Crimson Sea 2 is a Japanese 3D action adventure, where you play as Sho, a young warrior who must remove “The Menace” from the world in which he lives and protects. The monsters have taken over, and you must play through many missions with different objectives and requirements to get rid of them.

From the start, you have two firing weapons and a sword. One gun is a quick-firing affair, whilst the secondary fires slow-paced explosive charges. Your sword attacks can be put into combos to wipe enemies out stylishly, and you can add in jumps etc. to spice them up. You get combo points for chaining attacks together. They aren’t as stylish as Devil May Cry for example, where you get awarded for doing certain moves, but they are pretty cool regardless.

Along route, you pick up orbs, which are used for levelling up your characters guns and swords. Power, Rapid-fire speed, and Range can all be increased, and you can add power to the four attacks your sword has too. You can also power up your magical attacks. This begins as a shield barrier, which harms enemies if you touch them when it’s activated. These are known as NeoPsionic powers, and certain techniques and moves will destroy everything near by and you can achieve many hundreds of combo points in the process.

The game is played in a third-person view, and although it has several camera options to choose from, it is hard to get one you’re happy with. After a while and much fiddling, I ended up staying with the default setup, raised up a bit from standard, which seems pretty good in most situations. However you often have to press R1 to reset the camera behind your character, otherwise it starts facing the wrong way. This quite often happens in areas with lots of enemies and tight rooms and passages, so you have to be prepared to keep your finger near the camera button at all times or you’ll be getting attacked by an invisible (to you) monster. It can get quite frustrating at times, especially when you’re low on health and panic sets in. However a quick evasive jump and run from the attack and a spin-around puts you back facing the action, so it’s not all bad.

The game includes are rather neat multiplayer mode for up to two players. There are a few options to choose from including a Challenge mode and VS. The latter is setup like a death match where you go against each other using your guns and sword attacks until a player’s energy reaches nil. It’s pretty good fun, with some varied arenas to fight in. Challenge Mode is a co-operative split-screen setup (like VS) and puts you in a room with an infinite amount of enemies spawning, and you have to kill them before they can attack and destroy a generator type object in the middle of the room. This is really good in co-op, as you can spilt the room in half and go at on your own, or gang up on the pests and kick some serious ass as a twin killing machine. A friend and I had some really enjoyable sessions in the multiplayer part of this game, as it’s really easy to get into and the action is highly enjoyable.

Overall I really liked Crimson Sea 2. It’s got that real fast-paced action feel to it which is great fun, exciting and satisfying, and it’s easy to pick-up and play. The characters and story are interesting, and you do genuinely care about what’s going on, the story has been thought about and isn’t just put in the game for the sake of it. There are around sixty missions to play through, including side quests, and there are two playable characters, so there is plenty to do to keep you busy. If you’re a fan of Crimson Sea on Xbox, or enjoyed the Devil May Cry and Dynasty Warriors series, this will be right up your street.