To its credit, Eureka Seven Vol 2: The New Vision deserves praise for its use of the Eureka Seven license. Set two years before the show, the game serves as a very extended prequel for the television series, following characters Sumner and Ruri through a fair amount of backstory and explanation of the world's history. The game primarily focuses on Sumner's endless pursuit of Ruri and his following of her every whim, which makes for a rather dull central plot. Of course, complications arise -- several foes want Sumner dead, experiments to produce better pilots literally devour their souls -- but represent little more than briefly distracting asides.

Yet even this early in the game, before game play factors into the equation, problems arise. Eureka Seven relies very heavily on frequent cutscenes, to the point where the time one watches rivals the time they play, but fails to allow players the ability to pause any of these cinematics. Furthermore, only certain scenes may be skipped, at times leaving the player with no choice beyond sitting through the next series of events.

It quickly becomes apparent that the various twists and turns of the story exist as an excuse to shove players into brief sections of game play, which span five different scenarios. Of these, exploration represents the most tedious, merely necessitating players to chat up every character they encounter to trigger the next cinematic. As for the other four, they boil down to two different game play styles -- combat and hover boarding --which then intermingle to varying degrees.

Take combat, for example. On-ground mech battles boil down to locking onto a target and constantly moving while mashing the two attack buttons, which send long-range missiles and close-range punches flying. Lacking any sort of deeper mechanic or strategy, mech combat quickly turns boring. On-foot combat falls into the same trap -- encounter a foe, keep moving, tap the attack buttons until defeated, rinse, lather, repeat. A closer camera highlights the only significant variation on-foot combat throws into the mix, which only serves to allow unseen foes to unexpectedly ambush players from the side or behind.

Hover boarding represents the other major game play device, separated into races and in-air mech duels. Though full of potential, the problematic camera and controls quickly frustrate. In the first event, a portion of the track forces players to head underground, but as players dive into the tunnel, a poor camera angle makes it difficult to judge their height relative to the ever-lowering ceiling and the fast-approaching ground.

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