Video Game / Zwei: The Ilvard Insurrection

Top to Bottom from Left to Right: Odessa, Exmachina/Mia, Montblanc, Rue, Alwen, Subaru, Ragna

Zwei: The Ilvard Insurrection is an Action RPG created by Falcom with combat system closest to Ys series. It is the direct sequel for the previous game Zwei!!. (which was released as Zwei: the Arges Adventure in the West.) The game was first released as Zwei II in Japan in September 2008; then, in December 2009, Falcom added some additional feature and re-released game as Zwei: The Ilvard Insurrection, which is the version that Steam version was based on. The English version was released by Xseed Games in October 2017. XSeed also released the previous game Zwei: the Arges Adventure on January 24, 2018.

Five hundred years ago, the world of Granvallen was rocked by the Great Sorcery War. The Six Demon Lords, fallen angels who betrayed the twin goddesses Apileste and Espina, attacked Granvallen and caused much destruction. Eventually they were defeated by the Holy Kingdom of Valence, who allied with the fairies and the great dragons. Afterwards magic was sealed; the magic gates linking the floating continents no longer worked and the continents lost contact with each other. In recent years, machinery has prospered and now the people of Granvallen can move freely using aircraft.

Ragna Valentine is a treasure hunter who journeys to the north-western continent of Ilvard to fulfil a job contract. As he enters Ilvard's airspace, he is shot down by a mysterious group and plunges to an imminent death. Fortunately he is rescued by Alwen du Moonbria, a vampire princess who performs a blood contract with him. Ragna becomes Alwen's Blood Warrior and instantly recovers from his fatal injuries due to his newly gained supernatural strength. When they meet again, Alwen explains that her home castle and magic were stolen from her by an unknown enemy and requests Ragna to help her reclaim them.

Please keep in mind that this page contains details for the game as well as the previous game Zwei: the Arges Adventure. So beware of spoilers!

---

This game provides examples of:

