3rd person shooter mixed with JRPG and it's awesome
I haven't watched the Black Rock Shooter(BRS)anime so I don't know much about it's story,all I know is the story is about how in the year 2032,aliens invaded Earth and have wiped out much of the Earth's population.In the year 2051 there's only 12 humans left alive on Earth and they awaken the BRS.The BRS is some sort of clone from personas that come from other worlds whom fight demons.The clone took 16 years to mature in a chamber before it was awakened and the last remaining humans are going to use her to fight the aliens as some sort of super weapon.Just from reading about the characters I can see there is a lot of interesting history to learn about BRS and the other worlds and about the other characters in the series but if you haven't watched the anime/OVAs you won't feel the full impact of the story from playing the game despite the fact the story presentation has lots of cutscenes showing you things happening within the story.
As for the game play,it's a lot like an RPG in the sense you'll level up and use and learn more skills which will help you in battle greatly.The skills are used in an interesting way because some of them are really weapons such as a weapon that allows you to do a powerful blast or a sniper rifle or being able to paralyze an enemy or use stat boosts and you can only equip so many skills.There is no stores and items can only be found from defeating enemies or chests.The levels are linear and you can't really explore them or talk to NPCs like in typical RPGs with the exception of one level.However,to stop it feeling too much like an action game,enemies won't attack you until you touch them.
For 3rd person shooter elements you'll manually target enemies you want to shoot.
For a bit of turn-based elements,sometimes you'll need to choose whether to attack or block/sidestep enemy attacks.
For more strategic depth,if you use abilities such as skills or sidesteping too much too much you won't be able to use those abilities until they cool down.
For a bit of action game play,there's times when you'll need to press certain buttons quickly during the battle system or ride a motorbike.
The game is short for an RPG,around 8-10 hours which kinda sucks.
The visuals are a bit rough but are passable for PSP standards and there's still an interesting combination of colors and things to see such as the dark black revealing outfit of BRS and her hairstyle in which numerous parts of her long black hair stretches out very far(it's hard to explain but looks cool)and the huge gun she carries and you'll see characters with pink hair and white hair and colorful robots.There's still some nice and atmospheric and artistic cutscenes and some of the gameplay environments have great atmosphere such as when you're travelling up the ruins of extremely tall buildings and it gives you a great sense of height.At least the game gives you different types of environments such as cities and forest and snow/icey areas and futuristic.
The music is pretty much what you'd expect for a Sci Fi themed Japanese game,a lot of electro sounding music,I heard one of my favorite Japanese bands(Blood Stain Child)did music for Black Rock Shooter but I didn't notice any of their music for the game so it must just be for the anime.
Overall,BRS is a great mix of 3rd person shooter and RPG and is a great game in the PSP's library but it's lack of extra polish and short length stop it being a true gem.