Cosmic Fantasy 2 (TurboGrafx-CD) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
199A playthrough of Working Designs' 1992 role-playing game for the TurboGrafx CD, Cosmic Fantasy 2.
This video shows the entire game from beginning to end.
You can find a compilation of all of the game's cutscenes here: https://youtu.be/6w2pibsBXf8
Cosmic Fantasy 2 is a traditional 2D JRPG that was originally released by Nippon Telenet for the PC Engine CD-ROM² system in 1991, and its American release the following year was the first CD-based localization ever to be done by Working Designs, the firm best known for translating games like Lunar, Alundra, and Elemental Gearbolt... and generally filling them with awkwardly shoe-horned in pop-culture references. Cosmic Fantasy 2 is also notable for being the only game in the series to ever be officially released in English even though there were four full games and a few spin-off titles released in Japan between 1990 and 1994.
The game follows the story of Van, a local villager kid that finds his village attacked and his childhood sweetheart Laura (the princess of Idea in hiding) abducted by Galam, the ultimate evil guy who wants to exploit Laura's powers by making her marry him. It's nothing too revolutionary at the beginning, but the story does take some cool turns throughout - especially when you are about halfway through the game and the game throws a real "shake-up" moment at you. I won't give it away here, but let's just say that for as formulaic as the game appears to be, it does have some tricks up its sleeve.
The gameplay isn't one of them though. This is as simple as JRPGs can get. You wander from town to town raising experience and gold with turn-based battles, explore caves and castle for bad guys and treasure, and talk to everyone in sight for hints and event triggers. The fighting is pretty mundane - there are no critical hits, no missed attacks, and the real kicker: enemies cannot do anything but use a standard attack. They can't cast magic, they can't heal, and they can't inflict status ailments, which hilariously renders a large number of the game's healing items utterly useless. The quest is lengthy, though, and the battles do go by quickly and are rarely difficult enough to wipe you out if you keep yourself reasonably well leveled and equipped.
Cosmic Fantasy 2's biggest selling point was its graphics and sound. Granted, it's a CD System 2.0 game so the world graphics are bland and repetitive, but the battles feature some really cool enemy designs, and the cinematic cutscenes were absolutely top-notch. For 1991, the art style and the limited animation really made the game come alive in a way that hadn't really been seen before in RPGs - some of those character designs are absolutely gorgeous, and the even though the acting was super-hokey (and clearly low-budget compared to the likes of Ys), the novelty it brought to the table, along with the Redbook soundtrack (which was great but entirely too repetitive) made Cosmic Fantasy 2 a real win for RPG fans. It reviewed reasonably well when it came out, and get this - EGM actually voted it RPG of the year. Anybody else remember that issue?
While Cosmic Fantasy 2 never had the chops to directly compete with Phantasy Star 2 or Final Fantasy II, it is a fun, short, and fairly easy RPG to play through. If you've been looking for an RPG that's over in under 15 hours but has enough meat to keep itself entertaining for that long, you'll most likely enjoy this one.
(I really hated the dialogue font with a passion though. Why is it so pixelly and gross looking?)
And really, those cutscenes alone are worth playing the game to see. Just imagine what this looked like to players back in 1992!
_
No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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