• Ace Pilot: Ragna, Odessa, and Claude. Pokkle probably counts as one as well despite reservations from Pipiro.
• Aerith and Bob: Normal sounding ones such as Mia, Fiona, Rue, Odessa, Subaru (Normal in Japan, at least)...and decidedly not normal sounding ones such as Ragna, Alwen, Dyguld, Zahar.
• Almighty Janitor: In the G-Coliseum, the gym built by Gallendeau, there is a cute service penguin who seemingly does nothing other than manning the gate to the gym, guiding fighters to their matches, and flapping her hands around and looking cute. She's the final boss of the Coliseum Challenge, and she hits extremely hard. You will need a lot of preparations if you want to beat her.
• Authority in Name Only: The Grand Duke of Arges. He's just a rich guy who built a mansion near Pokkle and Pipiro's home town and declared himself to be its overlord. He spends most of his time bragging about how great a job he's doing of running the place, despite the fact that everyone ignores him - Arges is so small that the locals are perfectly capable of ruling themselves without any input from an official authority figure.
• Batman Gambit: When Exmachina threatened to kill Ragna, Ragna told her to go ahead because he always believe that she is his little sister Mia and his little sister is never a killer she might imagine herself to be. Exmachina got mad and conjured a powerful magic to shot at Ragna. Ragna did not move, and she missed, just as Ragna thought.
• Becoming the Mask: The reason Thermidor takes care of Exmachina/Mia is because he needs to cultivate Lucian's soul that was embedded in Mia as her Superpowered Evil Side. However, the times that he spends to take care of her cause he to genuinely cared for her. This prompts his Heel–Face Turn and Heroic Sacrifice towards the end of the game.
• Big Bad: Zahar initially appears as this but it is Lucian the Gilded.
• Big Eater: Alwen loves eating even though she does not need to do so for sustenance.
• Blood Knight: Dyguld who came back from the dead just so he could go out fighting a worthy opponent.
• Book Ends: The game started and ended with Ragna flying his plane Tristan over Ilvard.
• Boring, but Practical: Alwen's non-elemental magic Force Arrow, which she starts off with, may look unimpressive but its high rate of fire and long range mean Alwen can safely kill most enemies from afar. Doubly important if players are doing No-Damage Run to earn platinum medals.
• Brought Down to Badass: This is what happened to Gallandeau AKA Duke Guiscard who lost much of his magical powers 100 years ago and thus trained his physical body to compensate.
• Brought Down to Normal: This is what happens to Colbert and Montblanc at the end of the first and second games respectively as their masters who supplied them with magic power are deceased.
• Cats Are Mean: Colbert and Montblanc are villainous feline sorcerers who attempt to kill heroes at various points in the first and second games respectively.
• Chest Monster: There is one (mimic) masquerade as a treasure chests, and there are several of them (pothead, jarhead, perfect pitcher) masquerade as clay pots that you need to destroy to platinum the level.
• Cool Plane: Ragna has the Tristan, Pokkle and Pipiro have the Blue Star, Fiona has the Lord Valence, and Odessa has the Beowulf.
• Corrupt Church: Played with: the nun in the Ilvard church is a heavy smoker, and charge outrageously for her confession sessions. However, as shown in the later parts of the game, she does provide genuinely good advise.
• Cute Monster Girl: Alwen, a Trueblood princess, and Rue, her familiar, are both cute as a button.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!: In an action RPG game, your first instinct is probably to smash every enemy and object in your way. However, in this game, there are several treasure chests that require you to not kill the monster. Accidentally killed the monster that was required to open the gate? You better do the dungeon again. See Guide Dang It! below.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Alwen is a vampire princess who is appropriately associated with darkness but she is a heroic figure. This also applies to Espina, one of the setting's top goddesses, whose domain is The Sacred Darkness.
• Despair Event Horizon:
  • Ragna crossed it when he finds out that Exmachina, the doll-like girl who works for Zahar, is actually his sister Mia, who went missing for seven years. Worse, Mia refuse to acknowledge Ragna as his brother, insist he got the wrong person. Ragna was so heartbroken that he went on a long period of Heroic BSoD until the attack on Starfall Hamlet.
• Developer's Foresight: If the players elect to fight Subaru in the G-Coliseum while she is rendered unconscious from injuries during the story, the announcer will state that she did not show up so they come up with a robotic replica for players to fight instead.
• Disc-One Final Dungeon: The Moonbria Castle. From the opening of the game, you are under the impression that the main focus of this game is to help Alwen to take back her castle. Here you are, inside her castle, clear three separate dungeons to fight off three mooks of Zahar, and then clear a long dungeon to finally facing Zahar himself. Then, Zahar just beat you up in a Curb-Stomp Battle. This is only half-way through the game.
• Disc-One Final Boss: Zahar, both in Moonbria Castle and in Luna Mundus.
• The Dragon: Thermidor initially appears as this to Zahar but he actually answers to Lucian.
• Elemental Powers: There are six attributed magic in this game: fire, ice, earth, wind, light, and dark (there is also a default, non-attributed magic), Ragna's third gear has fire attribute. Fire and Ice are weak against each other, and earth and wind are weak against each other.
• Fallen Angel: The six demon lords who once served the twin goddesses of the setting. Of the Six, Vesper and Lucian are Big Bad of the first and second games respectively.
• Fantastic Racism: Zahar never misses an opportunity to flaunt the Truebloods' superiority over humans. In fact, his motivation for seeking the demon lord's power is to ensure the Trueblood supremacy over the world.
• Fictional Currency: Pennes.
• Floating Continent: Ilvard is a floating island. It used to be much bigger but most of it was destroyed during the Great Sorcery War.
• Friendly Neighborhood Vampire: Alwen of course. Duke Guiscard is one as well.
• Gotta Catch Them All: There are achievements for getting all of the widgets, accessories, armors, foods, character info and combo attacks in the game. Oddly, there isn't one for getting all the treasure chests. However, getting all the treasures will give you a lot of money, as well as a pet, which will be helpful to satisfy the other two achievements, one for getting 500,000 pennes and one for raising all pets to level 9.
