from the screen. The AI isn’t great either, enemies didn’t usually make bad decisions thought it did happen on occasion. While ally groups I had to rely on were usually a burden.

Overall

The branching paths and new game + options give this game a lot more playtime that you’d think at first. Which is a good thing as skipping individual fights makes the time go a lot faster. In terms of value for time it’s fine so long as you’re interested in going for the other paths. For the cost I do find the mobile game look to be pretty sad.

Langrisser II is so much more of an improvement over the first game I wonder why they didn’t implement more changes to I in this remake. I feel like they could have cut it out and focused on giving the sequel a better look. Still, if you’re interested in some unique SRPG combat and diverging story paths this package is a decent deal.

Final Verdict: I like it