Initial 2 : New Stage on Steam - User reviews, Price & Information
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“Initial Ⅱ” is a fast-paced hack & slash featured Action RPG. It tells a tale of both the super-power war and the friendship. Our Heroine wields 4 types of weapons and can dynamically switch between them at will. Hope you like it!
Initial 2 : New Stage is a action, female protagonist and rpg game
developed and published by Restory Studio.
Released on October 18th 2018 is available only on Windows
in 4 languages: English, Japanese, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese.
It has received 414 reviews of which 282 were positive and 132 were negative resulting in a rating of 6.5 out of 10. 😐
The game is currently priced at 20.99€ on Steam.
The Steam community has classified Initial 2 : New Stage into these genres:
Media & Screenshots
Get an in-depth look at Initial 2 : New Stage through various videos and screenshots.
System requirements
These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.
Windows
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS: Windows7 or higher
- Processor: Intel i3 or higher
- Memory: 4000 MB RAM
- Graphics: Nvidia GTX750
- DirectX: Version 11
- Storage: 13 GB available space
User reviews & Ratings
Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.
Initial 2: New Stage takes place in the same universe as the first game, but it’s not a direct sequel, since only two bad guys from The Initial appears - Kyuya and Ryuzaki - and their role in the storyline are different. This time, the game got English dub. The voices are nice but the repeated lines during the fights get annoying fast. The story mode is longer than The Initial. The first game took me around 2.5 hours to complete. This game is a good 5 hours. The English text is… often very funny and the text warping in the boxes is off most of the time. So, if you are looking for a “perfect English” game, with a deep plot and character development, Initial 2: New Stage won’t meet that expectation. It’s rather a nice and casual hack’n’slash with two cute heroines - Belvia and Sera - plus Veritas. I think Sera’s habit of talking in the third person all the time is kind-of annoying. Anyway, I recommend it with a 50% discount, since its short.
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takes all the good from the first game and improves in almost every way, the game did come out badly optimized but seems to run pretty good now after many patches still fps drops from time to time but for the most part runs well now!
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”Despite some flaws, it delivers fun experience for hack-n-slash fan.“ “Initial 2: New Stage” is 3D hack-n-slash developed by Restory Studio. Follow the core gameplay and style of first “The Initial” with promised various improvement. I review on version 11.9 and point out what’s good and bad for indie title. --------------------------------------------------------- Story and Presentation Initial 2 is an ambitious indie project of 9 people team. The game set in futuristic world and great war between Philosophia Academy and Scientia Empire. You mainly play as Captain Belvia, first-class Ludex soldier of Philosophia, team up with two companions named Sera and Veritas. The story of fighting against evil forces may sounds simple, but provide clear ultimate goal, supported by interesting lore and world design. The storytelling of friendship and sacrifice feels emotional and extra NPC dialogues make me actually care those characters. It’s enjoyable new story with some references from first Initial. However, there are some stiff animations and lifeless character expression in couple cutscenes. Initial 2 is developed by using Unity engine. Detailed and complex character models. High quality special effects and assets. Academy and some couple levels are great. Unfortunately, the overall design is inconsistent. Some open environments are lifeless and empty. There are also weird interior lighting and clone Ludex NPCs. --------------------------------------------------------- Gameplay and Combat The highlight of Initial is fast-paced combat. You fight against waves of enemy and move to next section, repeat process, and face the boss at the end of chapter. There are total four weapon types and various chips as active and passive skill which can be switched in pause menu. Each weapon has its combos (ground, mid-air, charge) with simple inputs of light and heavy attack. Light saber is well-balanced default weapon, has most combo, and It is only weapon you can use during EX mode (berserker mode). Greatsword is slow but offer high area-of effect damage and can break enemy’s guard shield. Power Fists provide fast one-on-one combat and knockback of last impact. Falcon Bow is good for damaging enemy from distance or boss’s windup attack, and charge attack like Hanzo. The combat is more responsive and fluid than previous game. You can avoid damage by short-distance dodge or follow-up unlimited sprint to avoid enemy’s long combo/projectile. There are skill chip provide extra moves to experiment such as healing, reset cooldown, blast punch. Lock-on also improves along with targeting system where you dash toward nearest target and change depended on your control which keeps the combat flow. I appreciated the variety of enemy (they had cool designs too) move and boss pattern. It engages player awareness and provides clear telegraph as fair fight even though there are few janky animations. While all weapons are fun to use and effective in boss fight, Greatsword feels underwhelming because of most fast-move and spam boss which against Greatsword playstyle. --------------------------------------------------------- Sound Initial 2 has a lot of memorable music from main menu to cutscene and boss theme. The composers did great job to deliver quality sound design and some emotional music. The English voice acting features voice actors worked in previous AAA games. It’s good, but somehow lacks emotional expression than Japanese voice. The sound design of weapon feels impact especially power fists. Although, it lacks of feedback sound from common enemy and most heavy charged attacks. Companion dialogue also needs to be toned down when they repeat same line over and over at least it’s only in Story mode. --------------------------------------------------------- UI and Performance The game keeps simple UI, but it’s easy to understand and clear visual. The major problem is text arrangement and localization. They are messed and disconnected in game dialogue and skill/lore information which need to be prioritized. In term of performance, the game run smoother and solid along with mouse and keyboard control. Thanks to developers who address issues since first release. However, there are still some issues like one-time long freeze after you defeat first wave of first startup (only happen to me) and some missing textures in Academy last visit. --------------------------------------------------------- Extra Contents Initial 2 also offers extra mode after story mode is completed. Challenge mode and Limited mode where you fight without NPC companions can provide different experience and challenge. Boss Rush is very fun one-one-one boss fight including extra bosses that are not in campaign. Each bosses have enhanced move and aggressive, but few of them need to be tweaked due to oversized tracking hitbox and boss spam move/dodge make fight become more irritating. Verdict Finally, Initial 2 is not a perfect game. It has flaws and thing to improve. I wish developers add combo counter/rank to keep player engagement and give combat feedback in this game or future project. But it does succeed to deliver what I expect from indie hack-n-slash genre. A fun fast-paced combat with smooth animation and fancy effects. That is definition of this game. If you found this review helpful, please consider and give a thumb up or feedback to improve my review
