The year is 2045. The Planet is Tobal. Choose either to win the 99th Tobal #1 Tournament by beating the 10 other competitors to be the 99th Super Tobal Man — winning prize money and the Royal Molmoran Stone — or go on a quest find out why the Kuts Foundation has been ruthlessly buying and mining land in the mountains on Tobal. TOBAL 2 takes place a year following TOBAL #1.
Squaresoft delivers a game that is revolutionary in the ways a 3D fighter should be perceived and played — setting new standards in gameplay and graphics. Like its predecessor, TOBAL 2 is a 3D fighter of a different sort.
Returning characters are miner Chuji, Epon, Oliems, robot Hom, 66th Super Tobal Man Fei, Ill, pro-wrestler Mary, 98th Super Tobal Man Gren, and the two new characters — kickboxing surgeon guy Doctor V and Jackie Chan-style Galaxy Patrol gal Chaco. Each enters the 99th Tobal Tournament for different personal reasons, whether it be revenge, investigation, fame, money, etc.
Fighters have innovative full-3D movement on the ground (as opposed to a 2d plane) in a square arena with ring outs. Movement consists of high/mid/low attacks, blocks, jumps, grabs, 3D movement with the pad, and a variety of moves, combos, and juggles. Combos/juggles are improved with the new Super Combo system that allows combos/juggles to be chained together to create spectacular multi-hit combos and juggles. And not through button mashing - the player must hit the right key at the precise point in the animation. Returning characters have most of their former moves and attack styles, but with more eye-popping variety.

Grabs have more options now, including foot sweep, repeated rapid punching/kicking into dizzy, and tweaked throws. Grabs can not just be simply escaped now, but can be escaped into a grab position for a grab reversal, which can be escaped into a grab position for a grab reversal....and so on.
The final addition to the attack arsenal is projectiles. The first is a close-range unblockable attack where the attacking limb glows with the gathered ki before striking. The other is a long-distance unblockable ki ball (or other shape, like Chaco's heart-shaped energy projectile). However, using ki balls drains life so it balances game play, and discourages previously fireball-happy players.
The most interesting and unusual part of TOBAL 2 is the Quest. Expanded quite a bit from Tobal #1's levels of aimless dungeons, the Quest is now RPG with different towns, people, shops, and quests to solve. The dungeons are the standard type of kill creature, get food and items. There are 200 differing types of creatures to be encountered in the dungeons, such as the Chacobo bird from Final Fantasy. Creatures appear as orange flames before they are encountered, and when a level is cleared (or nearly cleared), random blue flames will appear for that random encounter action.
Any good RPG has items. There is food, but sometimes it is poisoned. Potions come in a variety of colors and effects, and can be combined to make different colors of potions, with different results. There are diamond-shaped stones with differing positive effects (or negative for the cursed ones).

Each creature encountered in the dungeons will show up later in the character selection menus, and become playable if they were captured or beaten. Capturing involves beating a creature to 10% health, and then throwing a purple stone at it. Creatures consist of lizards, jellies, bears, zombies, robots, dinosaurs, jellyfish, etc.
The player character gains experience and levels individually in each body part or type of attack, including the head, each arm, each leg, throwing, and guard, plus health/stamina and bonuses/minuses from the attached stones. Thus, characters can be highly developed in one area (such as arms) and weak in others (such as throws). The built-up character can be saved and loaded up in the normal tournament/vs modes to use. Squaresoft seems to be encouraging players to make super strong characters with which to battle their friends.
The Quest mode does seem a bit unfair, however. No matter how well you fight and survive battles, the chances of the poisoned food, randomized effects of potions, or random encounters killing you is very high, and so only becomes really playable with cheat codes like infinite life.
The technical aspects are superior as well. At 60fps (frames per second) in the hi-res 640x400 graphics mode, Tobal is definitely in its own category for graphics superiority. The upgraded looks have more textures, the VIRTUA FIGHTER polygonal looks have been smoothed out with more judicious application of gouraud shading, and the joints in the polygonal models have disappeared with the new "skin" technology. Vertex animation, vertex interpolation between moves, and vertex sharing give Tobal 2 its smooth movement and looks. Backgrounds are multi-layer with polgonal objects in front, and a flat scenic scrolling graphic in the back.

The intro to the game has changed and seems to focus more on the Babylonian/Assyrian constellations of Tobal as a camera zooms in to the planet of Tobal from orbit, to the fights, and the hand-animated (and some motion-captured) competitors. Very nice and dramatic.
The endings for the characters aren't real-time rendered polygonal models now but FMV. So much for the TOBAL #1 experiment. Each character has their own ending that links quite well to their background. At the end of each fight, an impressive high-polygon-count model of the character is shown doing his/her victory walk and talk as the camera does various dramatic fly-bys.
The ambient MIDI music is rock, techno, jazz, classic, and more flavors and styles done well, and complementing the game without being too obvious.
Load times are low, replays of fights can be saved, practice modes give full debugging options, colors of the player's clothing can be changed (nude color schemes available online), dungeons stretch to many different worlds, creatures are numerous and different, fighters can be shrunken to ant size or to giant size, and on and on. There are just too many options to be described.
The new dual-analog pad control is supported although the dual-analog flight-sticks aren't supported in the analog calibration screens. Analog is much more precise than the digital controls in controlling the characters during fights, easily making the transition from walking to running easily.
Again, the character designs are done by Toriyama Akira of DRAGONBALL fame. Also, the voice of Gren Kuts is none other than the renowned Kamiya Akira.
If you carefully look at the backgrounds of some of the scenic fight arenas, you'll see either multiple sky palaces of Kami-sama (god) from Dragonball, or the residential bubble houses from Dragonball. And rumor has it that the alternative victory dance that is shown by L2+diagonal-right-up held down before the standard victory dance is a motion-captured dance by the Jpop group Puffy.
Overall, TOBAL 2 is a superb game from Square. The game play is fun and simple to get into, but with a challenging curve for those who wish to truly master it. Excellent animation with the improved new graphics tech, added players abilities, additions to players abilities to fight, playable characters galore, and a nearly full-RPG mode further smashes genre barriers. If not for the slight RPG difficulty, TOBAL 2 would be the nearly the perfect 3D-fighting game. Just another gem from Squaresoft that proves like STREET FIGHTER II, that improved sequels are indeed possible. This game ought to be ported to other countries. [Editor's note: At press time, there are no plans to bring TOBAL 2 to the United States for domestic release.] In the meantime, get this import where you can find it.

Rating: **** (out of 4)