Nights of Azure 2: Bride of the New Moon

Nights of Azure made its debut last year that had us noting its lack of customization and variability, but praising its concise, straightforward, and accessible structure that doesn’t make you feel as if you owe it 100+ hours. You can check out the full review for it here. A year later, we are greeted by Nights of Azure 2 maintaining many elements seen from the original, all while introducing a brand new cast of characters and updated features.

Though Nights of Azure 2 feels more like a sidegrade than a definitive step-up at times, some of its new and revised features still allow it to feel like a genuinely new experience that fans of the genre are sure to enjoy.

Gust may be best known for their fantastic Atelier series but it's great that they're branching out to new franchises. Nights of Azure 2: Bride of the New Moon is a sequel to last year's gothic tale so let's see how haunting it is.

I enjoyed the new battle systems and all of the additional features that Gust added to Nights of Azure 2. However, it's clear that keeping the action fast and the frame rate stable were the developers biggest concerns and it shows in the forgettable environments. Thankfully, there's too many good features about Nights of Azure 2 for fans of Gust to not pick it up, while at the same time introducing new players to the developer. As for me, I'm going to hope that they continue to support this awesome action RPG series and its casual yuri story plots.

As a fan of the action RPG genre, Nights of Azure 2: Bride of the New Moon should be everything you’ve been craving after devouring the other great titles this year, but that’s probably the worst knock on the game as well, it does little to make itself stand out and call it a game you must play, or even should probably try eventually.

Nights of Azure 2: Bride of the New Moon is an action role-playing title set an unspecified number of years after the first game. Foul fiends, tainted by the blue blood of the Nightlord, still roam the land and there are rumours that a dreaded Moon Queen has appeared as the new ruler of the demons. If she isn’t sealed away quickly then the whole world will fall into an eternal sleep.

Check out PlayStation LifeStyle's Nights of Azure 2 review to find out if the sequel fares

Playing through Nights of Azure 2: Bride of the New Moon is a strange balance of joy and determination — long periods of boredom tend to surround shorter pockets of enjoyment. It’s shy of a hack-n-slash yet falls short of being a dense JRPG, and caught in the middle of the two, it fails to carve out its own identity. While it delivers good memories to its fans, it fails to open a door for newcomers properly. Nights of Azure 2 is a beautiful night that somehow only requires a passing glance.

With the help of new friends and old, Aluche will do battle with the Moon Queen to save the world and her friends! Nights of Azure 2 is an anime action RPG with an all female cast, complete with relationship building, demon collecting, and frantic combat.

Gust has been outputting games at a decent clip in the past couple of years. Whether that rate allows those titles to reach their full potential is certainly open to debate.

Frustratingly repetitive gameplay makes this a disappointing follow-up to last year's action RPG by Gust.

Compared to the original, Nights of Azure 2: Bride of the New Moon is an utter disgrace. For me, it took all the good stuff out and amplified the things that didn’t work. Performance is notably worse, and don’t get me started again about how bad the dialogue is in this cookie cutter excuse for a sequel. Even if you like this kind of titillation, this is a remarkably poor example of it. Avoid at all costs.