Despite my rough time with the first game in the series, I was nonetheless curious to see if its sequel fixed anything. Given what a boilerplate shameless mechanical clone of Dragon Quest the first game was, I basically just hoped that this would be a fixed up version of that. No matter how fair my expectations were, there was no way in heck I ever would’ve expected what I actually ended up getting. It took me about 13 hours to beat the Japanese version of the game on emulated hardware.

Where the first Super Famicom KGM game was based on the first Knight Gundam story, this is based on the second, so while our main character is once again the titular Knight Gundam, this is an entirely new character in an entirely new world. You play as Knight Gundam, the sole survivor of the royal house after the Zeonic Empire invaded your kingdom and slew your father King Gundam I. When the empire’s grasp finally reaches the tiny village you were secreted away to, you must take up the challenge to avenge your father and free your kingdom from the Zeonic Empire’s evil clutches. This is a much less silly game than its predecessor. Really, it feels more like a more typical JPRG that just happens to have Gundam fantasy aesthetics. While you do have some U.C. Gundam-homage characters here and there, many of the main characters that you’ll meet are only loose inspirations if not entirely original characters. It works pretty well too! It’s not exactly high art, but it succeeds in being an engaging and good story with well presented, charming characters.

Now not just the story is different, but so are the mechanics. They’re so different I don’t really know what else to compare it to, though people I’ve talked to say it sounds most similar to Chrono Cross to them. Now while there are still random battles from a first person perspective, you only actually gain money from battles, and money stops being terribly useful pretty darn fast, so for the most part, battles don’t mean all that much. Not having any experience point system, the game doesn’t even have individual character levels either, and instead you have a shared level for the whole party. Your whole party is composed of up to THIRTEEN MEMBERS (including yourself), and your party level goes up every time you recruit a new character, so there’s a lot of incentive to keep your eyes peeled for potential new recruits and to check towns at both daytime and nighttime for secrets.

Now most of your party will head off after each chapter ends, but you can get them back later on near the end of the game (and you only have one possible final party composition anyhow for plot reasons), so while you don’t often have a full party, you will have one for a fairly significant amount of time. This all makes for a very unconventional gameplay loop, and as you possibly could already tell from just how fast I beat the game, the game is well aware of that too. Knowing that your only new sources of power are finding/buying (though usually finding) new armor and finding new recruits, it doesn’t dilly-dally around throwing massive dungeons at you most of the time, and story beats move pretty quickly and are signposted quite well too. The game’s balance is also very well tuned, though the VERY hidden character to get you an extra 15 levels was something I wasn’t super happy to discover existed (after looking up a guide), given how tough a bugger the final boss is. I really loved searching for hidden characters, as they always had fun and interesting designs, and I managed to get all but one of them (I think XP).

The game’s presentation is once again really nice. As most SNES games do after ‘91, it looks much more “next gen” than its predecessor, with much more well detailed sprites and better use of colors to make some really cool looking allies and enemies (my favorite of which was the Zakutopus boss). The music is pretty good too, albeit quite generic and nothing especially memorable.

Verdict: Highly Recommended. I went into this game with expectations basically below the floor and walked away from what’s easily one of the coolest hidden gems I’ve stumbled across on the SFC. I don’t believe an English translation exists for this, but if one ever does, this is absolutely a game worth playing if you like Gundam or JRPGs, as this is easily one of my favorite surprises this year.