Many of you may remember the fiasco this past spring when Sega released the American version of Riglord Saga in the United States. Sega held a naming contest at the company headquarters and one lucky fellow won. It was named Mystaria and sold very well for about a week. Then it was recalled due to trademark infringement on TSR's Mystara name. Whats in a name anyway? Many of you may notice that many games that are ported over from Japan no longer undergo any name changes. Case in point, Baku Baku Animal. What in the world is a Baku Baku Animal? One thing is for sure - there is nothing in the USA that is trademarked under Baku Baku, let alone Baku Baku Animal so Sega's on safe ground with that one. In the past, we might have seen a name change from Baku Baku Animal to 'Animal Eats His Favorite Food' or 'Eatin' Rascals' or something silly like that. Sega has not re-released Riglord under a new name yet but things go on in Japan. Riglord Saga 2 continues the 3-D epic in grand style with rendered graphics and a host of new options and skills for your characters. The character graphics are larger than they were in Riglord 1 so there is much more of an 'in your face' effect as you wander the countryside and waterways in search of treasure, wicked ones and exotic items that will enhance your party's power. The battle system has been refined and now includes the ability to attack from different levels of terrain. You will encounter battles where your enemies are on higher or lower ground than you are while some of the beasts that you'll fight against are airborne. You'll have to accomodate for this difference in levels by adjusting your tactical offense and defense accordingly. The skill allocation has also been greatly expanded with 200 skills to enhance your characters with. In Riglord 1, your skills would only help you in terms of the range and power of your attack. This was in line with the other RPGs of its time but now gamers demand more. Riglord 2 will give you some skills that are useful but then many of them are frivolous. Your characters can now push enemies off cliffs in a sort of role playing ring-out. This was one of the useful skills in the game but not all enemies will be push-overs and you will have to fight it out old-fashioned style with hacks, slashes and magical ballistics. Another skill that was useful was the ability to imbue your attacks with an elemental force; a slash would then freeze an enemy instead of taking away hit points. Once frozen, you can split the scene and not have to fight an enemy that will only give you a little bit of experience or treasure. These new additions and innovations help to make this new release a worthy successor to Riglord Saga. Riglord 2 offers an enjoyable RPG experience which adds to an already impressive RPG line-up on the Saturn.

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