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Slayers Royal 2: Gameplay

Event Mode

The most significant change to gameplay in Slayers Royal 2 is the enhancement of time. A full daytime cycle is now in place, which works something like real life. In a 24-hour day, you have 6 hours of morning (’©, 5:00-10:59), six hours of afternoon (’‹, 11:00-16:59), two hours of dusk (—[•û, 17:00-18:59), five hours of evening (–é, 19:00-23:59), and five hours of late-night (�[–é, 0:00-4:59). Certain stores are only open in the daytime, certain bars only open from dusk until midnight - everything varies from location to location.

They've gone and fixed the interface for Royal 2, compared to the first game. For us English-readers, all normal icons now have a word associated with them, so it's not quite so much of a burden to figure out what does what. As you can see here, there's four icons, and each opens up another submenu.

The Move icon pulls up the map - although you can also hit the 'B' button to cancel the menu and bring up the map as well if you're feeling lazy. In the map mode, you have two basic kinds of destinations - sometimes it's hard to figure out your current location, but you usually figure it out anyways. Red pins are places you haven't been, and yellow pins are places you have been. The round pins are major streets, and the triangle flags are other locations. Triangle flags can be found and accessed by going to the nearest round pin.

Which brings us to the next item - 'Action.' The Action menu pulls up different things depending on where you are, but almost always you will have the options 'Look' and 'Event.' If there's something to look at in the current area, 'Look' will tell you what it is. If there's something worth doing, 'Event' will do it. A lot of times, you have to 'look' to find new flag-locations, or you have to use 'Event' to ask someone where new ones are. You can't just walk up and find the Church of Mages, for example, without asking someone where it is first.

There are also other options which come from the 'Action' menu, in certain locations. For example, you can spend the night in the inn, or buy food in the restaurant, etc. It all depends on where you are.

At bars, there's usually two options. The first one is an all-you-can-eat bar, which fills your characters up, but it usually costs a bunch. Some all-you-can-eat bars suck, though, and Lina and Gourry complain about the food, so every so often you might want to try ordering individually from the menus. Often, these menu items are cheaper.

At inns, you get food, and you can also spend the night. You select how many time periods you want to sleep for. (See the six time periods, above.) Of course, you digest food when you sleep so you'll probably want to feed the characters again when they wake up.

Next submenu is the 'Camp' menu - which is kinda a misnomer, since you can only camp on the streets. In the 'Camp' menu are the 'rest' option, which takes you to the next period of time. (See the six time periods, above.) If you can't rest in the current location, this icon does not appear. There are also usually two other icons, 'Status' and 'Item'; Item uses one of your items, of course. 'Status' pulls up your characters' status. In this game, you have to watch your food and stamina, because if you don't, you do worse in battle. Keep Lina and Gourry fed, or they WILL complain - and make sure you get some sleep when you can. Sleeping in inns is usually best.

The last option is 'System' - here you can load and save your game, as well as do system config. In system config, most everything should be self-explanatory except two items. Comment: Word means that the text boxes show up letter-by-letter, which is easier if you're trying to follow the vocabulary, but if you're not really READING the Japanese, Comment: Line is better for showing an entire line of type at once. Mode determines how your cursor moves in battle mode. Mode 0 means that your D-pad is rotated visually 45 degrees clockwise, such that pushing up moves the cursor diagonally up and right, and right moves you diagonally down and right. Mode 1 moves your cursor the other direction so that up moves you diagonally up and left, while Mode 2 makes things really confusing, such that up moves your cursor up, which, on the battlefield, is actually a diagonal movement. Stick to mode 0, it's easier to understand.

Battle Mode

Battle in Royal 2 is more or less the same as before. The icons are pretty much the same, with the difference that AI is turned off by default, and that there IS no 'begin combat' button. Characters take turns fighting - the characters' turns are usually indicated by a number of the characters' heads. 1 indicates that a character goes next in the fighting order, for example.

The 'Move' icon lets you select 'walk' or 'don't do anything' - walk range is indicated by the blue squares. The 'attack' icon pulls up three others: 'slash', 'shove', and 'don't do anything.' The slash button makes the character run to the target and slash them with the sword, the shove button makes the character push the target one square back.

'Defense' is the next icon - it doesn't really perform an action, but it lets you select how to react when attacked. The icons are 'counterattack', 'dodge', 'parry', and 'move to another square' - I think that's the order they're in, I can't remember right now.

'Magic' comes next, and it pulls up a special spell-selection screen. Select a spell on the left, and the spell information like attack damage, Magic Point usage, hit percentage, and incantion time, show up below. Also, a neat feature is that spell effects are shown in the 'radar' to the right - players are indicated with a P, enemies with a red E, and you with a green dot.

Once you select a spell, you select your target. Most spells are single-target, but some spells (like fireballs) have a blast radius - don't stand in the blast radius. Also, some spells are line-of-sight, so if you're trying to hit a troll on the other side of Gourry, using a Flame Arrow, make sure Gourry gets out of the way before you finish casting the spell.

The next major option is 'AI' - I recommend not touching this one at all, but the sub-options are 'full mode', 'special mode', and 'off'. 'System' works same as before, with Load, Save, and Config options.

Magic effects are much better in Royal 2, but the same quirky behavior about picking up crystals after defeating enemies is still in place. Just make sure to pick up as many crystals as you can before killing the last enemy - stall if you have to, because these crystals are probably the only way to boost your characters' stats. As before, you've got STR (Strength - how much damage you can do with your blades), DEF (Defense - how much damage you can take), HIT (Hit percentage - how accurate you are), and SPD (Speed - how much you can move in a turn).

Luckily, now you don't have to figure out the confusing 'bikkuri mark' floating above your character palette. You can now move multiple times in a turn, i.e. you can walk to a location and then fire a Flare Arrow without missing a beat. The amount you can move is determined by your SPD. Also, certain spells take longer to cast than others, and if you're hit in the middle of casting a spell, you will not be able to finish it.

You can't cast magic forever - it's still based on MP (Magic Points), but usually you regenerate magic fairly quickly, unless you haven't been eating and sleeping properly (watch your Stamina and Food levels). If you run out of MP, stall by running around in circles.

One thing to watch out for now is the Mazoku. In the first game, you could kill anything with the Laguna Blade. In this game, though, the Mazoku have watched the anime, so they know how to teleport out of the way and avoid an early demise, so you probably have to wear them down with the weaker spells.

For more info on the spells, continue onwards!

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