The most fun ARPG on handhelds. Y's 7 is a masterpiece and the strongest of the series. You owe it to yourself to play!
Inteface - The game provides a consice interface detailing things like points of damage , loot pickups, etc.. It's non intrusive and very well done with nice fonts. The menu system is well structured, fast loading and full of depth , which is what is needed in a rpg..
Story - Great story, some may say, its a typical jrpg fair, but it's not. Sure it deals with saving the land (but why do people take that as a bad thing) but the way it is told and the characters are not typical at all. All the cutscenes are in-engine so you never feel out of the game. The story revolves around you going to various temples across the map getting power from the ancient dragon gods. Meanwhile thier are undertones of conspiracy acrouss the kingdom. You are outsiders to this land and you are not trusted a whole lot. It's difficult to explain the story without spoiling it so I will leave it at this. Its a fantastic story with many, many many twists and "oh snap" moments. I was highly impressed!
Gameplay..-- Here is where this game excels. I went from playing DQ9 to this and let me tell you, I haven't touched dq9 since (or the other games I was playing) y's 7 uses a cool system where you have a 3 person party and its press x to attak, hold x down to charge to get more damage and get sp to launch special skills. hold R1 and one of the buttons to do a special move that you map yourself to the buttons, hold L1 to do an extra move which you build up to using more and more special moves. Everything is fast paced, you have a dodge button which basically lets you roll/jump around the map. The combat is fast, frentic and damn addictive. When you kill something it drops all these coins and materials that you can use for crafting. The loot system feels like a lego game (the best way i can describe it) when you kill enemies they drop coins and you pick them up it sounds like picking up legos in one of those games... its really slick. There are of course treasure chests to, and tons of items for enviroment manipulation, key type items, maps, and puzzle solving gear.
-Summary-
Y's 7 is a masterpiece. You owe it to yourself to buy and play this fantastic game. Its a long game running well over 40 hours. it has an incredible story and people need to pick this up. This game was built from the ground up on psp and that is a good thing as there are no loading times, it has a fantastic interface and slick combat system. No other Arpg compares on the psp.
Gamespot is overly harsh on the psp and it pisses me off..if this was on the ds with worse graphics it would of scored 9+ ... GS sucks at psp reviews... Y's 7 deserves at least a 9 and in my opinion it's a 10 game, without a doubt.
on a side note.. I love the monster hunter type creatures you find in the world (don't try killing them at low level.. one hit does 2000+ damage from some of these guys..