Cosmic Fantasy 2 (Turbografx-CD) review "This is no fantasy of mine!"

I love playing through a game like Cosmic Fantasy 2 more than I probably should. Not because it's a great game — far from it; I'd have to be in a particularly generous mood simply to call it anything more than adequate — but because this is the sort of effort that really allows my imagination to lead me to some very interesting conclusions. Such as how I determined this game was made by people who had played a few JRPGs and enjoyed the experience so much that they had to make their own…but simply didn't grasp what makes one actually work well, resulting in something that's kind of a mess.

If Nippon Telenet truly succeeded with anything on this TurboGrafx-CD game, it was the first of its three acts. At least in the game's early going, it was a bog standard genre offering that didn't really stick out in many ways, positive or negative. A bit boring to write about, perhaps, but unoffensive to get through.

Your protagonist is a young man named Van, who lives in a remote village where he engages in activities such as hunting and trying to impress his girl, Laura. One day while doing the former, the soldiers of evil wizard Galam storm the village and abduct the latter. Making Van's day worse: The leader of those lackeys defeats him effortlessly. And thus begins Van's quest to rescue the girl and defeat the villains.

A quest that's a lot like most others of its sort. Van will go to towns to buy equipment and items, meet allies who join and leave him with regularity, travel the countryside to reach dungeons, traverse those places to loot treasure chests and wash, rinse, repeat until his travels have led him to Galam's castle. The only noteworthy deviation from the tried-and-true formula revolves around the game's battle system. While Van and pals have both physical and magical attacks they can utilize in the game's many random, turn-based encounters, enemies deliver the exact same attack every single round. Each and every one of them — whether we're talking about basic slimes and spiders or climactic bosses — will attack one character per round, causing them exact same amount of damage with each strike.

Essentially, this means that every fight comes down to you being able to withstand an enemy's attack long enough to dispatch them, which you'll figure out very early into the proceedings. Before Van gets smacked around by Galam's lieutenant, he'll have to overcome a different subordinate. If you haven't beaten up on the random encounters in the area long enough to gain a couple levels, this will be quite the daunting task, as his damage output is too much to easily overcome. Put in some work, though, and you might need to use a handful of healing items, but should be able to cruise to victory since you'll know just how much damage you'll be taking every turn.

To make up for that predictability, Cosmic Fantasy 2 gives enemies first strike more often than any other game of this nature that I've played, ensuring that you'll at least take scratch damage with regularity. On the other hand, whenever characters gain a level, they'll see their health and magic restored completely. On yet another hand, after Van and pals have gained a certain number of levels, you'll realize that continued grinding is not very feasible as you won't be getting much experience from battles at this stage of the game and you'll need a lot to continue gaining strength.

But like I said, Van will reach Galam's castle, where he'll now be easily able to dispatch the lieutenant that got the best of him at the beginning of his quest. And then, he'll challenge Galam and…well, that fight doesn't go nearly as well for the lad. Seems that Laura has some sort of power that Galam is able to tap into by keeping her in his possession, making him nigh-invulnerable. One one-sided thrashing later and the evil magician, on a whim, decides to send the guy dedicated to stopping him 20 years into the future to spend the rest of his life in a world that Galam has conquered. Sure, this shows that even by the standards of evil emperors in video games, Galam is a special sort of stupid, but it does serve as a pretty good cliffhanger!

So, we jump into the future and temporarily go science fiction, controlling a young space cadet named Babette as she's scouring the galaxy for a missing cat-like alien — a journey that coincidentally leads her to Van's world. I'd say adding a second protagonist was a cool feature except for the minor detail of how this part of the game is tedious and frustrating.

The thing is, Babette isn't quite the fighter that Van is, meaning that battles will take longer to complete. Making matters worse, she'll spend much of her portion of the game working solo, which really drags things out. You'll rejoice partway through this second act of the game when, after helping a pair of sisters reclaim their town from Galam's forces, one of them joins you. This girl is a fighter on Van's level, so you'll likely cruise through the next dungeon without much trouble.

And then she'll leave Babette, saying that she needs to join the fledgling resistance movement against Galam. And then Babette will immediately jump headfirst into a mission to rescue kidnapped girls from a subordinate of Galam, apparently deciding that strength in numbers is some weird urban legend because she sure as hell never suggested to her temporary ally that they could continue pooling their resources for as long as their goals are coinciding. Bad move on her part because, as like Van, she isn't going to gain experience quickly enough to make level-grinding a good idea. Also: Your quarry provides the toughest battle in the game due to both being a tough opponent and Babette and her overall mediocrity flying solo.

Assuming you survive that confrontation, you'll revisit Van and things will quickly flow the other way. He'll meet up with Babette and another ally, you'll suddenly start getting way more experience per battle and the amount of experience it takes to gain levels barely goes up to compensate for this. Now, your party members are rapidly getting more powerful and, with the exception of a couple bosses, the enemy simply isn't able to keep pace.

Really, the only thing working for the bad guys down the stretch is the game's love of adding and subtracting party members frequently. Van and Babette will be mainstays, but the other two spots in the party revolve frequently — including two members being replaced after you've reached the final land in order to challenge Galam. The new duo won't have the great equipment that Van and Babette possess and, unless I missed something due to a rapidly growing sense of apathy, there's no way to return in order to do some shopping. Therefore, while two party members are able to withstand nearly everything, the other two will be quite vulnerable to damage. I guess if you can't figure out a proper way to provide challenge, artificially creating it in this way is a solution. A bad one, but a solution, nonetheless.

So, what to say about Cosmic Fantasy 2? As an early CD game, there are some animated cutscenes and voice acting to differentiate it from the average RPG of its time. But that's not really enough to make up for its very generic battling or how any difficulty it possesses is rooted in how characters randomly join and leave you for often-flimsy reasons. While not actively bad, this game is victimized by a few bizarre decisions. The sad thing is that i can't even be overly critical of those decisions because they're easily the most interesting aspects to discuss.

Staff review by Rob Hamilton (July 19, 2023) Rob Hamilton is the official drunken master of review writing for Honestgamers.