The Spirit Engine 2

The Spirit Engine 2 is an In Name Only sequel to The Spirit Engine. The story begins when the three heroes (chosen from a possible cast of nine) rescue a young girl named Isabelle and her brother Elai from assasins of a cult which seemingly seeks to kill her and her brother. Before killing Elai, one claims that some great mission is almost over. Although they rescue Isabelle, nobody has any clue why they had any interest in the children. Knowing her village is too vulnerable to leave her there, they escort her to a nearby military base in hopes of leaving her under their protection. However, they are soon plunged into the heart of an even deeper, more sinister plot, with many apparent enemies and few friends. The plot inevitably links back to the children they saved, but not before growing in scale beyond their wildest dreams.

Although the plot retains no similarities or links to the first Spirit Engine, the game features a greatly-enhanced version of the first game's active-time battle system which leads to difficult, strategic battles. Like in the previous game, the player can choose one of three characters to fill each slot, with similar roles in the party, but the choice of characters in this game has a much greater effect on the plot, each having their own arc through the story and many scenes either unique to one or different for each party (including elements which depend on more than one person). Their outlooks are also far less similar than one would expect, despite leading them to the same decisions at most points.

The game is shareware; a demo containing the first two chapters is available on the author's website and the full nine chapters can be purchased for ten dollars. AND NOW IT'S FREE!

"Ferwin/Charlotte/Pyan Pau: Oooos so cute? You are!"
 * Action Girl: Ionae, Charlotte, and Grace.
 * After Combat Recovery
 * Almost Dead Guy:, who uses this to deliver one of the game's biggest Tear Jerkers.
 * Anti-Hero / Knight in Sour Armour: Kaltos.
 * Apocalyptic Log: You find one right near the end. So did the villains, but they're too impatient to translate it all..
 * Arranged Marriage: For Ferwin.
 * Artifact Title: This game does not contain the spirit from the first game, rather less the Spirit Engine, but retains the name anyways.
 * Spiritual Successor: Though it has a completely different setting, it retains the battle system of the original Spirit Engine.
 * As the Good Book Says: Mericious quotes a passage from the Bible at one point.
 * The Atoner: Enshadu most obviously, but also possibly Kaltos and Grace.
 * Aura Vision: Pyan Pau claims to have this, though we must take his word for it. Mostly it tells him there's something wrong with Ionae, in case it wasn't already obvious.
 * Battle in The Center of The Mind: Sort of. After 's brutal Hannibal Lectures in chapter 8, your characters proceed to fight.
 * Battle Theme Music: Regular encounters have their own theme that usually changes once per chapter, and every boss has a unique theme.
 * Berserk Button: Don't criticize (or patronize) Grace for her part in the Amaran war. You will regret it.
 * BGM Override: During chapter 5, the area music plays during all battles except the boss.
 * Big Damn Heroes: Clay 13, twice (though it's not until after the second time that you actually find out who he is).
 * Bishonen Line: The Final Boss goes from an enlarged version of himself, to a bizzare humanoid creature in heavy armour, then ends with a transformation back into his regular human form (albeit with an Absurdly Sharp Laser Blade).
 * Possibly justified;.
 * Blood From the Mouth:.
 * Bonus Boss: Urtat Underval, twice.
 * Boss Remix: "The Fiercest", chapter 3's miniboss battle music, is a remix of that chapter's normal battle music.
 * "Demonic Timbre", chapter 8's boss music, is also a remix of that area's background music.
 * Broken Angel:
 * Subverted.
 * Byronic Hero: Ionae.
 * Cavalry Betrayal: Though they don't want to kill you, just slow you down.
 * Character Development: And how!
 * Character Portrait: Lots. Even minor characters usually have quite a few.
 * Chekhov's Gunman:
 * Circling Birdies: Stunned creatures will have the star variant.
 * Combat Medic: Priests are your main healers, but can dish out formidable concussive and magical damage too.
 * Cool Old Guy: Denever.
 * Cool Sword: Knights.
