Crimson Sea 2 PS2 Review

A sci fi feel replacing ancient china and animeish characters in place of Chinese men with funny facial hair, it’s Dynasty Warriors with guns. There’s no truer description or comparison for Crimson Sea 2 than this. It’s one of these games again, get it if you are prone to stress, after all there’s no better remedy than shooting the hell out of generic space creatures, whilst letting off some steam.

Crimson Sea 2 is the sequel to the relatively well regarded Xbox original: Crimson Sea. But this time on PS2 where it’s assured a wider audience than previously. It has all the things a sequel should have in place, such as improved visuals, new combat moves and even a new playable character: Feanay, who joins Sho the hero from the original game for some monster blasting antics.

Just like the first game, you have guns available to take care of distant enemies and a sword for close combat as well as your NeoPsionics powers, which are stylish moves that allow you to destroy hordes of enemies in an instant, and time extend allows you to slow down time. The game certainly offers significantly more combat options than, say Koei’s own Dynasty Warriors series and is therefore less repetitive.

Crimson Sea 2 also offers a surprising amount of mission variety. There’s rescue missions, collect missions and of course monster blasting missions, all of which ensure that the game can be played for longer periods than similar games before boredom is to set in. However, wandering around samey bland corridors can begin to grate after a while, its just a shame that the developers didn’t opt for more varied environments for our alien shooting backdrop and for this alone the games loses a point.

Possibly of most interest to fans of the first game, that are returning for this sequel is the addition of blue haired female: Feanay as a playable character. Feanay is armed with guns and a melee weapon just like her male counterpart, which is mildly disappointing. However she does have her own unique NeoPsionic powers to wipe out the alien scum with, which alone, makes her a worthy inclusion to the Crimson Sea universe.

Crimson Sea 2 is yet another solid hackandslash title from Koei, which suffers from similar problems to Dynasty Warriors and co. Even with the fairly impressive range of moves, things can still become repetitive rather quickly, albeit in less time than most similar games. The level design is far too samey and bland for starters and the game would have benefited from having two characters with obvious differences, rather than two that mostly function the same, finally the included multiplayer mode is throwaway to say the least. Despite all these faults, Crimson Sea 2 is still a good game that fans of hackandslash should lap up.

7/10