Magic Knight Rayearth 2nd: The Missing Colors

Released exclusively in Japan for the Game Boy on October 27, 1995, Magic Knight Rayearth 2nd: The Missing Colors is a dungeon crawler that offers a much better gameplay experience than the first game.

If the first game was too simple and easy, the sequel does a complete 180. This one is a real RPG, with all three girls fighting together and 3 big dungeons of around 10 floors each.

Story: A World Without Colors

The game picks up right after the previous one. After escaping the world inside the painting, the girls find themselves in a devastated area. A fairy appears and tells them that this place connects to another world, where someone has stolen the colors, and with them, the fairy folk's powers. The Magic Knights decide to travel to this other world to defeat the color thief and return the colors to the fairies, saving both worlds.

Just like its prequel, this is an original story made just for this game. This time the Mashin, the giant robots that are the key to saving Princess Emeraude, also make an appearance both in the story, and acting as the last magic each Magic Knight learns.

Gameplay: A Real RPG This Time

While the first game was made up of 3 small adventures with each girl on her own, in The Missing Colors you always control a party of all 3 girls fighting together. They even have different spells to buff and heal each other.

If you want to check what a spell does and how much MP it costs, just press Select over it.

This time, you get more of the mechanics of a real RPG, like buffs and items, and you actually have to keep an eye on your HP and MP. Honestly, I found it to be a fairly difficult game, with enemies that have different resistances, enemy parties of up to 4 monsters, and few chances to heal your party.

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There's still no way to change equipment, and stats depend only on each character's level, but I think the game does enough to feel like a full-fledged RPG, especially considering the platform it's on.

The first few battles might be confusing. First you choose which knight you want to give a command to by pressing up and down on the D-pad, and then you pick the command with left and right. Once you're happy with your choices, select "Go". Any girl you didn't give an action to will simply attack. This means that against easy enemies, you can just press "Go" and let everyone attack, which speeds those battles up a lot.

While you can heal for free on the overworld by choosing Mokona's house from the menu, inside the long dungeons your only options are items and healing magic. This makes resource management essential if you don't want to end up with no HP and no items in the middle of a dungeon, especially since you can only carry up to 9 of each healing item.

Hard Puzzles... or Not?

The dungeons are full of puzzles that require either some understanding of Japanese to read the instructions, or a good dose of trial and error. One floor in particular, with invisible walls and teleportation pods whose destination depended on the combination of 3 levers, really tested my patience. Another had me weighing boxes one by one to find out which ones were heavier, so I could split them into two groups with the same total weight.

So yes, the puzzles can demand a lot of patience... if you don't have the game manual.

Maybe knowing that a lot of players would be children, the developers included an easy way to move forward: the answers to every puzzle are in the manual!

So if a puzzle is giving you a hard time and you just want to keep playing, that option is there.

How Much Japanese Do You Need?

Just like the first game, the sequel doesn't use kanji. However, this one has a variety of items and spells, so being able to at least read hiragana and katakana will help you know exactly what you're choosing. The story itself doesn't use many difficult words, so I'd recommend it for upper beginners... as long as you check the manual for the puzzle answers. If not, I'd say you need an intermediate level to understand the instructions for each puzzle.

Conclusion

The high rate of random battles and the extremely simple plot hold the game back a little. Still, it's an undeniable improvement over the first game, and it feels like a much more complete experience for fans of the Magic Knights.