Initial 2 : New Stage

The combat was decent, but the story was very boring. I will not be playing this game any further.

If you have played the first game, then this game is a massive upgrade. Everything from combat, story, level design to graphic is wayyyyyy better here. Combat feels satisfying, and the story in this one is well written too. Unlike the first game, where twintails girl just slashes everything that moves with her budget Judgement Cut, the story here is more complex, the emotional scenes are strong enough to pull some of my string. If the first protagonist is a budget Vergil, then think of this protagonist as a budget Dante. But hey, this is an indie game, so please don't come into the game expecting some Devil May Cry level of quality. That's just asking for disappointment.

It's more like an early access game. Unfinished, or at least unpolished.

The animation, the moves of the protagonist, especially those execution kills are cool. And the fast paced combat could be fun if you like just smashing buttons and watch enemy dying. But that's probably the only good part of this game.

Even though the animations are good, the VFX and sound effects are not properly timed, and some are missing. For certain skills you can hear a very loud hit sound without seeing any effect. And some of the attack effects just doesn't match their hit collision. I didn't check them one by one. But I guess about 30% are more or less wrong, both yours and enemies.

And by the way sound is really a mess, it's like they just got some raw sound assets and throw them in and call it a day. The volumes are not balanced, some are extremely loud and annoying.

Level design is as bland as possible. Just waves of enemies spawning, you kill a wave, spawns the next. You kill a few, go to next area. No branch, no gimmicks, nothing, just go through some areas and repeat the same thing.

Enemy design, well, I don't really know how they work. You can kill them very fast and even if you don't want to, you companions are so eager to "help". There's probably some melee types, some ranged types, some suicide-bomb types, and some shield types. The shield guy is a joke, he just stands still and stays behind his shield waiting for your heavy attack. You can easily pick them one by one, and ignore them when fighting other types.

Story...let's skip it. It's better not to talk about it. Well it's cliché by itself, and combined with bad level design and unpolished cutscenes it just doesn't work. I'd rather they make it as simple as possible, like Devil May Cry 1, where you just go somewhere and kill bad guys.

Last and the worst, camera. Oh god I've never thought I could get motion sickness in a 3rd person action game. The camera is just...wrong. I don't know how they made it but just...always doing some weird shit. Like whenever you move the right stick, the camera "jiggles" a little bit. Going close to a wall could make it do some strange teleport. I don't know, I've never seen anything like this.

And I could go on, but others are really tiny issues compared to above.
You know this is the 2nd title in the franchise, the dev said they really made some improvements. And here we are, still a long way to go. Instead of paying for VAs and making theme songs. I'd rather they put all the effort in action itself and really polish it to the best. What a shame.

Initial 2: New Stage takes place in the same universe as the first game, but it’s not a direct sequel, since only two bad guys from The Initial appears - Kyuya and Ryuzaki - and their role in the storyline are different. This time, the game got English dub. The voices are nice but the repeated lines during the fights get annoying fast. The story mode is longer than The Initial. The first game took me around 2.5 hours to complete. This game is a good 5 hours. The English text is… often very funny and the text warping in the boxes is off most of the time. So, if you are looking for a “perfect English” game, with a deep plot and character development, Initial 2: New Stage won’t meet that expectation. It’s rather a nice and casual hack’n’slash with two cute heroines - Belvia and Sera - plus Veritas. I think Sera’s habit of talking in the third person all the time is kind-of annoying. Anyway, I recommend it with a 50% discount, since its short.

Unfortunately the game is not that good.
The characters models look good - combat is a bit fluid (at least with the first sword) but the issues piling on made me refund the game back.

The game starts in japanese ( I think) but you can kind of trial&error your way into the options menu and switch the language. However afterwards problems come in:
- extremely jittery camera
- joypad does not recognize the Trigger buttons (XBox ONE controller used)
- Sound just goes berserk, randomly changing volume (up to a point where enemies and weapon clashes screech into your ears)

The gameplay is surprisingly quite nice - although I could not handle the issues.
To be fair - I would actually try out the next game if the developer makes another title in this genre.

