PSP Review-The Legend of Heroes: A Tear of vermilion
The Psp's first RPG a sad mockery of the genre, Untold legends left most RPG fans, like myself, wanting. Through hours of countless hack and slash became boring and repetitive, I was left wondering "is this all that Sony has to offer me?". With the release of The legend of Heroes: A tear of Vermillion (LOH for sort) did anything change? Frankly yes. This title is an actual RPG, in all of its turn based glory.Presentation:B+
The visual presentation of this game is gorgeous, plain and simple. The characters are drawn nicely in a 2d fashion reminiscent of Final Fantasy V. While the background consists not only of the same 2d type animations but 3d as well. Both blended seamlessly together. The audio tracks for this game are the typical for any RPG, a large amount of classical mixed with some other genres. One thing that bothered me was why there was not any voice acting put into this game? It would have made LoH even more engrossing. Reading through chapters of text never bothered me, but without the addition cut scenes or voices just seems like a little polish was left off of a great game. While I am on the topic of dialogue, in this game some of the dialogue were not translated correctly; for instance the word has appears in the game as was, so when a character "Avin has learned a spell" it appears on screen as "Avin was learned a spell". The dialogue errors are few and far between, but the errors just keep showing themselves.
Visual presentation+Audio-Voice acting (lack there of)-Translation errors=B+
Gameplay: A+
LoH is an old school turnbased RPG at heart. During battles, players select what he or she wants his/her character to do (cast spell, strike, skill, deadly, etc..) once the actions for the whole team are set, the "actions" begin for both the player and the computer. The AI in this game is decently intelligent. I've been in battles where the AI attacks the healer just to cripple my party. While walking around the environment, the main character Avin, will have a pet to assist him in finding items. In return the pet expects food and lots of "lovin", but not in the nasty way, but in the same way as in the Purina commercials. Navigating the menus is simple and uncomplicated. Battles are a breeze, not in difficultly but in playability. For a good RPG to be good battling should not feel like a horrible chore, but a fun and necessary part of the game. Leveling up is at the right level of difficulty too, were it does take time to level up, but it is not to the point were you have to spend time walking around just to level up if you don't want to. Character learn skills and spells as they level up. Each character has a special move called "deadly". Every party member has a bar at the bottom of the screen labeled power that is filled up by every attack and hit that a character does/receives. Once the bar is full the "deadly' move is unlocked and can be unleashed at the player's discretion to do high damage. All enemies are present on screen, so there are no random battles. Icons over the enemies head give clues to their strength and aggression levels. Outside of battle icons are present over the NPC's heads as well helping players distinguish whom they really need to talk to complete a mission. I find this very helpful as in most other RPG I've played have me wondering around for days (real time) looking for a character that was right in front of me the whole time. The game varies a good deal with missions and battling, which is a good thing, helping keep the game fresh.
Menus+pet system+Battle system+leveling up+NPC Icon system=A+
Story: B-
There is nothing original about the story to LoH, never the less it is still entertaining and includes some interesting plot twists. The story begins with Avin and his sister Emeille. They are both living in Cathedral are the passing away of their parents. The Cathedral comes under attack, by a once good guy who is now bad (I'll save his name because that kind of spoils the rest of the game... Just a little). The "baddie" wants what he calls "the daughter of Durga" which seems to be Avin's sister. A chase ensues and the pair ends up separated, with Emeille going into hiding. This starts Avin's quest to find his sister... Things do get more interesting from then on out, but I won't ruin it for you.
Plot twists-unoriginal= B-
Overall= B-
posted by ljbad4life @ 11:37 AM
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