Far from being an unforgettable title, Nights of Azure managed to make people talk and to carve out a niche of admirers, thanks to some peculiar characteristics that distinguished him from many other JRPGs: first of all, the splendid artistic direction,
both at visual level both musical, but also the delicate love story of the two protagonists. Gust – company also known and above all for the Atelier and Ar tonelico series – would have had to adjust the shot on different critical points,
and in a certain sense he did it, but not completely, and under other points of view he took several steps back .Nights of Azure 2 comes out in a complicated period for our country (in Japan it is available since last August, when there was no competition this autumn) and unfortunately it was difficult to find a good reason to recommend the purchase who did not become a huge fan of the series.
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One of the problems that had Nights of Azure and that Gust has clumsily tried to solve in this sequel was the story and, more precisely, the interaction with the cast. Arnice’s supporting actors in the prequel were more or less little specimens that affected the main mission of the protagonist: to save his beloved Lilysse, destined to be sacrificed to placate the wrath of the Nightlord, a demonic creature who had put on his knees an alternative version of our nineteenth century.
Nights of Azure 2 is set in an unspecified period but following the events of the first chapter, so much so that Arnice also returns in this episode, albeit very different from how we knew it.Along with her, the new protagonist Aluche is joined by some characters that Gust has characterized very well, such as the murderess Veruschka, the mysterious
Dr. Camilla and the nice chocolate Elenor. Aluche intends to find a way to stop his beloved Liliana from being sacrificed to the Moon Queen, a demon that … a moment. But it is the same plot of the previous episode!
Nights of Azure 2, in fact, does not differ much from the plot of the prequel, proposing almost the same narrative plot with the addition of a kind of sentimental triangle formed by Aluche, Liliana and the combative Ruenheid, a childhood friend of both who, having discovered the machinations of the Curia, decided to join the Order of Lourdes. In this second Nights of Azure, as you can guess,
Gust badly pushed the accelerator on the “yuri” themes – a Japanese word that expresses the homosexual relationship between women and girls – and in a sense has ruined one of the best features of the previous episode:in the first Nights of Azure, the link between
Arnice and Lilysette was implicit and told with a delicacy that relied on the intelligence of the player, but in this episode the developer has put aside any subtlety and the result is that, contrary to what one can think, it is not clear what the relationship between the three friends is.
The decision to implement a thermal spring, in the hub called Hotel Eterna, whose usefulness is basically to show the protagonists in a bathing suit, emphasizes quite clearly the intentions of Gust, and it is a shame because Nights of Azure stood out from many Japanese titles because of the original and detached way in which he represented his heroines.
