Slick action RPG with a Blade Runner flavor, right down to the wooden acting.
Great battle mechanic. Smooth running with decent sound and visuals. Mildly interesting story. Lots of upgrading of weapons & armor.
The Bad:
Voice acting is bad enough to make me think they were bad on purpose. AI nearly nonexistant in everything but boss battles.
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Lets see how many times I can say "hack-n-slash" without sounding overly repetitive.
Just as an opening aside, I've never played the phantasy star series at all, so this is a relatively unbiased reivew. Yeah, I was under a rock playing tetris or something. 'kay?.
For starters. I had low hopes for this title, knowing so little about it. I was sort of expecting another Valhalla Knights style piece of hack n slash fluff. While it does have a great deal of hacking and slashing (3), Phantasy Star Portable includes a lot of extras that make it a slightly more absorbing experience than your typical action RPG. Numerous weapons choices, armor upgrades, useful items, and costume changes spice up what could have been a fairly mundane rail-style hack n slash. That said, however, in the end, this is pretty much a hack-n-slash item collector's dream (4 & 5...OK I'l stop it now).
You choose a character class, gender, and starting outfit, and are thrown into the mix of being a Guardian, where you recruit teammates, accept missions, and head off into the appropriate dungeon to finish of whatever boss you are assigned to defeat. Sounds hack-n-slashically dull, but the game has so much style and slickness that it stays relatively entertaining for the duration, at least in shorter bites.
Battles are played mostly in behind-the-player third person akin to the Monster Hunter style (and the layouts and several weapons are reminiscent of the MH realm), but that is where the resemblance ends. The monsters are generally easy to hack apart with slashing motions if you are sufficiently levelled up. Also, the behind-the-character camera, which can be potentially difficult in these sorts of games, works quite well at keeping you aimed where you were hoping to look, and in fact behaves a lot like the camera in Metal Gear Solid Portable Ops. Unfortunately, the companion AI consists mostly of them huddling around you, and usually only taking hacking swings when you slash at something. Not the greatest algorithm when you are trying to snipe from afar with a gun, unfortunately. I was longing for some sort of control over how the companion AI should act, but alas, this is a True To The Original game, complete with crappy companions.
Graphics and sound are good, with little slowdown and fairly entertaining fight moves pulled off by you and your companions. While not the best you can get on the PSP, they are generally clean, crisp, and more than adequate to make you feel like you are 'somewhere' when in a dungeon or in town. Unfortunately, the voice acting is terrible, so if you want to follow the story, you are in for an aggravating experience as you listen to either over-the-top renditions of dirty old men, or wooden awkwardly delivered lines with emphasis in all the wrong places.
In sum, this is a simple and stylish gear-hunt, with smooth battles and lots of modification possibilities for upgrading and equipping your avatar. Better acting and better AI programming could have resulted in this game being rated higher, but with wifi multiplayer, you don't have to play the story more than once.
Not hack-n-slash-tastic, but a fun game none the less.