Spectacular swordplay moves! A decent role-playing game to spend a week on.

User Rating: 7.5 | Tenchi no Mon PSP
As one of the few role-playing games in the PSP market at the time, Kingdom of Paradise beats the rest with its unique and interesting combat system. You combine moves that come in the form of scrolls that you find from treasure chests and enemy drops and activate them in special sequences that is easy to use and fun to watch. Thus, one major appeal of playing this game comes from the treasure hunting process to get all the scrolls for the particular sequence you want.

The combat moves are inspired from ancient Chinese martial swordplay but the premise is heavily influenced by Japanese culture. The mix looks quite strange to me since I've watched a lot of Chinese fantasy kungfu films since I was a kid and the Japanese are never a part of it. But to the rest of the world, it may be an interesting fusion culture for you to experience.

The role-playing element is actually quite tedious halfway through the game when you find that all you have to do is actually running around in circles across the map triggering scenes to advance to the next checkpoint. Luckily, the boss fights are challenging enough to not get boring, especially against monster bosses which are quite a sight to behold. However, you may find that eventually, the easiest way out of every enemy encounter is to activate the highest level Chi arts that you can muster which renders the spectacular swordplay useless all this while. Finally, the fact that your character is stuck with the only weapon equipped from the beginning till end game puts me off. But if you are just looking for a fun hack'n'slash role-playing adventure to entertain yourself for the week, feel free to give it a try.

KingLim