Engorssing story plaqued with annyoing side quests.
The story is pretty streamlined (hotheaded main character, coolheaded sidekick, lost significant other) but it is still quite good. The characters are very well developed-- you feel sad when they are going through traumatic events, and happy for them during the gleeful parts. However, the game has some bad translations and sentence structure. You’ll still understand everything, it’s just the writing could be better (and the story is the most important part of an RPG in my opinion). Some parts of the game you might just feel more emotion than the characters are actually expressing, which is both a good and a bad thing. As with a lot of RPG’s the story starts out molasses slow… expect a few hour investment before it starts to get good. When I got to about the middle of Chapter 2, I definitely didn’t want to put it down.
And here comes the first annoying thing about the game—side missions. It happens WAY to often that you’ll get a nice juicy bit of plot and then start running full speed to the next area with spirits high and then… wait, you have to fetch something, or help a kid in a cave, or deliver a letter. It will really bog you down when all you want to do is find out what happens next. Fortunately, after most of these missions you’ll get a little bit a character development, which adds a little to the story not to mention racking up the 50 hours of gameplay.
The other thing that takes away from the game is the back tracking. Now sure some is okay, like when you revisit older locals, uncovering things you didn’t have accesses to before. However, when you have to go back in fourth to one place to other in succession, it gets quite annoying. In one part of the game you leave a mountaintop town in order to get inside the shrine nearby. Once you get to the shrine you learn you can’t get in and have to go back to town, then back to the shrine, then back to the town, then all the way down the mountain to a forest, back up to the town, then to shrine again… URGHH!
The graphics in the game are actually VERY nice. Both the towns and other areas have very nice textures, with a lot of detail. It’s just that there isn’t much variety, all the towns are connected by two different types of highways, either grassy or desert-gorge. There are plenty of caves as well; the developers loved those caves (they are all identical too). The 2D sprites are decent but the monster drawings are pathetic. There are some nice touches though—fog effects and some flashy spells. And the anime drawing of the characters that appear with dialogue are the best aspect of the graphics here. They are many different drawings for each character depending on there reaction. Overall, I was impressed by the graphics, especially when you compare it to some screenshots of the other RPG for PSP, PoPoSomething.
For gameplay, the battle system is nothing special. In the IGN review, he commented about it, saying it is a “just press X” kind of thing. That is not the case if you look at the game as a whole. You will get plenty of special moves and spells to choose from. And the range of attack, speed of you characters, and spell damage radius all play important rolls when deciding what is the best coarse of actions. It is nice, for such a traditional RPG, that you can avoid monsters. It will come in handy with all the backtracking. The game is far to easy though, which may turn some RPG aficionados away.
On the back of the game case it’ll say “Unique pet system” they are lying. It’s very stupid. But it doesn’t take away from the game… it nice seeing your pet run behind you and it finding items for you is kind of cool so you don’t have to waste money buying them. The only actual interaction one would every really have with the pet is keeping it fat and happy before big bosses so you get a defense bonus.
Oh did I mention loading times are pretty much non-existence. That’s pretty cool.
The music in the game is decent. There is nothing memorable here, and they play the same songs too often. But generally I though it was good. And I’m pretty sure that a lot of the reviewers failed to play the damn PSP with headphones!! I admit I didn’t play the first half of the game with them, but when I plugged it in the music sounds much more engrossing and the sound effects in battle are awesome. Overall the music and sound effects add to the experience.
Now I did a little bit a nitpicking but I think it is much more suitable then IGN’s or Gamespot’s (GS said that you’ll get lost way to often… I, however, never did). Overall this is must-buy if you like RPG’s. The story, graphics, and sound are all very good. And as Gamespy said, a RPG should only be judged by the whole experience, and my experience was extremely enjoyable. This game isn’t stellar, but it is good—8 out of 10.