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Introduction Initial 2 is a game with some flaws, but beneath all of them is hidden a real gem. While the game has a lot of faults it still manages to be an enjoyable experience if you go in thinking about it as a budget game which it really is. For a small development team, this is pretty well done and surprise me in terms of how good it actually is. Story The story is good and interesting however most the translations of the subtitles are poorly done so you are gonna have to replace the words that dont fit there with the correct vocabulary in English in your mind. If you can manage to that then you will be able to see that the story is well put together. While most of the game features a lot of uncertainty and weak pacing it does algo have some strong moments that make the story feel real and makes you interested in it. Gameplay Combat is a hit and miss. First, there is no feedback at all in your hits which can leave an impression of your attack being light as a feather and not having any real strength behind them. Second, eventually you get 4 weapons and lots of chips which are either passive effects or activate abilities, yet you will find yourself only using a few of them. On weapons, the katana/light sword is your bread a butter and your jack of all trades while the fists are amazing at filling your EX-gauge which makes you super strong. The heavy sword is too slow and will make you take free damage and the bow is just too slow for it to do any significant damage to the enemy. In chips, you will always need to reserve a space for HP recovery as it is the only way to gain HP apart from checkpoints before bosses, then you will mostly use vortex with whirlind+rewind since those 3 are broken. Vortex will stutter enemies, keeping them in place and usually killing them by itself. Whirlwind is generally a one-shot and rewind just gives you all your abilities back for free by making the cooldown 0 upon activation. You can pretty much use your abilities twice in a row, wait 110 seconds for a third activation and then repeat twice in a row, all meanwhile you use EX during the 110 breaks. The best chip is handed to you in the first mission I think and it's called trust. It gives you 0.5 of EX every second which is insanely good. Difficulty As for difficulty, the game is pretty easy. Kinda wish they would have raised the overall difficulty I guess but that's subjective. Still, you can pretty much fight an attrition battle with EX VS Bosses as well as use bow to chip them little by little(not recommended it takes forever) and their patterns are very simple for the most part. Out of all the bosses, only 4 of them are a challenge with 3 out of those 4 being actually hard to beat. Props for variety though. Some Notes Frames are stable above 60 as long as you have a GTX 1060 6GB(this can be addressed in the future as the development team is still working on the game, adding content and improving optimization) no drops at all and is a fluid experience through there may be some stuttering in some levels but it only last a couple of seconds and it is rare. This game story mode is short ranging at around 4-6 hours but you can replay it in different modes as well as enjoy some boss rush modes and others extras. All being said, I think that the Initial 2 is worth the price if you like hack-n-slash games. The first 2 hours might see kinda underwhelming but the rest of the game is amazing. Once you reach a certain point in the story, it really starts to pick up its pace and it becomes something far greater. So I suggest that if you find the early story lacking, do stick around because it will get so much better. For Voice actors, English is bad. It sounds as if English voice actors can't decide between acting like human beings or robots and they tend to change between both so one scene the characters sound alive and the next they are talking like emotionless robots. I recommend the Japanese Dub as the characters always sound alive and like normal human beings. Sum up + Great combat. Player has the choice between making complex combos with all the tools at their disposal or keep it simple. + A story that is weak at first but gradually becomes better. + Characters design is interesting. Uniforms with the colors black and gold are unusual and the characters are well diversify. + Offers some extra modes to keep the player playing even after beating the story. + Is a major improvement over the first game. - Translation is poor. - English VA can't decide between being an emotionless robot or an overreacting teenager. - Bad optimization. Recommend to play at max on medium graphics. - Has a lot of bugs, they won't make you lose a lot of progress but they can be quite annoying. Conclusion In resume, Initial 2 is not a perfect game and it suffers from many flaws but at the end of the day, it is a pretty good game. For a small team of developers, this is really well-done and they still go to great length to support their game. My only gripe is that they should really fix those English translations in English.
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The developers were quick to stress the quality of the character models and music and both are excellent. Graphically the game is excellent, particularly the particle effects. The combat feels fluid and the different weapon types help break the monotony of combos. StrawberryHill Music have done an excellent job creating tracks that move each scene along smoothly. Beluvia's character model is so well crafted that it seems a shame we can't style her in different outfits, my biggest feature request would be a selection of outfits to choose from for her!
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Last Updates| Steam data | 09 April 2025 18:14 |
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| SteamSpy data | 09 April 2025 02:45 |
| Steam price | 15 April 2025 04:19 |
| Steam reviews | 15 April 2025 03:59 |
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- SteamDB - A comprehensive database of everything on Steam about Initial 2 : New Stage
- SteamCharts - Analysis of Initial 2 : New Stage concurrent players on Steam
- ProtonDB - Crowdsourced reports on Linux and Steam Deck Initial 2 : New Stage compatibility
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Developer
Restory Studio
Publisher
Restory Studio
Release
18 Oct 2018
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