A valiant attempt to add some spice to the over-populated SRPG Genre but boring side-quests and poor art hold it back.
Let's start with the story. LA2 tells the story of Roland, an aspiring Knight in the Kingdom of Carnava. Recently Beast Fiends (read monsters) have been more active and in greater number, and are attacking the Kingdom. It is believed to be a result of warring witches in the neighboring regions. The Shadow Frost Witch has left the Magic Association and has been doing some "evil deeds" since. Dia, Light Witch and leader of the Association sends Althea, an aspiring witch-in-training to give the Queen of Carnava a message, but is attacked by one of the Shadow Frost Witch's minions along the way. Roland accidently stumbles across Althea, and through a series of accidents and random occurences ends up joining Althea and others in a quest to stop the Shadow Frost Witch and become a Rune Knight (Knight who can use magic). The story shares a lot with many other games of its type (Fate, Teen Romance, Fan-Service, etc) but enjoyable and decently developed characters will keep you interested. One particular character, Kaph, is particularly entertaining in a perverted-stalker kind of way.
This entertaining story is severely muddled with one major problem. ART. I hope you can enjoy the animated cutscene the game gives you when you start it up because that is the only cutscene you are going to see until you beat the game. Every other cutscene is done simply by showing portraits of the two characters that are speaking and a background image (many of which are re-used over and over again). When action takes place they might shake a characters image or flash the screen white. They don't even show any kind of effort to depict anything going on screen. Example: Althea casts a fireball in one cutscene at one of your enemies. She says some magic words, the picture of her charcter flashes white and a fireball noise is made. Then the enemy picture shakes up and down and falls off the screen without changing or anything like that. They don't even show a fireball travel between the two characters! The DS is capable of full video and 3D cutcenes, and the intro movie (handrawn anime cutscene) is evidence of that. A cutcene or two throughout the game at major climax points would have been nice. Your character even kisses one(or more?!?!) of the characters in the game and they don't show this either! Come on!
On to the acutal gameplay. LA2 will feel familiar to anyone who has played an SRPG right off the bat. You can use up to 6 characters in most battles, gameplay is turnbased, and you move on a grid. Depending on your character you will be able to move anywhere from 4-6 places, and jump from 2-5. Some characters can walk on water but most have to jump across or find a bridge. Attacks are done before or after moving, with Arts forming your special attacks and magic. Range, Weapons, and Arts are different for every character and they progress entirely on their own as they level. Experience is earned for every action taken (attack, art, use item, kill enemy) with the majority of experience earned by getting killing blows. This can cause issues if one character is getting most of the killing blows while all your others are just doing the damage allowing him/her to make that blow. It is easy to end up with one high level and many low level characters if you do not pay attention to this. It is also difficult to level your healers because of this. The one character that has a somewhat interesting attack style is Roland your protagonist. He can Engage with one of the witches in play and gain her arts and an upgrade on his stats (there are six witches in total and each witch represents one of the games six stats, STR, SPD, MAG, TEC, DEF, and RES). This system allows you to adapt Roland to the situation at hand and use him more tactically then anyone else in your team. However, I found myself using Althea's engagement (STR) more than any other engagement.
The game is reasonably difficult through out. If you keep your characters balanced and well leveled, you should be able to progress to the final boss without having to do any side-quests. The missions are usually hard enough that you have to think strategically, but not so hard that you end up playing them over and over. The only part that is kind of annoying is the seemingly random reinforcements. Often cued by a certain number of enemies defeated, reinforcements will often join your enemies from a pre-specified position on the map, many times behind your team. These reinforcements can often completely ruin a strategy you had set up, and there is no way of knowing they are coming. This often feels like a cheap shot, and may result in replaying a battle you should have won.
Now about that final boss I mentioned. Without giving away any spoilers, prepare to be very dissapointed when you make it there. The game has been relatively fair and very enjoyable up to this point, with all enemies being within your range level and growing proportionately to your party. Upon arriving at the final battle you are given two tasks. Defeat form A of the enemy, then go on to a second battle and Defeat form B. Form A is your typical battle from the rest of the game and while chalenging can be completed with some effort. The second part, however, uses super attacks capable of wiping out your entire army, regenerates absurd amounts of health every turn, and can one hit KO almost everyone in your party. The only way to defeat this enemy is to load up an old save and go back to the guild and replay a whole bunch of old side quests to level your characters. Grind = NOT FUN.
About those sidequests. Most of the sidequests have little to no story to them, take you to places you have already been, fighting monsters you've already killed, and generally don't reward you with much more than some experience points. They are only useful if you need to grind, and the only time you should need to grind is to finally finish the game. Lame.
Replay value for LA2 is relatively small, the game has 2 endings, basically a good and a bad. The Good ending is the easiest one to get where as the bad ending requires a lot of effort and preplanning to achieve. Completeing the game 100% only requires you to get both of these endings in separate play throughs, and does not require you to do even a single side-quest (guess even the designers knew no one would want to play through them).
If you are looking for a decent SRPG that has loveable characters and a fun story line go ahead and pick up LA2. Just don't expect anything special. It's just another SRPG.