+:
-nice environment and atmosphere
- nice female character



-:
- copy of Neir Automata
- very very boring fighting style, you need to press the same button more than 10000 times
- usual story, nothing new
- cannot equip more chips, use only one
- a lot a lot of repeated fighting with same enemies


I wish they make Initial 3 much much better one

If you like ''The Initial'' you will like this game too. The difference is:

-better graphics and design
-2.5 hours longer story (not much exciting though)
-Camera lock target is available (which is number 1 problem in the first game)
-Different music for each chapter (it starts awfully but gets better and epic)
-You got AI teammates that fight with you
-4 different weapons and many skill/chip builds to customize your fight style
-No need to farm money to learn combos, they all available when you find the weapons
-No difficulty level selection option (sadly the game starts on easy mode)
-Block is gone (no need since the game is very easy)
-Special Mode: Tower (Special Boss Rush mode is the real challenge in this game)

Overall all so much upgrade
but I wish the story was more interesting and wish I could chose the difficulty level.

Considering that whole game made by 5-6 people, especiall a lot of work requires for the grapgics this game worths to buy

I just wanna point out that I never really liked the first game "The Initial". But I did like some parts of the first game like the OST the sci-fi tone and liked the game's setting. Although the story of the first game and its hack and slash gameplay was kinda boring and the trash mobs were just a pain in the ass to fight.

However, "Initial 2 New stage" is overall very fun to play and its story is much better then its former installment. Its hack and slash Gameplay is 100 times more enjoyable then it too,

Music & Audio in this game is really good too, much better then the first title. Even Emi Evans sings one of songs in this game. Even has english dub if thats your thing.

Don't pay attention to the mixed reviews of this game. if you're still not sure about spending money on this game, Try it out from a external source for free, if you like the gameplay and story buy it here on steam cause its definitely worth full price imo

if you do buy it and get the japanese text on the main menu use the guide here to switch to english text:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1798113704

How does it run? well pretty good actually, I finished the game's story within 5 hours and then tried out the extra modes like its boss rush and this game's version of DMC's Bloody Palace mode.

During that time I played it on the highest settings and had a solid 60+ fps with no frame rate issues or gameplay problems whatsoever, The controls are much better then the first game too, heck you couldn't even dream of playing the first game with KB and Mouse however in this one you can and the default KB+M controls are feel great and responsive and I would say the controller would feel the same.

This game is as a whole Pretty good compared to "The initial", seriously just skip the first one and play this one instead. its far superior then the first title.

pretty good and sad storyline with great characters , soundtrack looks amazing for me , this game is really enjoyable and worth the price and I really like it

Okay so, I'm gonna be honest here. It's a pretty good game, it really is. It's literally just a love letter to Ninja Gaiden. It includes pretty much everything you have in Ninja Gaiden 2, including the special takedown attacks on wounded/weak enemies. There's is indeed an izuna drop input that will give you a nice air combo (with the default sword only, I'm not sure about the other weapons since I currently only have the default sword and the greatsword.)

All in all if you like character action games like Devil May Cry, Ninja Gaiden, etc. you'll probably enjoy this game. The movement isn't *quite* as fluid as Ninja Gaiden but all in all it's still very polished and smooth to control much to my own surprise.

So here's the only real issues. The weapons other than the default sword have about half of it's move list (you can see all the weapons moves from the start) and the english is baaaaaaaaaaaad. Don't expect to understand anything going on in the story or any of the descriptions of what moves or abilities do unless you're fluent in broken english. I know I definitely have no clue. They definitely need to find someone to translate this game properly. Other than that just know that no matter how you adjust the audio for in-game the cutscene audio will always be maxed out in all categories so don't bother touching the Master Volume slider, just change the volume in the windows volume mixer.

Honestly though, I can't stress enough that for the price this is actually a pretty decent game.

i have to say just like the first Intial game which i still own, the Intial 2 new stage is awesome and this time round has a lot more detail to the enviroments and a real indepth story as well, and your character and the NPC's that assist your character in the game can get annoying when constantly repeating insult phrases all the time, but given how good the combat in this is i tolerate it, but overall it has the hack and slash mechanics i like, and the gameplay makes me feel that i am playing Nier Automata and this other ARPG game i play on my mobile Tablet everyday called ''Darkness Rises'' it really does shares a close similarity to those two games i mentioned in the way it plays but thats a good thing, but anyway to wrap it up this game is awesome and is a must buy for any fans of ARPG Hack and Slash games, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND this game

Initial 2 takes all the good from the first game and throws it out of the window. This game feels like an unfinished tech demo and just not fun to play as an action game. It's really sad if the developer sees this as an improvement.
To make things worse, the horrible translation makes unbearably annoying characters even more irritating. If you're looking for a good hack and slash/action game, look elsewhere.

