More downright weird and wonderful Japanese role-playing confusion, continuing not far from where the first jobbie finished.

If you’ve forgotten what in blazes happened in the last instalment (or couldn’t be bothered to make sense of the thing), cracking on with its sequel isn’t a problem. An hour in and it makes about as much sense as its predecessor.

There are disappearing watches worn by wish-hungry dimensional-wandering children, violent siblings, dreams of violent siblings, and an over-fed cat possessing a meow that's clearly a person trying to sound a like a cat. Come on, how difficult is it to get a cat into the recording studio...

True to form in Anime-style games, the voice acting is average to poor and conversational structure has no basis in reality.

But if Anime warms the cockles of your face then you’ll be used to this sort of thing. Hell, you probably even covet the stuff.

On a technical level, the game mimics the system from Xillia, which is fine because it worked a treat and our hero Ludger has some nifty skills that show it off nicely. Illium has also been replaced by Allium, a slightly different upgrading tool that improves how efficiently one introduces death to an opponent.

Fans of Xillia should find the answer to their prayers here, particularly if all they wanted from the Gaming Almighty was a continuation of the previous tale without stuffing up the engine room.

Out on PS3