Phantasy Star Portable is what I wished Monster Hunter was.

User Rating: 9 | Phantasy Star Portable PSP
Phantasy Star makes it's debut on the PSP with a great customizable RPG. Ever play Monster Hunter? It plays similarly to that, but on a much better scale. Some fans say Monster Hunter is better because of skill, but disregarding that, they are both great games, however Phantasy Star really shines out for me.

Now if you haven't played a Phantasy Star game or Monster Hunter before. Then this will be new to you, you start off by selecting a race, gender and name. Each race has it's benefits, beasts = melee, Newman = magic, CASTs (robots) = long range and humans = balance. Now what makes this different from Monster Hunter is that you actually level up, I found that a big turn off in Monster Hunter as I felt I wasn't really progressing far, always with the same area with no real motivation to go on. The same goes for story, Phantasy Star has a pretty cliche story and bad voice acting, but this compensates with incredible gameplay.

Graphics aren't exactly Crisis Core graphics but they are certainly not bad considering the huge environments you go through in each mission. The environments look large, detailed enough to the point of it being perfectly fine. Did I mention very low load times? For me, the game loads from block to block in about 2 seconds, not even, it flashes and it starts up right away again, never leaving you with the moment to wait. Character models look fine, and there's an assortment of monsters to fight which also look monster like enough to tell the difference.

Gameplay is simple. You do missions and roam around the area trying to complete it, you have an assortment of weapons that you can use, most which are beneficial based on the race you chose. There are guns, magic, daggers, dual daggers, swords, sabers, dual sabers, dual guns, large axes, rifles, claws and much more. Giving you a huge variety of weapons to chose from. As well during a mission, you can switch them around easily by holding circle and selecting the weapon you want with ease, making battles that much better when you have to switch from long range to close range in a second.

There are two types of missions, story driven missions and free missions. Free missions are basically missions in which you complete a task and have the ability to complete it whenever you feel like it. Free missions have different difficulty levels in which you must obtain a certain level to unlock. Story line missions are just that, they drive the story, most likely they represent the end of a chapter.

As for difficulty, the game isn't too difficult at all. Grinding isn't a huge deal in this, want to level? Isn't too hard at all. Free missions are usually there to give you that extra boost in levels. Story missions aren't too hard that you are required to finish Free missions either, they're at a right pace in which you can pretty much breeze through the game without playing a single free mission.

Battle is real time, so it's never slow nor do the frames ever hiccup when too many monsters appear.

You can also have a party, in which you can form with other NPCs when doing Free missions (story line missions have certain NPCs you must you). They'll help greatly whether it'd be support or not.

There are also a lot of customizable items in the game. You can buy a variety of armor, discs (skills), items and etc. You can also buy clothes and customize how your character look. You can change what skills are associated to your weapons.

There are also classes, such as hunter, which is better for melee weapons. As such you'd probably want to associate the right class for your race in order to maximize their ability. As well classes give the ability in which weapons you can use, and to up to what weapon class you can use.

There's also the ability to play with friends, similiar to Monster Hunter. Making this a great game to play either single or multi.

In the end, there's just so much this game packages in that it's worth the buy if you're looking for a satisfying RPG on the PSP.