I was stupid enough to get a PSP
So what’s the game about, sadly, I am not that far into it to tell you the full story, and I don’t think I’ll get there until my birthday in February. With my schedule, I think I’ll beat the game by March. So to be fair, I have to say that my review is only of the 5 hours I have played the game, it’s a hefty chunk, but not enough to tell you, the reader, if the game’s story holds up. So on to the important stuff….the music.
As I said, I am a ruler of a nation, but I do like lots of music. In the game, the music is very, Chinese, not Japanese. It is a bit of a throw off, and sometimes can be distracting. The battle music is fine, the traveling music isn’t. The psp should have the ability for custom soundtracks…sigh. Anyway, the music is important because it makes itself important to gameplay. The way you feel when the music is soft and playing quite quietly in the background as characters speak is a feeling of amazement because you think yourself, “wow, actual orchestrated music” then that feeling is ripped away from you the moment you set on your travels again. There is a lot, and I mean, tons of traveling in this game. To ease player frustration, I suggest playing the game with the music off.
The game is one of the better games on the PSP, I have to admit that I only picked up the PSP to play Wipeout Pure (which I will open Christmas morning) and it dilivers on its hack-n-slash, shake-n-bake, style of gameplay. The gameplay actually is the most rewarding. This game is no Nintendogs or Animal Crossing, but it gives players a deep storyline, story driven game, on the go. That really hasn’t been done well with the exceptions of a few game on the GBA. The story is well crafted and the script is actually pretty funny. Mild swearing, but I expect as much from a T rated game (Flunk you NIMF), and there are a few sexual themes in the game (yah right, they are really sisters) but none of that really takes away from the story….it actually adds to it.
As I am in the process of beating the game one thing and one thing alone, bothers me about it. The freakin’ camera is broken…in fact, it’s not even there. The camera system is non-existent for two reasons, one they cut corners and didn’t want you to see how the game world really looks, and two, the L and R buttons are being used and I see no other way to map a camera without using the Analog nub, and that nub is better used as the control (the D-pad would have made a nice camera moving thing, but its not analog, so that would have been another issue). The camera “gets in the way” most of the time. The map system isn’t clear and cut, (its not dry either, rather wet) and it has characters sometimes running into invisible walls. This makes me feel quite frustrated at times, especially when I am having my hair handed to me by some large guy with big swords. But the game is good because it has me coming back for more.
This game is like Ninja Gaiden, not in style but the way you die. Once you life runs out, that’s it, game over and back to title screen or last save point. So it’s best to keep on top of things and not wait till the last minute to heal, like thought I could do my first hour. The game is a great showcase of graphical power because of the massive scale of the worlds at times. I am very impressed (more impressed by wipeout, but I can’t play that yet) and I highly recommend this game to all adventure fans out there. It ain’t an RPG (thank goodness), and it ain’t a beat them up either (using proper English grammar this time). The game focuses on one thing, giving you a good play experience to have on the go, while waiting somewhere, or while being served dinner. Be prepared for 30-50 second load times when you start it up, and don’t be alarmed if you run into a random battle and the game freezes, that just means a cuttween is loading (cuttween: a in game cutscene that breaks away from the action using high polygon character models with the background being actual game play…like it, just made it up).
Game gets an 7.9.