• Big Bang Mini
  
• Brave: A Warrior's Tale
• Brave: Shaman's Challenge
• Igor The Game
• Monster Madness: Grave Danger
• Ninjatown
• Raven Squad
• X-Blades

• 80 - EuroGamer: "A very, very good videogame: another brilliant evolution of Koei's unique interpretation of the real-time strategy genre..."
• 61 - PSM3 Magazine UK: "A so-so mix of tactics and chaotic combat."
• 60 - PSM Magazine
• 47 - EGM: "With all these hiccups, I'm shocked this war lasted one year, let alone 100." (I see EGM keeps getting wittier and wittier)
  
• 40 - 1UP: "The majority of the environments are quite sparse, with few buildings yet plenty of fog to help hide the fact that the draw distance here isn't that spectacular."

Though the PlayStation Portable may have its shortcomings, if it’s one thing Sony’s sleek handheld doesn’t lack, it’s basic RPGs – most of which have been coming from Sony’s in-house Japan developers. Titles like Kingdom of Paradise and the Untold Legends series have at least given PSP RPGers something to tide them over until more high-quality games (including Square’s just released Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth) have hit the market, and in that vain comes NIS America’s Blade Dancer: Lineage of Light, another Sony in-house title made in Japan.

Blade Dancer is a basic RPG that throws in an average hero, a “save the world” quest, a flashy opening, tons of enemies to plow through, and a lovely anime style that RPG fans will appreciate, but it isn’t enough. Despite the fact that the title is actually playable, its flaws will combine to overwhelm you and will leave you both frustrated and infuriated at its gameplay.

Blade Dancer begins with a typical plot-base: gamers are cast as Lance, a young adventurer hoping to test his skills in the secretive kingdom of Foo, which has just begun opening its doors to the rest of the world. Though Lance is eager to jump into the fray and help as many people as he can get his hands on (slaying dozens of foes while he’s at it), Blade Dancer doesn’t start with a traditional main quest; instead, the game allows the player to freely roam around town while picking up side quests, meeting NPCs, and learning the immediate layout of the land. Eventually the player is thrust into the primary storyline, which sees Lance (who may, or may not be the famed “Blade Dancer” – judging from the moon on his face, I’d say it’s a solid bet) fighting against an evil force from Foo’s dark past. In the process, there’s a pretty girl who needs rescuing and a world that needs protecting from this sinister figure, and of course a few allies who are willing to help Lance along the way. 

The action in Blade Dancer can be summed up in a simple formula: you maneuver Lance through the town, picking up quests and preparing for danger before actually trading the security of those big gray walls for lots and lots of monsters. The missions are quite standard and involve you seeking out characters, foes, and items to exchange for rewards. Prior to leaving town to embark on an adventure, however, you’re forced to stock up on items – especially crafting objects – because every piece of weaponry in the game has a durability meter that represents the likelihood of its shattering during combat.

And because your weapons break, you’re faced with two options: either purchasing duplicates from the weapon store (easy, but pricey) or making your own copies. To do this it’s off to the appraiser’s office, where an NPC will charge you the flat rate of 100G to disassemble your desired object (weapon, potion, or armor). Once you’ve broken Lance’s new sword into pieces, you can then pay to have the appraiser break each piece into its pieces, and so on until you’ve got a set of recipes that will eventually lead you back up to your new sword.

After you’ve enriched the appraiser it’s off to the crafting broker, who will sell you some of the basics needed to craft duplicates of the sword you just reassembled yourself (that lazy appraiser won't help you here). Crafting is a big highlight in Blade Dancer’s gameplay; if you’re the RPGer who is delighted by the opportunity of creating junk and then selling it at mark-up, or using that junk because weapons constantly break on you, you’ll have a great time. Lance is gifted with 100 item slots to hold all those crafting materials, complete with an arrange (i.e., stack) option, so there’s plenty of room to collect crafting goodies. To obtain them, though, you’ll have to use both the crafting broker and the game’s battle scheme, as some materials are only dropped off monsters.

Once you’ve filled Lance’s slots with potions and duplicate swords, it’s time to move outside for some actual fighting. Enemies in Blade Dancer come in small groups and are represented on-screen by giant flying skulls; the skulls’ color indicates how below (blue) or above (red) your level the opponents are, while a nice, angry white skull is a perfect target. The skulls patrol set paths and either make chomping gestures while they’re fleeing from Lance or soar right into him to instigate a fight. Then the now-traditional active-time battle system kicks in and things get a bit more interesting. Blade Dancer’s fight sequences make use of lunar clocks, which are small circles next to each teammate’s name. As the “hand” on the clock comes full circle, an exclamation point lights up and it’s time to select that character to plan an attack; characters can also use items, run away (always handy), or equip a different weapon (preferably one that won’t break during the fight). However, there's no defense option.

