Ah, the sequel. The black sheep of the two ActRaiser games. Prepare for a bumpy ride.
The game begins with The Master, now with wings and a shield, watching over everyone from the heavens. Suddenly, Tanzra, the final boss from the previous game, shows up and attacks. The Master has a shield and a pair of wings now, and he has a couple of new moves to ward off Tanzra's offense, taking him down. But this is the icing on the cake: Tanzra's forces have struck again, forming a legion and ressurecting him. Now the legion of 13 deadly demons have been sent by Tanzra to terrorize the world.
"Again" may be a bit of a stretch, according to Wikipedia:
The storyline relation of ActRaiser 2 is not explicitly revealed; however, many plot details suggest that ActRaiser 2 may actually be a prequel to the original ActRaiser, or take place in another universe entirely. Otherwise, the given story draws concepts from the famous religious epics Paradise Lost and the Divine Comedy.
Unlike the original game, which alternately combined platform game sequences and god game sequences, ActRaiser 2 is only a platform game. It is believed that this game was made by request from Enix of America to Quintet, and that they also requested that the simulation segments be removed because players would not "get" them.
Yeah, the Sim Mode from the first game was totally as complex as Advanced Calculus. Thanks, Enix. Assholes.
The World
Once you start the game, you'll be introduced to the story. Tanzra's been resurrected by his minions, and now these minions are unleashed upon the world.
Just like last time, you have an angel that acts as an assistant, who will tell you what's going on in whatever location you're in.
You'll start out above the town of Diligence. Select it and you'll see what's going on over there.
Diligence
The town of Diligence was once a source of pride. The forest was beautiful, the air pure. But one day the people not only lost the desire to work but also to live. To find out why, you'll have to head to the town of Industen.
Industen is in the circle in the middle of the huge forest to the west. Go up to it, then select it when you see the name Industen. When you head there, you'll see that a strange cloud appears, drops rain, then disappears. But why? We'll have to head down there to find out.
Industen
You'll be in a huge forest complete with larger-than-life-size mushrooms when you enter this place.
You can now strike upwards by holding Up on the Control Pad and pressing Y to swing the sword. Sadly, crouching and swinging does not seem to give you a slightly longer range like in the last game.
You can also do some stuff in the air, too. You can double jump. To do that, press B twice.
When you double jump, you can also slow your descent on the second jump to make platforms a bit easier. Just hold Up and press B when you perform the second jump, then hold B down and move left or right. While you're gliding, you can dive downwards, slashing through enemies on the way down. To do that, Hold Down while gliding and you'll perform the dive. Press Y as you're diving and you'll be able to attack enemies on the way down. You can stop, of course, but you'll skid a little bit when you land, so be careful.
If you hold Down on the Control Pad and press Y while in mid-air, you can perform a downward stab like in Zelda II: The Adventure of Link.
You have a shield this time around, and assuming you're facing the projectiles and said projectiles hit the shield, you'll be protected from them. To do that, just stand still. You can block low just by crouching. Holding Up on the Control Pad will allow to block things dropping from above.
The enemies here are pretty easy: there are worms that come out of holes in the ground that can be stabbed with a crouching strike. Wasps will fly towards you, and flea-like men will walk back and forth, providing the perfect sword fodder.
The small columns that look like a home stereo speaker work like the statues that gave you power-ups in the first game. The first one that you'll come across contains a small orange sphere that flies around in a circle. If you pick it up, you'll get two hit points back. There are other sparkles, such as a small blue one that gives you one HP and a big orange one that gives you five.
You start out with twenty hit points and three magic points in this game, assuming your playing on Normal. (Easy starts you with five MP and five lives, and Hard starts you with two of each and gives you less time to beat the stages.) You also start with three lives. Just like the last game, you don't have all the time in the world, either. The timer at the top center of the screen shows how much time you have left.
Not long after that HP pick-up, you'll face the first boss: some sort of Venus Flytrap-like monster. Jump over it when it charges, and when it shoots a three-way shot, duck down to block the low projectile and duck the other two.
To attack it, you can either perform the diving attack after double jumping over it when it charges, or you can jump over it and stab it as it shoots fireballs. It quickly rears back before spitting fireballs, so you can easily block the shots with your shield by pressing Up on the Control Pad.
The boss is easy, but the stage isn't: even if you beat the mid-boss here, you will be sent back to the beginning of the level if and when you die. This is where the game becomes discouraging: the game does not give you checkpoints, it removes the Sim mode that helped make the first game so awesome in the first place, and it's much harder than the first ActRaiser overall.
After the mini-boss, you'll be jumping on mushroom platforms that move back and forth to cross the muddy water here, which is crawling with frogs that will leap out and try to headbutt you. If you get sent into the water here, it will hurt you quite a bit.
To get to the entrance leading into the tree, you'll have to dive down towards it. Once you land on it, any frogs that may be following you (and there will be) will be destroyed. From there, you'll have to jump your way up the tree, fighting off archers. Block their arrows with your shield and strike them three times. The first statue you see here will give you an extra magic point, but more than likely, you'll be getting more practice with your upward stab and seeing how it works. Even the tip of the sword can do damage, so utilize that range on your way.
When you reach the top, you'll face the boss: some skeletons with scythes on a cloud. This is the demon Fatigue. Fatigue will throw scythes at you, and will also command his cloud to expand and blow wind at you. You definitely don't want to touch either of them or the scythes that Fatigue throws at you.
To block the wind currents that the cloud shoots out, face away from the boss and duck down. You'll block the low shots and duck the rest.
The best way to beat the boss is with your magic: hold Y to charge up your magic. The Master will glow red, and the timer will be replaced with a symbol. That symbol will be different depending on what you're doing. Your best weapon for fighting Fatigue is with the orb, which you can use while holding Up on the Control Pad and the Y button simultaneously. Just hold Up to look up, charge it up with Y, then keep holding Up and release Y to chuck three orbs upwards and forwards. You will use one magic point for every time you use the orbs, so be careful and time your orb throws carefully so that they hit them when Fatigue is right in front of you. Fatigue's energy, which is underneath the high score, will quickly be drained and he will go down in no time.
When you beat Fatigue, you'll find out that the rainfall, which was released by the cloud that Fatigue rode on, brought on the corruption of Diligence and drained the nature of the people. Diligence is back to normal, and if you go back to Diligence, you'll find that the people there are hard at work. However, your assistant is concerned about the upper part of the river that runs near town. Your work in Diligence isn't quite over yet, for at the very north end of the river is another area, Benefic, which seems to be just as ironic as the name "Industen."
If you select any place on the map that isn't a town, you'll get another assistant that will give you a password. Get one as soon as you beat a stage and copy the password down so that you can assure your progress is saved.
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