Worth adding to your PSP library, whoever you are.
That's what can be said about Sony Online Entertainment's first foray into the portable online world. An underrated videogame at the most, Untold Legends: Brotherhood of the Blade is pretty much a portable dream. Think about it: how many portables can have you playing an RPG on the go, with or without your PSP-totting friends? Truth be told, in its very core, it's still the killing spree that it has ever been, minus the gory execution cutscenes and blood splatters all over the place. Undeniably, this fact can definitely turn down the interest of people who were hoping something much more than the generic online RPG style of Brotherhood of the Blade.
But if you overlook its simplicity, you'll realize that it's suddenly much more. Taking more than one page from it's big daddy EverQuest and maybe borrowing some from the likes of Diablo and Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance will definitely turn heads, and it should be a good thing.
The story is simple: You are summoned in the town of Aven which just recently became overrun with monsters, and it is your job to rid the town of these monsters by going on quests. Until you complete all of your quests, the town will still be overrun by these monsters. Yes, typical dark online RPG stuff, but at the very least, it's not like the "orphaned hero/s out to save the world from a larger-than-Godzilla" RPG.
You start out the game, creating your character. There are four character classes to choose from, but keep in mind that each character class is limited to a set of items. Not all armor and weapons are available for your enemy-mashing. That said, there are also specific abilities for each of the classes. These abilities range from stronger attacks to pet-summoning, and upgrading to better abilities can definitely be exciting.
After creating your cheap-looking-and-packing character, you are either thrown into the world of Aven alone or with friends. This is because you can choose to have someone quest with you, or you can go in alone. It's the advantages of being a hack-and-slasher, apparently.
Quests start out simple, as you navigate your way through dungeons, killing every possible thing that moves. But as time wears on, you find yourself going back to dungeons even off quests, just to level up and get a gobfull of money on your side. Enemies drop out items, armor, weapons and accessories, that you can either sell to a merchant, utilize, or even drop. Inventory space is limited. You can't carry everything because of their weight. That said, you must try to plan what weapon and armor set you'll use, as well as what to sell.
NPC interaction is rather predictable, as they praise you and encourage you and sometimes also express fear of what is to come, leaving you with an impression that you won't just talk to them. Certain NPCs should be conversed in order to progress storyline and go to more expanded dungeons and sub-dungeons. Sub-dungeons basically are dungeons in dungeons, which will probably take a lot of time to explore. Enemies are abundant and mostly attack in packs, making it having a friend or two be an essential in your quest. If you're the loner type, a load of potions could do the trick.
The game is beautiful. Detailed environments really add to the addictive questing you do. Although sometimes the dungeons are bland, generic and whatever tomatoes you wanna throw to them, they still vary in design in some way, making it at least better. The music is fitting, since you do dangerous dungeon hacks. Those who hope for voicing aren't in luck, since there are no voice-overs in Brotherhood of the Blade.
In short, Brotherhood of the Blade is such an excellent and satisfying videogame that it helps to play it over and over again, maybe to release pent-up aggression or if killing fantasy and snot-shooting monsters is your thing.
And to make it clear, I'm no online gamer. I have never played PristonTale, Flyff or whatever tomato that is. Frankly, I have also never played Diablo and Baldur's Gate. So this is an honest-to-goodness review. Albeit a lengthy one.