Each attack, whether it’s derived from an opponent or an ally, fills up the shared lunar gauge, which is the bar at the top of the screen that determines a character’s “lunabilities”. Lunabilities are special abilities that are unleashed from within each character, and each requires a certain amount (points... ) of lunar energy, which is taken from the lunar gauge. They range from solo specials to powerful group attacks that involve the whole team, and also contain the typical heal, defense up, attack up, etc., spells. The lunability feature definitely increases the game’s difficulty level, as you’ll want to use up points on the lunar gauge before your opponents do and also keep tab on whose raising the bar the most/preparing to go lunar on Lance’s team. When someone is about to launch a lunability, hitting that person (again, friend or foe) will often break the charge and return those lunar points to the gauge.

All of this fighting and exploring would be incomplete without several towns to visit and various environments to explore, and Hit Maker at least made an attempt to enliven the experience. The game makes use of the typical waterfall or steam, along with lush, green forests and blue skies overhead. For more enhanced visuals, character animations are smooth and are highlighted by long segments of Lance running from place to place, while the cutscenes (which use in-game graphics and vibrantly colored storyboard character depictions) give the game much needed presentation points. Lunabilities performed during battles are also nice touches and provide the gamer with some graphical flash. 

To keep up with the average visual presentation, Blade Dancer features some lovely background music used for towns and important moments. The game’s opening theme is also very catchy, and voiceovers thankfully offer two options: either the energetic English approach, or traditional Japanese voiceacting (pick the latter). Typical ambient sounds – Lance’s feet hitting the earth, sword slashes, etc., - also abound. 

A key word used for describing the majority of Blade Dancer’s gameplay is “mediocre,” and that’s on a respectful note. To put it bluntly, nearly every aspect of the game is going to irritate you, beginning with the plot. Lance just sort of falls into the main storyline: He journeys to Foo, seeking adventure, and happens to find it (i.e., the bad guy). He essentially does what he can because he can, and despite his noble promise to help people, the gamer doesn’t take away much in terms of explanation or character depth – which is why I didn’t bother to detail the rest of the party. Tess, Gozen, and Felis are as static as Lance and should be considered as nothing more than animated place holders for Lance’s back-up attacks, and this is a bad thing for an RPG because RPGs encourage you to form attachments to characters and events – which requires context.

The next fault concerns the representational skulls in place of real enemies, which not only cheapens the experience (you’re not avoiding life-threatening dragons or challenging terrifying pirates, but skulls... ) but aggravates you as the skulls line up while they chase you down. In the end, you’re fighting several battles as the skulls catch up to you, such that you’re battling in succession; the real pain here is that you can’t stop to heal yourself between the mayhem (Hit Maker recommends lengthening fights in order to cast heal spells before the win for precisely this reason). You get the same problem during exploration when you’re stuck in certain areas – like closed corridors – because the skulls quickly regenerate and resume patrol. Add to this the fewer save spots/life points (save circles don’t heal you, and therefore the game needs life points) and weapons that routinely break for a hellish good time.

Moreover, there’s a serious balancing issue. Despite the blue/white/red marked skulls, some of the blue skulls house opponents that can and will decimate your team on occasion, while white skulls can be harder than the red. The improper balancing (paired with the inability to heal before the next fight) means that you’ll be dying a lot, especially while traversing areas teaming with white/red skulls. And frequent dying, of course, adds to the already frequent loading times, which occur as you zone into new segments of town or even enter/leave a house.

Another flaw is really three-fold. Lance runs quite slowly throughout the large areas, so when you’re running from place to place (in town) before you set out for monster-slaying and girl-saving, prepare for a lot of backtracking, which amounts to a lot of wasted time. More so when you’re working with fewer save spots, because when you load up after a death you’re headed straight through the same areas only to die again. Furthermore, due to the game’s poor balancing, you’ll be spending a lot of hours leveling up, going back to town to re-equip and forge duplicates, and then more travel time running all the way back to where you left off.

