A strategy RPG with an interesting twist on the regular tactical battle system, and an improvement on the prequel.
This time around you get to replay previous battle areas, and I suspect they took more than a few pages out of Final Fantasy Tactics' book. Skills are learned through items this time around though (reminiscent of Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, the oft-lamented sequel to FFT), and the dual-simultaneous turn battle system needs quite a bit of adjusting to. Characters no longer have classes; they are bound only by what equipment they wear: armor generally determines movement rate, hp, and mp, so you will adjust your weapons accordingly. So, it IS possible to equip mage robes and then wield a bow, but you probably wouldn't want to do that since the stats are generally skewed in favour of the traditional setups anyway.
Other than that, Vandal Hearts 2 still boasts a fairly engaging story, and is quite long - I'm embarassed to admit that, despite replaying 3 times, I never actually got to the last few battles. See, I'm a perfectionist, and try to unlock all skills from all weapons including secret ones. As you can imagine this takes a LOT of time and effort, and Vandal Hearts 2 needs a lot of both if you want to get the best ending. Yep, multiple endings, another thing that they got right.
Unfortunately, the rough art and generally old-school appearances do nothing to help spread the love. It's a good game, a great one even, but it requires some effort to hang in there till the end. Someday I WILL finish it, however.