It has some shortcomings in comparison to modern games, but if you can overlook its quirks and are in the market for a simple dungeon grind with a colorful world, basic story, a focus on RPG elements, and some humor thrown in for good measure, then Zwei: AA is a worthwhile $20.
Zwei: The Arges Adventure (hereafter referred to as Zwei AA) is a game that lies outside of my frame of reference. After doing a quick Google search I found out a few key pieces of background info: It’s a JRPG from 2001 from a company called Nihon Falcom that recently made its way over to the states through a group called XSeed that handled the translation and localization.
Zwei: AA is a JRPG, a style of game that I hardly play. However, the other elements of the game (like the dungeon crawling sections) were more familiar to me. Either way, I aimed to give the game a fair and honest chance to win me over.
The Game takes place in the world of Granvallen on the floating island continent of Arshes. You play as either Pipiro the magic girl with no filter, or Pokkle the honorable knight who dearly loves puns. Pipiro can only cast magical spells while Pokkle uses only physical attacks. Alternating between the two characters allows for different styles of exploration in the dungeons. The two set out to retrieve six goddess statues that are stolen from the shrine near their home.
I’ll begin with the most obvious things first. In the current year the game feels dated. I don’t mean this in a “bugs and glitches” sort of way, nor am I implying that the visual elements have aged poorly; they haven’t. But there is the feeling that you are interacting with a piece of software that was made before certain common conventions that we would expect today. Menus are laid out in strange formats, there seems to be a mess of things going on in the inventory, and controls are strange. I played this both with a mouse and keyboard and a controller and I have to admit that the mouse and keyboard just seemed to be more intuitive. Either way, you may find yourself pressing the wrong buttons out of confusion in the heat of the moment as I did.
As far as the visual and audio effects go, the game looks good and sounds better. I was honestly surprised when I found out that this game was released in 2001. The art style aims for the anime look, and for the most part it succeeds. Environments are detailed and vibrant and the various dungeons of the game are diverse enough visually so as to keep the player interested in discovering the next one. Audio is plus here as well, sound effects are good, and the background music isn’t obnoxious or detracting; in fact there was apparently an option to buy the dedicated soundtrack separately at the time of release.
One of the conventions that this game doesn’t seem to follow is a sense of congruity in the art style. Visually it is pleasing, but depending on where you are in the game it can change drastically. Your character’s proportions and size changes depending on whether you are in Puck Village (the starting hub), inside a building, on the world map, or in a dungeon.
As far as story goes, there really isn’t much of one. Its typical demons versus magical- anime-humans fare with some minor tweaks thrown in for good measure. I should be clear; there isn’t anything wrong with a simple story. In fact, many of the “common” anime themes that we see repeated over and over today most likely originated in part from games like this. But if you’re expecting this game to push the envelope in terms of what is possible, you will be disappointed. The humor of the main characters is exceedingly tongue-in-cheek, but I have to admit that I laughed at many of the small jokes and bits of flavor text snuck into the game.
In terms of gameplay, it is relatively straightforward and simple. You enter various dungeons based on the level of your characters, and once inside zoom around with the ridiculous movement speed spamming the attack button; its oddly relaxing. Where its not relaxing is when enemies go flying into “upwards” after you hit them. The game handles this by enlarging the enemy sprite to make it appear as if it has been knocked upward. Its extremely disorienting, and even after playing for a while I couldn’t get used to it though “juggling” seems almost required to beat some of the tougher enemies. Enemies also drop from the sky or pop out of the ground (literally how they spawn) which is jarring and sometimes feels like a cheap shot. Further adding to the confusion is the fact that the camera is “zoomed” way in. The game accomplishes this zoom effect by making the main characters almost comically large on the screen, limiting how much of the dungeon you can actually view as the player. There are sections with puzzle solving that involve activating levers in a certain order or pressing buttons, but they’re nothing exceptional. What this adds up to is that sometimes dungeons are amazing fun to dash around and wreak havoc in, and yet other times their is so much chaos on screen that you can’t invest any emotion into the gameplay other than annoyance and reluctant acceptance.
There a few interesting twists to the gameplay that are worth mentioning. The first is that either a dog or cat can join you on your adventure to help you fight, which helps to round out your little troupe and make you feel more confident in your dungeon clearing abilities. This is further helped by the fact that whichever character you are not currently controlling will auto attack every now and then instead of sitting around uselessly; you make quite the dungeon clearing team. Furthermore, experience is only gained by eating food. Yes, you read that right. Food drops from enemies and simultaneously heals you and grants you experience. This means that when you level up is completely up to you (granted you have to have the required amount of food drops to do so). Its an interesting mechanic and one that I have never seen before. I can imagine that managing your food drops is the difference between an infinite grind and moving through the story at a decent clip since all dungeons are restricted until you reach a certain level.
Zwei: AA has a blend of unique elements that give it more personality than “just another dungeon crawler JRPG.” It has some shortcomings in comparison to modern games, but if you can overlook its quirks and are in the market for a simple dungeon grind with a colorful world, basic story, a focus on RPG elements, and some humor thrown in for good measure, then Zwei: AA is a worthwhile $20.