Blade Dancer’s presentation also takes a few hits. The environments are quite bland and amount to a bulk of gray – castles, walls, streets – or brown – walls, streets, etc., - or green (those forests again). There’s also a slight draw-in problem for characters and items, as they only pop up when you’re approaching them and hence, you can rarely see anything off in the distance. Many of the areas feature spots covered in a light mist or very tight hallways (that you can’t avoid baddies while you walk through), and again, this cheapens what you’re seeing. Characters models, while average, are also recycled between characters of the same class/type (i.e., peasants). Animations are smooth when you do get them during cutscenes/while Lance plays errand boy, but in some spots they’re almost removed entirely. For example, during battle sequences when Lance or an ally approaches an opponent, he just pops up in front of the selected target and swipes – there’s a three second gap during which Lance is running to his foe that is removed from the action, and Blade Dancer doesn’t need that gap.

The audio fares no better. The player gets absolutely no sound while she travels through areas outside of town, with the exception of Lance’s footfall and the strange noise emitted from the skulls as they target Lance for the kill. The game offers no music during very long bouts of roaming for missions, and that’s an extreme downside for an RPG that forces you to put in that extra roaming time.

I’m also displeased with the crafting system, which is supposed to make it easier (and cheaper) to create duplicates so that Lance and friends can level up with less worries. Unfortunately, some of the items needed for more advanced weaponry aren’t sold at the crafting broker, and this becomes added frustration when you can’t get the items to drop on the field.

Finally, the game’s worst fault is that because the action, the missions, the battles, and Lance are so ungodly slow, you’ll be in the same stage of the game 15 hours in as you were at 1 hour, and that’s just painful. You can spend a dozen hours of your life wading through Blade Dancer’s enemies and not get anywhere – few directions, too many re-spawning baddies, breaking weapons, no music during your hours of struggle, widely dispersed save/life circles, bland environs, lots of repetition, backtracking, and lots of boredom are all present in Blade Dancer – and all are the aspects of the masochist’s RPG. 

And if you are a masochist, feel free to encourage your friends to purchase additional copies so you can create teams for network play because suffering through the main game just isn’t enough. 

As an avid RPGer and NIS America fan, I was definitely expecting more from Hit Maker and Sony's Blade Dancer: Lineage of Light. As it stands, the goal of the game seems to be that you level up to the point that you can walk through a new area without dying in the middle, and this isn’t enjoyable in the slightest. If you’ve got an urge for an extremely challenging and unrewarding (yet functional) RPG, give it a go. Everyone else is better off waiting for the next PSP game. 

Functional, but painful, and I’m not a fan of repetitious pain.

The environs are livable and animations work well, when we get them. Needs more flash.

When we get it. Town music, opening theme, and Japanese voiceovers are nice, though.

It’s not completely terrible and is far from a very bad game, so you may have some fun.

As with most RPGs, if you like it enough to finish, you’ll spend a lot of time with it.

]]> Wed, 02 Aug 2006 19:31:00 -0500 The Gaming Horizon Archive http://www.gamebump.com/go/untold_legends_goes_gold_for_psp http://www.gamebump.com/go/untold_legends_goes_gold_for_psp http://www.gamebump.com/go/untold_legends_goes_gold_for_psp# Sony Online Entertainment Inc. today announced that Untold Legends: Brotherhood of the Blade has gone gold for the PSP.

“In just a few days, the handheld gaming revolution begins with the launch of the PSP handheld system, and given the strong feedback we are receiving from the press, retailers, and consumers via pre-sell orders, Untold Legends is proving to be a must-have launch title,” said Torrie Dorrell, Senior Vice President, Sony Online Entertainment. “Untold Legends is a brand new intellectual property built from the ground up specifically for the PSP handheld system, and will be the only action role-playing game available at the new system’s launch.”

Untold Legends will be available at a price of $39.99 and is scheduled to ship to retail stores on March 22, 2005.

Originally written by Tim Grube]]> Tue, 31 Jan 2006 22:23:00 -0600 Shiva Stella http://www.gamebump.com/go/new_blade_dancer_screens http://www.gamebump.com/go/new_blade_dancer_screens http://www.gamebump.com/go/new_blade_dancer_screens# This article was originally published on Gaming Horizon, GameBump's predecessor. Certain formatting, imaged, and embedded content may have been lost in the transition process.

The first and only RPG available for Sony’s PSP, Untold Legends passes itself off as the sum of recently released RPGs, only portable, and for the most part that wouldn’t be incorrect. There are some detailed environments, a somewhat practical plot, a decent button-mashing premise, and the standard stats available for adjustment, but what it really comes down to is what you’re willing to sacrifice for a portable RPG.

UL’s storyline begins directly enough: the player’s character has won the championship title of Guardian, requiring that s/he stay in the city of Aven as its official protector, serving the people in times of need. Unfortunately something sinister is about, and of course this evil force begins attacking on your shift. The basic plot has the player completing quests to further the investigation of evil in order to save Aven. Not exactly earth-shaking or even remotely intriguing at the least, but for a portable title it’s enough to go on.