• Great Offscreen War: the Great Sorcery War five hundred years ago, when six demon lords rebelled against Sun Goddess Apileste and Moon Goddess Espina, they were defeated by a combined force of Holy Kingdom of Valance and a group of demon who sided with the goddesses. Fiona is the descendant of former and Alwen is the descedant of latter.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • To get every treasures in the game is kind of impossible without a guide as there are some treasure chests that can only be opened under some odd conditions, several examples:
    • There is one on Luna Mundus you have to have a weight over 99 Kg to enter, hope you have a lot of food on you.
    • There are several chests that can only be obtained if you don't kill certain monsters, such as the one going to a tea party or the one going to a court as a witness.
    • The one in Moonbria Castle sanctum requires you to close all treasure chests, include the one on the back of an ogre and a mimic.
    • One of chest in Snowstorm Steppe requires you to defeat a monster masqueraded as a mushroom's hat and later put the real hat on the said mushroom. The problem is if you just walk past the said mushroom the monster won't attack you. So you'll only be aware of such monster if you knew beforehand that it's there and attacked it.
    • The other chest in Snowstorm Steppe requires you to visit the cave at the end of the maze at exactly 0, 15, 30, or 45 minutes of an hour and defeat a monster that will only appears at these times.
  • Outside of treasure chests, as with the previous game, to get the final weapon of male character (Pokkle in the previous game and Ragna in this one) involves a long chain of item exchanges.
• Happily Married: The second game reveals that Paradys and Tiara, the important characters from the first game, are now married. They are even expecting a baby soon.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Thermidor, in order to stop Demon Lord Lucian from controlling Mia.
• Hidden Elf Village: Well, hidden ninja village. Starfall Hamlet is a village hidden beyond the Starry Peak where every villagers from the village (that is, exclude the ones married into the village) are trained as ninja. This village is tasked with guarding the key to the Luna Mundus. After the event of this game, the village leader Elder Tenzan decides to disclose the existence of this village to the outside world.
• Hopeless Boss Fight: You cannot defeat Zahar in Moonbria Castle as he is invulnerable to all your attacks.
• I Am Who?: Exmachina AKA Mia is revealed to be the reincarnation of Lucian the Gilded, one of the six demon lords who rebelled against the twin goddesses 500 years ago.
• Infinity +1 Sword: The final upgrade to Ragna's anchor gear turned all of his attacks critical, how to get the said upgrade is a massive Guide Dang It!.
• Impersonation Gambit: Occured twice in the game:
  • Exmachina/Mia transformed into Ra-Laira to try and convince Alwen to drop the fight to regain the castle. While the appearance fooled Alwen and Ragna, Ragna rejected her advice due to his Heroic Resolve.
  • Montblanc transformed into Princess Alwen to mess with the group (especially Rue). It didn't work because Ragna is under the blood contract with Alwen so he can tell Montblanc is not the real Alwen.
• Large Ham: Gallandeau AKA Duke Guiscard loves showing off his muscles at any opportunities. In fact, his Japanese VA is none other than Norio Wakamoto, who is well-known for this trope.
• Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards: Not to the extent of the first game but still the case. Ragna does gain some anchors which can deal powerful damage in close combat but they are nowhere near as versatile as Alwen's elemental magics. The game even acknowledges this as there are some sections where Ragna has to either travel alone or partner with other characters.
• Luke, I Am Your Father: Gallandeau is revealed to be Duke Guiscard AKA Alwen's father near the end of the second game.
• Magikarp Power: The last pet you get, a kobold, does nothing other than following you to collect coins and foods, in contrast to other pets that can heal you, attack enemies, or throw bombs. That is, unless you raise this kobold to level 9, then it'll transform into a werewolf-like creatures and deal massive damages to enemy.
• Meaningful Name: Meaningful nickname in this game. Odessa the Wildwolf, she is a werewolf.
• Mythology Gag: This game provides several for the later Falcolm games. Tristan model and penguin suit both show up as collectible items in Ao no Kiseki, and Tokyo Xanadu's main Character, Kou, sport the same weapon as Ragna.
• Non-Combat EXP: Zwei has an unusual level up system. You level up not by beating enemies, but by consuming food. Granted, outside of four extremely expensive food, you only get food from beat up the monsters in the dungeon.
• Ominous Floating Castle: Melzedek, which is a demon stronghold during the Great Sorcery War. The mere presence of it create a huge tornado, and it can continually bombard the target below.
• Our Vampires Are Different: They aren't affected by conventional vampire weaknesses such as sunlight, crucifix, and garlic although night does allow them to bring out their full powers. Alwen offhandedly mentions that she feels rather uncomfortable at the church of Apileste, the setting's Goddess of Light, but whether this applies to other Truebloods in general aren't clear.
• Previous Player-Character Cameo: Pipiro and Pokkle, the main characters of the previous game, feature heavily in the main storyline of this game.
• Princess Protagonist: Alwen is a vampire princess and current head household of Moonbria clan.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Ragna's red to Alwen's blue.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: The Holy Kingdom of Valence defeated six demon lords five hundred years ago. While they may not be a kingdom anymore, Fiona, the current head of Valence Family, views protecting Gravallen as her duty. Alwen counts as well.
• Samus Is a Girl: Subaru is revealed to be a girl. Downplayed in that only Ragna did not catch onto it until they take baths together.
• Undying Loyalty: Rue is deeply devoted to Alwen.
• Unwitting Pawn: Thermidor plays Zahar like a fiddle in order to revive his true master, Lucian the Gilded.
• Vampire Monarch: Alwen is a vampire princess but still counts since she is the current head of Moonbria clan due to her father's disappearance.
• The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: The mythical land of Serpentina and the floating fortress Melzedek serve as this in the first and second games respectively.
• Where I Was Born and Razed: This is revealed to be the case for Exmachina/Mia. Meeting with Thermidor caused her past-self's memory as the demon lord to surface and her powers got out of control, burning down her and Ragna's home in the process.