”Despite some flaws, it delivers fun experience for hack-n-slash fan.“

Story and Presentation

Gameplay and Combat

Sound

UI and Performance

Extra Contents

Verdict

The game performance isn't that good on my machine. I read the update announcements, and it seems like the devs are still focusing the performance on NVIDIA machine only. hopefully they did on AMD's too next time.
Also I don't really like the character view distance, i think that's too far. It will be great if we had an option for that.

Apart from that, the animations and soundtrack is a things that I like from this game.

When The Inital 2 was announced I was excited to see what they'll improve on from the first game.

What They Improved

• Default weapon: Good all-round weapon, has the most amount moves compared to the weapons.
  
• Greatsword: Slow, but damaging and covers a wide area.
  
• Gauntlets: Fast combos, good for hit and runs
  
[*]Bow: Good for dealing damage to the boss during their long windup attacks, compared to the gun from the last game you can evade while shooting, and do a charge attack that shoots an arrow in a straight line and damage nearby enemies as it travels.

What Wasn't Improved

Introduction

Story

Gameplay

Difficulty

Some Notes

Sum up

Conclusion

The project seems a bit too ambitious for the team size but it's one of the few indie titles that kept me playing until the end. This is another example of "Smaller AAA" that Ninja Theory was talking about. It needed about 2 or 3 more months of development and one more location.

My biggest problem is the combat doesn't have enough feedback behind it. When I get damaged it, I want it to be somewhat of a big deal. The camera gets hit stun when I land hits or when I get hit, other sounds effects lower when my character is expressing pain, and a vignette covers the corners of the screen when health gets low.

The story is odd but has heart behind it. I guess I cared enough about the characters to care about their troubles and thoughts. But it's a bit "absurd" but it has a good theme overall.

It's doesn't have the same arcade feeling as the first Initial and it isn't as difficult. Though this was a more pleasant and interesting experience.


Lastly, I have a 1070 and I'm not sure if Unity3D is the issue (as I never seen a released U3D look this good besides Re-core) but I was using like 60-70% of GPUs power at 1080p60 for PS3+ graphics quality. CPU was running quite high too (intel 7700HQ).


Overall, there were moments where I forgot I was playing an indie title and that's really awesome. The level, art, music, sound, game systems, animations and story beats all came together at moments that really gave me that AAA feeling. For a team of 9, I say congratulations on that! I hope this team keeps learning and improving so their next game is definitely one to recommend. Also, consider playing a few Action JRPGs like Shining Resonance, Kingdom Hearts, Ys VIII to get more inspiration. It may be a bit easier to focus on AJRPGs elements with your team size because good melee combat is really difficult. AJRPGs let you focus on other interesting elements like managing the teams and their abilities as well as what to cast (weaknesses and such) and when. AJRPGs generally have one combo for their attack strings and they can make a whole 30-40 hour experience. I find it a bit annoying to only have one combo but there are so many other interesting elements that I can tolerate it.

Game performance isn't good, The game puts all the rendering and load to the gpu , even if you have the latest gpu or the most optimized it will drop frames inevitably, It's ridiculous that when I checked cpu load it's 1% just for this game and gpu load is 99% , animation is good, English VA is cringy, especially the voice-over when attacking or getting hit. tho no complaints on ENVA cutscenes.

Negative for now until they fix the performance bottleneck for this game, might refund too if ever. Only buy the game to support the devs as they noted that they released it early and gave a promotional sale for funds

That's all for now.

The developers were quick to stress the quality of the character models and music and both are excellent. Graphically the game is excellent, particularly the particle effects. The combat feels fluid and the different weapon types help break the monotony of combos. StrawberryHill Music have done an excellent job creating tracks that move each scene along smoothly.

Beluvia's character model is so well crafted that it seems a shame we can't style her in different outfits, my biggest feature request would be a selection of outfits to choose from for her!

takes all the good from the first game and improves in almost every way, the game did come out badly optimized but seems to run pretty good now after many patches still fps drops from time to time but for the most part runs well now!