Eastern mythology and lots of great-looking swordplay combine in Kingdom of Paradise, an exciting and action-packed 3D role-playing game exclusively for the PSP. It's worth noting right up front that Kingdom of Paradise would have been a solid console game if it weren't portable, so the fact that you can carry this full-fledged, graphically remarkable RPG with you wherever you go is an impressive feat. But it's refreshing to see this game only on the PSP, considering the system's library is laced so heavily with console hand-me-downs. Kingdom of Paradise has somewhat of a steep learning curve and its flashy combat system has a few problems, but the quality of the game's presentation and the generally entertaining battles almost completely overshadow these setbacks.

Spectacular swordplay and heavy Eastern influences make Kingdom of Paradise an unusually satisfying role-playing game.

The hero of the story is Shinbu, a young swordsman dedicated to perfecting his martial arts. He's a former disciple of Seiryu, but fell from the graces of his nation's military sect when his curiosity got the better of him and he discovered some forbidden fighting techniques. But Shinbu is a good-natured guy and not a rebel--he'd like nothing better than to regain his good standing. The problem is, it seems the other Seiryu disciples have been wiped out. So Shinbu sets off on a journey to figure out what's going on, which will take him all across the country of Ouka and its different regions, each one named for and inspired by a monstrous god (Seiryu, for instance, is a blue dragon). During his adventure, he'll meet all manner of friend and foe, and many of these characters are quite compelling, thanks to some excellent character design and lots of high-quality speech. However, the story itself is rather dense and fairly predictable, though it's perfectly serviceable stuff to carry a role-playing game.

If you're familiar with Eastern mythology, you'll recognize some of the names and characters in Kingdom of Paradise, and will be in a better position to soak up all the different, unusual names the game quickly throws at you. The combination of both Chinese and Japanese influences gives Kingdom of Paradise its own unique feel, though in another way this makes the game quite reminiscent of this year's Jade Empire for the Xbox, another martial arts RPG set in a made-up version of the ancient Orient. What's mildly annoying is that if you do happen to know a little Japanese, you'll find that the otherwise-competent voice-over cast screws up a lot of the pronunciations. You'll even hear some inconsistencies in the pronunciations of certain names from one character to the next, but then again, we don't know for sure how they pronounce things in the country of Ouka. Regardless, the game's Eastern styling definitely shines through, making for a role-playing experience that's out of the ordinary. For instance, it's great that most battles pit you against enemy swordsmen rather than your typical host of generic fantasy creatures.

There's a great cast of characters to meet, do battle with, and fight alongside during the course of the game.

Two words you'll need to learn early on in Kingdom of Paradise are "bugei" and "kenpu." The game's manual does a better job explaining these than the game itself, but in short, bugei are special combat scrolls and kenpu are the tiles that are used to fill them out. Swordplay in Kingdom of Paradise involves equipping Shinbu with various bugei scrolls you find; but before you do that, you'll want to fill out your bugei with as many kenpu tiles as you can. Defeated enemies will often drop kenpu tiles, and it quickly gets to be quite addictive finding all the dozens of these to fill out your assortment of combos. Each bugei scroll consists of a completely different string of combat moves, and bugei scrolls are also aligned with the four elemental gods or other fighting styles. On top of that, Shinbu will also learn chi arts, which are powerful elemental strikes that damage all his surrounding foes. And if all this sounds like a lot to take in at first, that's because it definitely is.

Fortunately, the combat itself is really quite fun and simple once you get past the complicated systems behind it, especially because Shinbu's sword-fighting techniques just look so terrific. The look of the combat bears much more resemblance to fighting games than to role-playing games, and yes, that's a high compliment. You'll see Shinbu deftly execute elaborate strings of slashes, twirls, and kicks, which will often cause his foes to get knocked off their feet and then juggled midair by successive strikes. He'll also learn to throw his sword (which returns to him like a boomerang), allowing for a finishing move of sorts that causes a hapless foe to get impaled and then blasted by the full force of Shinbu's chi attacks. All this is accomplished primarily by mashing on the attack button, so the combat is quite easy to control.