 * Cursed With Awesome: Ionae eventually comes to view herself as having this. . However, even (or perhaps especially) after that she is acutely aware of the downsides of being a relatively-powerless human.
 * Cuteness Proximity: The tiquits in chapter 7.


 * Dark and Troubled Past: Kaltos . Charlotte . Enshadu, but it was clearly pretty gruesome.
 * The Dead Have Eyes:
 * Deadpan Snarker: Kaltos, Ionae, and Mericious.
 * Defrosting Ice King: if you also have Charlotte in your party.
 * Detached Sleeves: Ionae.
 * Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Ick Thelloth. Huge, hideous demon who can manipulate and break minds and who has been . Goes down hard.
 * Difficulty Levels
 * Harder Than Hard: Absurd mode.
 * Doesn't Like Guns: Kaltos.
 * Don't You Dare Pity Me: This, along with "...I just want to be alone...", are the last words of the Big Bad.
 * Dracula: Count Cristoff.
 * Dressing As the Enemy: The one secretive thing does all game.
 * Dumb Blonde: Charlotte, kind of.
 * Easily Forgiven:
 * The End of the Beginning
 * Eldritch Abomination: Ick Thelloth.
 * Everything Fades: Averted with monster corpses at least; they stay on-screen even after the battle is over.
 * Expressive Mask: Enshadu.
 * Expy: The hippy, peace-and-love cult making a pilgrimage to the Cathedral of Edges look identical to the evil cult from The Spirit Engine 1. Naturally, everybody and his brother assumes they're evil.
 * False Flag Operation: And boy does it work.
 * Fantastic Nuke: You'll know it when you see it. Dear lord, you'll know it when you see it.
 * Fantastic Racism: Two-sided example. Yaegera and Lereftain both think the other country is full of wretched barbarians.
 * Fantasy Gun Control: Actually averted. The technology level seems to be around the 13th to 14th century -- guns are still fairly recent inventions, and swordsmen are still around. This is actually rather problematic for knights, as the skills that they spent their lives training for are quickly becoming useless due to the advent of gunpowder.
 * The Fatalist: Mama Saga.
 * Foreshadowing: So much of it.
 * Fridge Logic / Gameplay and Story Segregation:
 * Fridge Brilliance: It initially seems very confusing why the scientific research station in Chapter 6 is in such an obscure location and why no major breakthroughs have been made by all the (admittedly kooky) scientists there. Then you realise this is
 * Glass Cannon: Musketeers, though their passive dodge skill helps a little.
 * Also 's final form. Terrible armour, but can dish out upwards of 2000 damage per attack.
 * Guest Star Party Member: At several points someone with a gun hangs around behind you to provide extra firepower. They're never as strong as the actual party members, but the extra firepower is free, so who's complaining?
 * Hair of Gold: Charlotte.
 * Hannibal Lecture: delivers one each to your characters in chapter eight via Mind Rape. Some of them are more like verbal No Holds Barred Beatdowns.
 * Human Popsicle: In an interesting variation, Sadly,
 * I Choose to Stay:
 * Idle Animation
 * Inexplicable Treasure Chests
 * Infinity+1 Element: Absolute damage, which cannot be dodged or resisted. Enemies are the only ones who can use it, too.
 * Actually one accessory will infrequently cause a small amount of this damage to an enemy, but the point still stands in general.
 * It Got Worse: Often. Very often.
 * Jerkass: Jonah, the bookseller at Longreach.
 * Karl Marx Hates Your Guts
 * Lady of War: Grace.
 * Lightning Bruiser:.
 * Load-Bearing Boss: The final boss. Though to be fair he was wrecking the place up pretty bad before you even arrived, and just got worse once he started fighting you. It's a wonder the ceiling held long enough to finish your fight.
 * Lost Technology:
 * Made of Iron: Jaques.
 * Magic From Technology and/or Magitech: However, not all the setting's magic has any relation to technology (such as the skills of the party members themselves).
 * Make My Monster Grow: 's first form is simply an increase in size.
 * Malevolent Masked Men: The Keepers.
