Adventures to go brings a new dynamic to rpg's, unfortunately it's not enough to overcome it's other problems.
• Adventuring ordering system is new and interesting.
• Main character has a entertaining personality.
Cons:
• After around 10 hours the new adventure ordering system loses it's novelty and game play becomes to repetitive.
• Besides the main character all the other characters seem bland and there is just not enough character interaction to keep game flow moving.
• Magic system is to costly and items offer a cheaper alternative, this makes the magic system pointless.
• Store line is bland and flows far to slowly.
• Low budget kills the huge potential that this game had.
The story and characters are quite limited, basically you play as Finn a young teen that decides to take advantage of a unique magical service that the town provides. Slowly you meet 3 other people and create a adventuring party. The game progresses so slowly that I only got a glimpse at the story line before I stopped playing, basically the magical dungeon service is interfering with the demon world and the demons are not happy about it.
Game play focuses on a magical dungeon that can be created at a mall like location, this dungeon is a lot like the holodeck from the Star Trek TV shows. For a fee you can order a dungeon that can have many areas leading to it and many levels to it, also the types of monsters and number of treasure chests are also options. The thing that progresses the game flow are event tickets, you find them hidden in the dungeon. When you order an adventure and then add a event ticket, a special event occurs that progress the story. Combat is turn based and occurs on a grid that varies in size depending on the area where the battle takes place. Characters and monsters have AP (Action Points) which are used to move, attack, use items and cast spells. If you defend instead of using your AP then the next turn your character will have even more AP to use. Magic is cast through buying elemental crystal shards, by combining the shards you can create more spells. There are hints in the dungeons on combinations to create new spells and the game remembers these hints for you so you don't need to write them down. At the magical mall there are shops for buying items, shards, weapons and armour. Buying shards and having enough of them is very costly and I found that just buying items that did the same thing was much cheaper. There is also a office in town where you can go to take on tasks, once the task is done you return for a reward. Basically every day you go to the Adventures to go building, order a adventure, complete the adventure and then return home to rest. The next day you do the exact same thing, day after day you do this and this is how the game progresses. Some times you have to go for quite a few days before you have enough money saved up to order an adventure that will progress the storyline.
The graphics are not bad but below what I expect for a PSP game, the budget to make the game probably wasn't very large but the graphics are not so bad that it makes playing the game impossible.
The value isn't to bad since the game was only about $20, but I was unable to finish the game due to much repletion and a very slow story line flow. If I could of gotten pass that the game would of been much more of a deal.
Final thoughts:
Adventures to go has a interesting game play mechanic in the ordering of adventures, but a low production budget combined with a very slow store line killed the potential that the game clearly has. I can only recommend this game to people that have a large amount of patience, after 22 hours I just couldn't continue.
Story & Characters: 6
Game Play: 7
Graphics: 7
Value: 6
Score: 6.5/10