A group of men in gear looking like they pulled it from the trash sit around a fire. One of them is strumming a guitar, a wistful yet melancholic tune that attempts to push back against the corrosive air surrounding you all. Others are smoking cigarettes, drinking vodka, and telling each other jokes. "Do you know what happened to the stalker that didn't drink or smoke?", asks an older man.
"What?", replies the younger.
"They died of radiation poisoning." He takes a sip of his vodka.

Come for the weird lore and bandit memes, stay for the atmosphere.

While still a solid time, it's a bit overlong and overcomplicated compared to the first game. Why do you need to get True Jedi in both story mode and free play in each level to get 100% instead of just once? Why are the stages twice as lengthy now as they were before? It just feels kind of unnecessary to me. Maybe it was an attempt to ramp up the challenge, but there's still no major setback for dying a bunch of times and lives are still infinite, so it ends up feeling more like unneeded padding. The only major improvement I can think of here is the flying stages.

Either way, I did enjoy myself. It took me a lot longer to finish than the first game, but I enjoyed myself nonetheless. Got lots of laughs out of the dumb humor, especially making Darth Vader drive around in those dinky vans and John Deere tractors that occasionally show up. I probably would have gotten the most out of both games if I had just played The Complete Saga, but I think I'm beat for now with these games (at least after I get all the minikits here) so it'll have to wait.

I'm surprised I ended up enjoying the first game more, seeing as those are based around the prequels. It's a very common and very boring opinion, sure, but Episode I and II are damn boring. I'm surprised but grateful that the game managed to twist them into something so fun and engaging.

Originally designed for the Sharp X68000 as somewhat of a Ys clone, the SNES port of Lagoon ditches the bump combat in favor of just mapping each swing to one button press. The game isn't rebalanced in any capacity to accomodate for this, and the sword you carry hardly extends out of your own hitbox at all, and so this change fucks up the entire rhythm and balance of everything going on to a completely absurd degree. It becomes insanely difficult and excruciating in this "fake" kind of way where it shouldn't be as bad as it is. The entire game is only about 5-6 hours long, but you will not get used to your wet noodle (according to Terri) of a sword even as it draws to a close. It is fucking inconsolable. It's too mediocre in its other suits to make up for the gameplay failures.

I would replay it before replaying Drakkhen, though. Somehow, it's not the worst of the console's launch year RPGs. No idea why you'd play either over Final Fantasy IV, though.