Magna Carta II

Love, hatred, elemental powers, and some mega-powerful force called the Magna Carta. That’s Softmax’s upcoming sequel in a nutshell. But making sense of those themes? That’s a whole other matter that involves Lanzheim — a continent embroiled in civil war — and a pair of characters named Zephie and Juto whose destinies somehow bind them together in an epic journey befitting a sprawling Korean-developed RPG.

As for that “II” at the end of the title, a few of you may remember the original Magna Carta (on PS2), but toss any of that knowledge aside: Zephie and Juto are brand-new characters starring in a brand-new story with no ties to the first game. Namco isn’t giving any plot spoilers just yet; instead, our first look focused more on the mechanics and details surrounding Magna Carta II’s fast-paced, multi-character–based battle system. This ain’t no turn-based yawnfest, after all: during combat, you’ll be responsible for real-time swapping between any two of your three party members. It all happens on the same field where you stumble across enemies (i.e., not on a separate screen when a fight is initiated, as in many other RPGs).

Once you get with the brawling, your main goal is to string together a long chain of attacks that results in bigger damage done to the bad guys. But there’s always some risk inherent in building up a large enough string of combos to reach this point — your character, while attacking, will constantly lose stamina.

Once their stamina is depleted, that character goes into a fatigued state and can’t attack, so you’ll have to swap to the next party member to maintain the barrage. As the second character keeps the chain going, you’ll need to make sure they don’t get fatigued, either. Juggling attacking party members so that none become fatigued can help to more quickly reset everyone’s stamina, while netting you bonus points. But push it too far, and you risk pushing your party members out of Overdrive, leaving them defenseless and unable to attack.

Sound complicated? You’re not alone — we were a bit daunted by combat at first. But as with anything, practice makes perfect, and we’re dying to get some hands-on time with Magna Carta II to try it out for ourselves.