Castle Fantasia 2 Renewal (Castle Fantasia 2: Seima Taisen (Sacred War) Renewal) is a strategy game/H-Game fusion released by Studio e. Go on December 22, 2000, as an Updated Re-release to the original Castle Fantasia 2. It was given a Fan Translation by BTAxis.
The original version had its sprites redrawn in high res, all characters were given full voice overs, and the music was resampled to CD audio quality.
That said, the story is as follows: You are Hewie, a general in the Injellan army, and your country is run by a theocratic regime that has declared war on the nation of Rusheria, and though Hewie follows his orders (mostly) loyally, he begins to question not only the purpose of the war, but whether it's actually true the enemy is, as his superiors keep saying, Always Chaotic Evil.
It's a fairly hard Tactical RPG, but it also is an Eroge, which means that if you play your cards right, you can wind up in a romantic relationship with one of the women in the game, though it's far more concentrated on the strategy gameplay and character development by far.
Here's the character list:
- Hewie Elzard: The Hero, leader of the 7th Injellan Holy Corps and something of Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass with Obfuscating Stupidity (as far being the The Strategist is concerned). As far as straight up fighting skill, he's the prototypical Badass Normal (even his special attack involves hitting people with his sword really hard, no magic involved). He also happens to be a subversion of the Chivalrous Pervert, the second part anyway, in that he is Chivalrous, but he does actually care for women and their feelings.
- Gurou Esteban: A Bishōnen guy you won't be seeing much of, but he's is romantically involved with the leader of the 3rd Holy Corps, Seria, who gets killed via magical cannon attack. He's commander of the 4th Injellan Holy Corps.
- Ducis: Commander of the 1st Injellan Holy Corps, Hewie's best friend (and something of a Friendly Rival), who is a bit arrogant and hot-tempered, but a ultimately decent guy.
- Seria: See Gurou's entry.
- Somia Arusta: A Shinobi leader with a rumored Ax-Crazy streak. In the original game, she died, but this game gives you a chance to avert that.
- Aria Gartland: The Lancer of 7th Holy Corps, one of Hewie's lieutenants. She is follows the rulebook to the hilt, and frequently gets frustrated with her commander's laid back attitude. Not exactly a Lethal Chef, but she does suck at cooking pretty bad.
- Hannah Hamilton: Fangirl of Ducis, The Medic and White Mage of the team. She is an excellent cook (to Aria's consternation), and is somewhat immature as a counterpoint to Aria, who's serious.
- Cecile Forward: A rather haughty (but goodhearted) witch who joins your team. She has an odd fetish with wearing what looks like Cool Shades and a black lingerish top, and her Berserk Button is whenever someone calls her "lobster" (her long red hairstyle with antennae style Ahoge doesn't help). The Smart Guy / Deadpan Snarker of the team (a title so co-holds with Aria at times).
- Tia: A halberd user who joins up with your team fairly early. Despite being chronologically old enough, she acts much younger (possibly a tad slow upstairs), who ironically has to be saved from a monster attack at first (she panicked and forgot she could fight).
- Ciruela: Originally commander of the 6th Injellan Holy Corps. Once she has her unit wiped out, she joins you. She looks like a Yamato Nadeshiko, and fights with her own Blade on a Stick [a naginata].
- Renoir: Leader of a bunch of bandits, she originally captures you, but you wind up earning her trust, and she not only frees you, but joins you. She develops a Love at First Sight relationship with Hewie after he sees her naked once. Also tends to give him cute nicknames and treats him like a wife.
- Judy: A Rusherian commander with heavy Samus Is a Girl obscuring her identity at first, she proves to be a Worthy Opponent, which hammers a huge nail through the beliefs of Injella that the enemy is the "forces of evil". It's possible to wind up with her, depending on certain story events.
Tropes common to the game are:
- A Father to His Men: General Targistan, despite his hardassed demeanor, is really this, especially to Somia, who he promised to watch over on the request of her dying father
- Alliterative Name: Hannah Hamilton.
- Always Chaotic Evil: What the the Injellan high command keeps calling the other side.
- Animated Adaptation: It's 3 episodes long and covers a good deal of the game's story. However, Tia is not present for some reason. It hasn't been translated yet.
- Ax-Crazy: Somia is rumoured to be this
- Badass Normal: Hewie, Tia, Aria, Renoir are physical attack based, and can actually kick MORE ass than the magic users.
- Bifauxnen Judy, with the armor on, it's hard to tell she's a girl at all.
- Bunny-Ears Lawyer: The 7th Holy Corps in general.
- Cannot Spit It Out: Ducis, to Karawei.
- Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Hewie purposely dumbs down his intelligence to look lazy, but he's actually a remarkably cunning strategist.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Rusheria has one officer [Gayak] who kills some soldiers who were planning to rape Ciruela, who actually falls for him, and Judy believes in not sacking defenseless villages and tries to negotiate an honorable cease fire with Hewie at one point, and it later turns out that Rusheria isn't nearly half as bad as Injella's high command would love to believe.
- Honor Before Reason: Subverted. being honorable would be reasonable in this game, but try telling the antagonists Injella's high command. that.
- H Game POV Character: Hewie is a Type I.
- Idiot Ball: The Injellan army occasionally plays dodgeball with this.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: How Somia dies if you let her, via spear to the heart
- Indy Ploy: Hewie has improvised some brilliant plans at times.
- Naked First Impression: Hewie and Renoir, partially played straight. This is subverted with Aria, who you can accidentally see naked after meeting her.
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Nintendo Hard: After a point, it actually gets easier, but the beginning of the game will PUNISH you for tactical stupidity, and idiocy WILL get your team killed later. - Playing with Fire: Cecile's default magic attacks.
- Plotline Death" Somia. the original version had her die no matter what, but the renewal version allowed you to avert this.
- Porn with Plot: Very heavy on plot, with the very few porn scenes brief, mild, and tasteful, albeit unskippable.
- Sergeant Rock: General Targisten can be a real prick, but he is actually a competent soldier who unfortunately is so loyal he willingly follows some pretty stupid orders and has a blind spot to dropping the hammer on disobedience, mostly due to almost crippling A Father to His Men tendencies.
- Shout-Out: to Mobile Suit Gundam's meme of red things going three times faster at one point:
- Squishy Wizard: Cecile can dish out some awesome elemental magic, but in return, her defenses are non-existant.
- Stripperific: Cecile has a mild version of this going, with her lingerie style blouse
- Aria's outfit in the renewal version.
- Subordinate Excuse: Hoo boy, this is played totally straight for not only your hero (in all but two cases, depending on your choices), but for Ducis as well, though to be fair his was kinda unavoidable.
- The Glasses Come Off: Inverted - Cecile needs her glasses on in battle. She's pretty timid without them.
- White Mage: Hannah serves this role for he 7th Injellan Holy Corps.
- We Have Reserves: Injella, at first, to Hewie's consternation
- Villain Ball: Injella actually grabs this more than the obstensible villians at times.
