Another galactic disappointment. Cosmic Fantasy 2.

The amount of cautious optimism I had before going into Cosmic Fantasy 2 wasn’t enough. Like I mentioned in my review for the first game, there was nowhere to go but up after the disappointment from Cosmic Fantasy. Cosmic Fantasy 2 did not go up. It didn’t even go sideways. No, it stayed in the same depths as the first game. I question if anyone at anytime found this series, a clear attempt to capitalize on the success of series’ like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, enjoyable.

Cosmic Fantasy 2 takes place on the planet of Idea. A scrappy, peppy young lad named Van lives his life worry-free in one of Idea’s tiny villages. While out hunting, he sees another village engulfed in flames. Monsters burned the village to the ground hoping to smoke out the princess of Idea. It doesn’t take long for Van to put two and two together and realize that they’re probably looking for his sweetheart, Larla. Sadly, Van’s too late. Larla is captured and Van is blasted away by powerful wizard. Van has to rally to save her. A damsel in distress plot is fine. In fact, most of Cosmic Fantasy 2’s plot is fine – this includes some time-jumps that occur partway through. The narrative takes place through multiple chapters. Each chapter will introduce new characters until the entire cast is brought together. The downside to this is that this translated version on Switch is filled with typos, errors, and mistranslations. I learned that Working Designs published their own translation years ago. I’m guessing that one was less error-filled, but filled with silly references to pop culture. So, pick your poison, I guess.

Despite my obvious misgivings and issues with Cosmic Fantasy 2, I do want to point out a few features that can be looked at as improvements from the first game. First, you can move in eight directions instead of four. Second, the music sounds a bit better. Sound effects and music variety are lacking, but they’re not as grating. Third, there’s less menu-ing when passing items and equipping gear. It’s still there, but nowhere near as tedious as it was in the first game. Fourth, there’s a lot of NPCs that come and go during Van’s journey. Their variety and capriciousness means variety. Finally, while they are less of them, the anime scenes are sharper and have better animation. Graphics outside of that are more colorful and classic, but once again, it’s the animations that takes center stage. Really, these are the best part of the game. Picking up this collection on Switch will allow you to access them at anytime.

Otherwise, this game is just as big of a pain to get through. It really comes down to one thing: dungeon exploration. Dungeons are massive, labyrinthine, and require Van and his friends to traverse them in their entirety without a place to save or a means to escape. Think of the NES/Famicom version of Final Fantasy III. The encounter rate in Cosmic Fantasy 2 is somehow worse. At its worst, there would be a random encounter every two steps. Combat options are the standard Attack, Magic, Item, Run so it’s not like getting into encounter after encounter is exciting. In other words, combat looks like every old-school RPG you’ve played, but you see more of it. And sadly, there wasn’t a good “nuke the mooks” kind of spell available until super-late in the game. This is another missed opportunity since combat time feels inflated due to imbalanced character growth. A level up with stat boosts and new magics doesn’t feel like anything special.

As a result of all this, Cosmic Fantasy 2’s length is far longer than it should be. Luckily, it didn’t make long to realize that this was just more of the same disaster exhibited from the first game. After putting the game away for good, I learned that there were additional entries in the Cosmic Fantasy series. I have zero interest in them. They can be some of the best RPGs from a bygone era ever, and I still would not care. I’m done with this series of cosmic disappointments.

Overall, 3.5/10: Kudos (again) for anime cut scenes, voice acting and some minor improvements. Otherwise, no. This is not a good RPG. Age will never be an excuse for poor translations, poor gameplay, and poor programming.