Basic gameplay has players choosing a class from the available list: alchemist, druid, knight, and berserker. The classes are rather self-explanatory and each plays simply; the alchemist focus her power into her intelligence stat and attacks with both melee and magic; the druid focuses on intelligence but rounds out his other stats (stamina, strength) more equally, using nature’s magic and basic melee attacks to advance; the knight focuses largely on strength and stamina, wielding the most powerful weapons while taking hits well; and the berserker focuses primarily upon strength, using the stat base to unleash devastating damage. Each class has a typical fighting technique – flips and kicks for the berserker, basic sword-swipes for the alchemist, etc. – and each can be visually modified in limited terms of skin tone, hair color, and hair style.

Other than the basic stat adjustments, players are able to select their character’s armor, weapons, and jewelry. The inventory screen will appear familiar to RPGers, and is extremely reminiscent of Sony’s Champions of Norrath inventory selection system. Items take up a certain number of blocks, and when the weight limit has been reached the character is unable to carry any more equipment. The standard gear – armor and weapons – can be modified with special enchantment items, like storm totems, by selecting the enchantment item and then the equipment desired for upgrading. The menu system is maneuvered through via the L and R buttons (with some lag between screens) and the cursor is controlled with the analog stick.

When a player is ready to get into the actual game, he may choose to start a normal (offline) one, or go online and either join a multiplayer room or host his own. Since chances are good you’ll rarely ever spend time in multiplayer mode I’ll be focusing on the regular, single-player option. Once inside you’ll be greeted with the initial storyboards explaining the plot, a couple (very lengthy) loading screens, and finally the beginning stage, inside the Inn. Players control their character with the analog stick, which provides much smoother movement than I’d anticipated, and attacking is accomplished via mashing the X button. If magical attacks are your preferred method of slaying, you’ll be pleased to know that a now-standard quick-menu has been implemented. The quick-menu hosts up to eight magic spells and allows for two quick-magic buttons to be assigned (circle and triangle), which is now also standard and very convenient, and is accessed through the D-pad.

Killing in UL is just like killing in any other recent hack-fest RPG, and involves running into foes with blades swinging (or spells casting, depending upon your preference). There’s no manual targeting involved so spells and arrows kind of fly out on their own, but if you’d like to feel a little more control you can always zoom the camera in by holding down R and pressing up on the D-pad, showing where to more precisely attack. You can also adjust the camera from the normal via with the other D-pad buttons.

The environments in UL are adequately detailed, with trees dotting the forested landscapes, snow falling from the air, water rushing from spouts/pipes, rocks decorating the land, and individual concrete blocks visible on the streets. Spell effects are colorful, bright, and even nicely misty in some cases, showcasing the graphical power of the PSP. Modified weapons also shimmer/glow, and with the camera zoomed in you’ll be able to see the fine details in character clothing. Enemies (monsters, boars, spiders, and the like) receive just as much attention. The game isn’t exactly beautiful, but for the first RPG on the handheld, it’s got enough visual pizzazz for a single play-through.



That’s if, of course, you enjoy the game enough to even finish it once. The most serious fault of UL is that it’s extremely boring, typical, generic, and dull. Enemy AI is simple and straightforward, requiring absolutely no strategy from the player. Running around in circles, spewing acidic juices at bosses, is just as likely to guarantee a win as is standing and fighting, with or without strategy. There’s a slew of very long, very frequent loading screens for each time the player enters a new area. The storyline is so mediocre and un-intriguing that even the most aloof RPGer will find that it offers zero motivation or interest. An annoying bonus is the lack of sufficient quest information. You’ll learn to head to area A and that’s about it, which means you’ll spend some time wandering around, looking for the next (pointless) boss to kill.



Taken for what it is, Untold Legends: Brotherhood of the Blade is an adequate RPG for the PSP, being that it’s the only one available at the moment. However, even the most indifferent RPGer will find it boring and uneventful. If you can ignore the absolute dullness of Untold Legends and truly desire a portable RPG (and lack a GameBoy Advance), only then can I recommend you give Untold Legends a try.

Standard hack-n-slash that apparently every developer thinks constitutes a good RPG.

Not particularly bad, but bland. Good details for characters and enemies.

Swoosh, swing, growl, and howl, plus a forgetful background song.

Absolutely boring and bland.

Multiplayer means you might come back.

]]> Tue, 12 Apr 2005 19:46:00 -0500