Worth Playing for JRPG lovers with a high tolerance for large amounts of text.
Although certainly playable, Legend of Heroes II seems to have lost something in translation to the English language. As the story has its charming moments, it also seems rather quaint and ham fisted. In parts of the game there is a fair amount of grammatical errors as well which can cause confusion. Personally I think the story could have used a once over by Michael Moorcock due to his ability to put more action on a single page of text than any other author I know of.
Graphics are quite nice. They are a mix of 2D sprites on a 3D background and work well on the PSP. The 3D environments are especially nice and pleasing on the eyes. The enemies you fight, however, could have been much more interesting in appearance and all but the final boss seem to come in only 2 sizes, short and tall. There also is a fair amount of pallet swapping as well which is reminiscent of early JRPGs.
Battles are turn based and for the most part avoidable. They occur when a coming into contact with a monster on the worldmap and even then I don't think I ever failed to flee a battle I did not want to fight.
The battles involve picking targets based on the range of whichever action you wish to take. Using a melee attack usually has more range than spells and some spells have an area of effect. Combat starts out very simple and eventually gets a bit more tactical. The battles for the most part are fairly easy, but things can become more difficult when fewer than the maximum 4 members are in the party.
There are a great number of characters in the game and most of them do not stay with the party for very long. The main two characters Jurio and Chris always seem to lag behind in levels behind the guest characters. This usually isn't too much of a problem however, because the amount of experience a character gains from battles is greater at lower levels that at higher ones allowing characters to catch up to each other; This also deters grinding and makes it so you can keep up with the monsters even without fighting too many fights.
The game is very linear and the puzzles start out extremely straightforward at the beginning and get gradually more complex later on until you get to the final labyrinth. Even that is not punishingly hard, but is much more complex than what is seen in the rest of the game.
All in all, I found Legend of Heroes II to be mildly entertaining and at times charming. The game is best digested in small chunks in order to keep it from getting monotonous, but the linear styling makes it easy to pick up where you left off even after extended periods of non-play. It did not make me want to go out and play another Legend of Heroes game right away, but down the road I can see myself trying out another in the series.