I'm oddly fond of the Mortol duology in UFO 50, but due to UFO 50 having fifty whole games it can be hard to find much discussion of them as individual games. So I just want to say how I like the interplay between Mortol 1 and II, like how I feel II has a vaguely anti-religion theme when compared to 1.
In the first Mortol your characters are volunteers answering a call from the leaders of the country to sacrifice themselves for the greater good. Your abilities are called rituals.
In Mortol II it's explained that the government used its study of evil from the first game to become more evil, and you play as a resistance group to take them down. The castle you break in to notably has stained glass windows.
Both games are about taking down the same evil, but in II the only reason it's around is because it turned out the government from I could not be trusted. That all the sacrifices it called for were just to acquire more power.
The placement of the airship from the first game on top of the castle in II, where you fight a massive demon, reinforces that link between the government in 1 and the enemies in II.
Also the structure of the games compared to each other highlight the difference with their loose narratives. In the first Mortol you're following orders so it's a linear progression with more reserves to gather and an airship to keep up with you. There is no difference between your warriors, they are interchangeable cannon fodder whose corpses you can literally use as a platform.
In Mortol II you start with a limited number of characters and can't get more, and each has their own specialization. It's a wide open and cryptic map where each death puts you back at the start, it's not even made clear what the win condition is.
With Mortol II the characters are making the choice to rebel against the government, so they don't have easy access to more soldiers and advanced tech, because they're rebels making a desperate attempt against unfair odds who know they're not all making it out.
It's funny how much you can get from very loose on plot games when you think about them a lot.
