As the people of Emon gather to celebrate Vox Machina's heroic adventures in Whitestone (last season), the city comes under assault from four dragons who call themselves the Chroma Conclave. Even one of these beasts alone would be a terrible danger to Emon. Combined, they completely obliterate the city's defenses and inflict heavy casualties, including the Sovereign.
Hopelessly outmatched, it is all Vox Machina can do to escape alive. They flee first to their keep, then when that it razed by the 'weakest' of the dragons, all the way back to Whitestone. A conference with their allies there sets the adventurers on a new path: seeking powerful artefacts called 'Vestiges' to assist them in facing the dragons.
Of course, finding people willing to go up against not one but four such powerful creatures is far from an easy task, and the dragons themselves aren't about to simply sit idle while some ragged bunch of would-be heroes tries to collect super-weapons to use against them.
A great many adventures - and dirty jokes - are sure to follow.
This is the second season of the animated show based on the events of the first of Critical Role's Dungeons & Dragons campaigns. I very much enjoyed the first season, and was looking forward to this series. So did it live up to expectations?
Not entirely.
There is a fair bit to like about the show, still. The opening dragon rampage is a really quite intense sequence, effectively underlining how overwhelming this new threat actually is. Vox Machina have defeated a dragon once before, but it was both complacent and ill-prepared, and even with some very useful advice on its weak point, they nearly died. This first encounter is merely a desperate race to escape alive, as scores of other characters die around them.
The show's biggest problem is that opening sequence is probably the strongest part of the whole season. A big contributor to this, I think, is that the rest of the season is over-stuffed with content. There is just so much going on as Vox Machina not only visit multiple new locations in search of the 'Vestiges', but also encounter a host of new (to the audience, anyway) characters. Many of the newcomers prove to have history with our 'heroes', and between explaining what all these new places are and how all these new faces fit into the characters' backgrounds, the show ends up bulging at the seams.
It's all a bit of a whirlwind, but also at times it seems like there's lot of activity that isn't actually accomplishing all that much. I think this is in large part because the show too-often stops all forward momentum to have extended fight scenes. The many battles with the black Umbrasyl, in particular, ultimately got a bit wearying for my tastes.
As for the new characters who get introduced: most seem interesting, but they generally get only a limited amount of time to shine because the show is galloping through so much plot. There's also the matter of Anna Ripley, a minor antagonist in season one who returns here but whose role in the story lacks much context or any resolution - I suspect that she is mostly on screen to remind us that she exists, and that she will play a bigger role in season three.
I also don't think this season is as funny as the first. Not because there are fewer jokes; there are just as many, maybe more; but because they are pretty much exactly the same jokes.
Finally, I have some minor visual quibbles. This season features a lot more "really big monsters" - dragons and sphinxes and such - all of which are done in CGI. I don't feel that these always integrate all that well with the traditional-style animation used for the main cast and other "human scale" characters.
Overall, I don't regret watching this: it's still a pretty fun fantasy adventure show. I will definitely tune in for season three when it appears. But I definitely think this season was not quite as enjoyable as season one.
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