Castaway 2: Isle of the Titans

Developer: Likwid Games

Publisher: Armor Games

Format: PC (Browser/Adobe Flash)

Now for Castaway 2: Isle of the Titans. This is my personal favorite of the bunch. You see, Castaway, as a franchise, didn’t have much of a standard to it, being as there was only one game at the time. This became that standard. The game was completely reworked. Everything was different, from the way it worked to the art. Despite all this change in the series, it still manages to keep it’s original soul.

Lets just point out the differences. First off, its now a top down RPG instead of the 3D isometric one it was. The combat works a lot like Secret of Mana, where it lets you spam attacks, but unless you have a good amount of stamina, its not going to do much. This stamina design for combat sets a good pace, yet still allows you to keep enemies at bay while you use a potion or two.

Instead of the old village, you have a different one called Astreas Bastion, run entirely by a statue called Sigil. Sigil also runs everything else on the island, or should I say isle? Anyways, there’s all your basic stores, now run by Sigil, except the guilds where you get quests from. Sigil just stands there and hands it out as if that’s all she has and its Halloween. Another nice addition is to the nursery. There’s this really demonic looking Sigil who, if you can pay the price and give her it’s blood, bring your pet back to life.

The magic runs on mana now, and there are more magic spells available from the start. You gain magic spells via a skill tree system. You can get a spell or skill for the amount of skill points its worth, and if you have the spells lower than it. There are multiple paths you can take, and nothing stops you from trying a bit of all. There’s four offensive magic types: Fire, Ice, Lightning, and Acid. The other things you can pour skill points into are healing and the basic skills like thrusting and shield bashing. Each route has three levels, the first costing one skill point, the next costing two, and the last costing three or maybe four. For the role-playing aspect, most just choose one magic and pour the rest into healing and skills.

There’s now crafting this time around, and I’ll admit, its pretty darn extensive. You can create armors, shields, weapons, potions, and much more! There are even these unique forges that allow you to combine a specific unique miscellaneous item with a non-unique item to create a unique item, be it weapon, shield, whatever. Needless to say, this increases the value of miscellaneous objects, as well as increases the armor and weapon variety, along with all the other weapon and armor additions.

The way of progression is different this time around, actually involving bosses instead of Elemental Generators. The bosses are really just bigger versions of main enemies with different looks. They attack the same as their base monster and then unleash their babies on you. Weird, I know. These are stronger, faster, and have more health than their base counterpart, so using lots of magic and skills can be necessary.Speaking of enemies, most of them are the same, just re-stylized. There are some new, while some were taken out. There are some though, those smart ones with the magic. Some enemies have some basic magic now, and oh boy are they a pain to deal with. The eye-guys are now a common enemy too, making the one in the first game not so cool. In the end, you still have your recognizable enemies you all love or hate.

Another thing is how you’re always in control of your character. No more of that point and click thing you had in Castaway 1’s village. You’re always walking around. It all transitions smoothly as you get to directly explore all the different areas. No more going from village to area back to village to go to a new area. No more backtracking out of an area after activating the Elemental Generators. Despite this, it never feels any less of a journey.

That’s because of the art and music. The art-style is a new hand-drawn one, and I’ll admit, its cartoony look drove me away entirely at first, but I eventually warmed up to it. Want to know what pulled me into the game through? The music. The title theme is absolutely beautiful. The theme playing while out adventuring is a nice, well orchestrated tune that fits the mood very well throughout all the areas. Beautiful. Just beautiful.

So through all these changes, through a complete rework of the game, it still had the soul of its predecessor. It still didn’t fix the whole “no where to put spare items thing”, but that’s not as bad in this game because of the new inventory system. It’s a great experience, one I’d suggest playing, especially if you liked Secret of Mana or the older Legend of Zelda. It was Castaway’s second game in the franchise, so it did a little experimenting, like Legend of Zelda did with Zelda 2. Once it was all over though, Castaway 2: Isle of the Titans had become the standard, the theme of how the Castaway franchise would be.

Play Castaway II: Isle of the Titans here:

http://www.freewebarcade.com/game/castaway-2/

#castaway #gamereview