 * Marathon Boss: The Bonus Boss, Urtat Underval. He's a Stone Wall, and heals himself when low on health. Defeating him is extremely difficult and often takes quite a while.
 * Also . His health actually decreases throughout the fight, but every attack he makes drains a sizable portion of his target's health, so if you damage him, he can just drain it back. It gets even worse once he gets low on health and uses an attack that makes him disappear for a long time and regenerate about 2000 Hit Points. Needless to say, the battle can drag on for quite a while.
 * Although effective use of the brace skill allows you to reduce the damage of his attacks, and coincidentally the strength of his healing, to such pathetic levels that his fight becomes an extremely short cakewalk.
 * The king, though, is Ick Thelloth. He doesn't have any way of healing himself except for some token extremely slow regeneration, but he reflects a percentage of all damage he receives back onto one of your party members, in a form that ignores armor and cannot be dodged or resisted. So if you try to kill him too fast you die, and just hitting him at all usually requires waiting for him to randomly select the party member you can most easily heal for his ability, launching one or two solid attacks, and healing up, by which time your window of opportunity to attack has likely closed. And he has a lot of health, and some devastating active attacks.
 * Master of Illusion: Ick Thelloth, although it's more of the characters' own imaginations by way of Mind Rape.
 * Mauve Shirt: Almost every Red Shirt becomes this due to the aversion of Nominal Importance, though in particular,.
 * Medieval Stasis:.
 * Melodrama: Ionae is fond of this, especially in her journal entries.
 * Mercy Kill: Your third party member delivers one to.
 * Mind Rape: The Rakari, and may or may not still do so when necessary for security (though the end of implies that their mind control is refined enough that they probably don't have to). This is also Ick Thelloth's modus operandi.
 * Mirror Match: The Imagination battle if you have a party of Ionae, Pyan Pau, and Denever. (Doubly so for Ionae and Enshadu, who )
 * Money Spider: Averted -- there's actually a finite amount of credits in the game, in addition to a limited number of slots for selling things, forcing you to be very careful with your purchases.
 * Mood Whiplash: Chapter 4. You've gone to bright, happy, Porto Vale, with cheery music, a festival, and an uplifting mood! Things might be making a turn for the better for once!
 * Morality Kitchen Sink: Although the good guys are obviously good guys and some of the bad guys are obviously bad guys, by the time you reach the end and have the full story it's entirely unclear whether or the  are good, evil, or neutral, and the answer to both questions may not be the same. And if you do think they're evil, that gives the "real" villains of the story quite a bit of sympathy points.
 * Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
 * Nintendo Hard: The second half of the game.
 * No Hero Discount: Averted with in the final chapter, who agrees to give you a discount, but also played straight and Lampshaded with the shopkeeper right next to him.
 * Nominal Importance: Usually averted; even minor characters and shopkeepers have unique names and sprites.
 * Also Played for Drama in that many of the Red Shirts and Cannon Fodder are given unique names and portraits, purposefully sidestepping the usual purpose of the trope.
 * And Played for Drama yet again in a specific instance:
 * Now What?: The ending leaves it intentionally unclear whether . The status quo is definitely broken, but it'll be a while before any of the characters present for the finale or the final scene know just how broken, and nobody has a clue yet what it'll be replaced with.
 * Occupiers Out of Our Country: Big part of motivation.
 * Officer and A Gentleman: Captain Hardcastle.
 * Also, Grace.
 * Oh My Gods: Since Pyan Pau is from a different country, he uses "Karvey" in place of "God".
 * Only One Name: Averted; almost everyone has a last name, and we never even learn Baliste's first name.
 * Overt Operative: He may be good at not dying and several steps ahead in information gathering, but it's hard to justify calling Jaques Zerau a good spy.
 * Plot Armour:
 * Projected Man: Darak.
 * Properly Paranoid:
 * Psychic Powers: The Rakari can read and rewrite humans' minds, though the mind-reading power doesn't seem to be always on. Ick Thelloth's got mind-attacking powers too, but seemingly much less refined.
 * Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: It depends on what characters you select, but you'll often end up with this.
 * Religion of Evil:
 * Retired Badass: Grace. Averted with Denever.
 * Reverse Mole:
 * Rhymes On a Dime: The Crone.
 * Ridiculously Human Robot: Clay 13. He even
 * Also, Darak.
 * Runaway Fiancee: Ferwin.
 * Schrodinger's Player Character
 * Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Jaques Zerau is rather...eloquent.
 * This is also deconstructed, amazingly.
 * Ionae does this too, of the melodramatic variety.
 * Sequential Boss: The final one.
 * Shapeshifter Guilt Trip: Ick Thelloth absolutely loves this trick.
 * Show Some Leg: Ionae.
 * Shut UP, Hannibal: A few characters attempt this to ...who simply redoubles his efforts and causes them to finally crack.
 * Simple Staff: Priests.
 * Slept Through the Apocalypse: A minor example, somewhat. The playable characters and survive the Fantastic Nuke midway through the game due to . They don't realize what's going on until they wake up.
 * Sliding Scale of Linearity Versus Openness: Usually a level 1. Areas are extremely linear; you can only follow one path. Chapter 7 is slightly closer to a level 2, however.
 * The Smart Guy / Only Sane Man: Denever, Enshadu, and Grace, usually.
 * Spirit Advisor: Pyan Pau's grandfather. He seems to be real, as at least once he tells the party something he shouldn't have known, but nobody else (including the audience) can see him.
 * Stab the Sky: The Swordfaith ability.
 * Starfish Aliens: The Rakari, Ick Thelloth, the cloud children... how about "everything that's not a human".
 * Stepford Snarker:
 * Stone Wall: Priests, if you use the right tactics -- chi protects them from physical damage and constantly regenerates, aurora protects them from magical damage, and the Chosen skill greatly increases resistance to ethereal. If you combine these attributes, they become nigh untouchable.
 * Also Urtat Underval. His defenses are massive, and he can also heal himself while at low health, which can make the fight drag out for quite a while.
 * Notable in that he apparently has an in-universe reputation for this; his title is "Urtat the Unmovable".
 * The Final Boss slowly progresses from Stone Wall to Glass Cannon every time it changes forms.
 * Stripperific: Ionae to an extent. Averted with every other female character.
 * Sufficiently Advanced Aliens: The Rakari, probably. Though as it turns out,.
 * Sword Plant: The Thunderstrike ability, which creates an earthquake (or something).
 * Talking Is a Free Action: Averted hard with during chapter 9.
 * Theme Naming: Shana, Shara, and Shala, Baliste's three bodyguards.
 * Timed Mission: Two of them. Unsurprisingly these compose two of the three places people will argue are the hardest in the game.
 * Token Good Teammate:, of 's group.
 * Tomboy: Marie.
 * Took a Level In Kindness: by the end of their Character Development.
 * Tsundere / Belligerent Sexual Tension:
 * Universal Poison
 * Unwitting Pawn:
 * Victory Pose
 * Villainous Breakdown: The Crone before she is fought a second time, evidenced by her dropping her Rhymes On a Dime.
 * also goes completely insane once they go into.
 * Visionary Villain:
 * Well-Intentioned Extremist: . Whether and/or  are this is intentionally left for the player to decide for themselves, but it's clear that even if they are, he went a bit overboard against them.
 * is a heroic variant.
 * Wham Episode: Chapter 5.
 * Wham Line: Minor example; "You've got plenty of time. Or rather, it has already run out."
 * Where It All Began: Almost. The game ends in Longreach, which is also the location of chapter 2.
 * Why Don't Ya Just Shoot Him: Averted with, who does not hesitate to slaughter anyone who gets in his way.
 * Wide Eyed Idealist: Pyan Pau, Ferwin, and Charlotte are mild examples.
 * Winged Humanoid: Ionae. While the attention they draw is inconvenient (and they're no good for flight), that's only tangential to her real problem.
 * Wings Do Nothing: They're not for show, though, and she actively tries to hide them.
 * With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: