The Phantasy Star series comes to PSP and brings with it the fast paced and fun action of its earlier games.
Other Platforms: None
Release Date: March 3rd 2009
Genre: Action-RPG
Number of Players: 1-4
ERSB Rating: Teen
Review
The Phantasy Star series has been around for quite some time, hitting up consoles such as the Sega Genesis, Dreamcast, PS2, among others. The PSP got its' first chance to dive into the series in the beginning of March. The game seemed to be kind of an after thought to me and I wasn't sure I was even going to pick up. I was glad I did as the game brought some fun times to me and sticks more with the Phantasy Star Universe style of things. I was also happy to hear they are making one for the DS later this year, but for now let us stick with Phantasy Star Portable and a few thoughts on it as I played through and conquered it.
Story
Not to start of on to sour of a note, but I was not a huge fan of the story in Phantasy Star Portable. Nothing caught my attention during it and I found myself skipping through the talking scenes and after some time, just wanted to get on to the fighting, which is what this game is really all about. I didn't even know I was coming to the end of the game and I beat one of the bosses and the credits rolled, I was shocked... But lets get into the game play and the meat of what drives this good game.
Game play
The game play starts off fairly simple as you are forced to picked to start customizing your character which turns out to be an immense part of the game. Meaning that you could have hundreds of combination's depending on your choices for your character. You first must choose between Human, Beast, Newman and Cast, all of which have a few different attributes. And of course don't forget to choose male or female :) I chose Cast, which is a robot and is AI, and male to boot. After going through how you want it to look, you get to choose from 3 jobs, Hunter, Range and Force, but later on you can choose from several others. You also get to choose a Partner Machine that hangs out in your room.
After all that you can pick up and start playing. You meet many people through your journey and most will go along with you and fight with you during missions. Once they go with you once, normally you can take them along again later. The only time partners are limited is when you are doing Story Missions. Story Missions are specific to the progress of the game. Normally after clearing Story Missions other Missions, called Free Missions, will open up for you to play and gain levels. For these Free Missions, their is 4 difficulty levels, each with monsters gaining in strength and power.
Now to the actual hands on fighting. Depending on which job you have for your character, you will be able to equip certain items. I chose Fighmaster and was more into big swords. For each type of weapons, special attacks, called Photon Arts that can be attached to each weapon once you find the, and these can unleash a big time chain of damage. These attack do use points that will regenerate over time, or you can use an item do charge also. Their is a ton of items, weapons, armor and even clothing you can find to change your appearance. I could mention everything but that is no fun.
The boss battles bring a nice change of pace to the game, some are flying through the air, others diving in and out of water, and yes some big ones to come kick your butt on land. They look nice and seem pretty balanced to your character, not to hard or to easy.
Sound and Graphics
The graphics in the game are very nice and pleasing to the eye, the bosses and enemies look great on the PSP. The game is brought to life with the small screen and makes things a blast to explore. Scenery in different planets varies too a point as it really looks like your on a different planet. Both your character as well as the others you interact with all are very nicely done with nothing look stale or redone. The music fits the game and really didn't change my opinion of the game a whole lot. One thing that did was the terrible voice acting. Most of the time I found myself skipping over the talking as much as I could to avoid it. Also your character never really talks which kind of sucks to a point. One other small gripe I had was camera angles can get a little wacky in certain spots. IE the last boss which I didn't even know was the last boss until it was over, had a brutal camera angle and got me almost killed several times.
Overall
This is a great 'level-grinding' game on the PSP. If you enjoy massive character customization, great graphics and drive to keep finding some of that rare loot. Then you need to pick it up. I enjoyed putting 40+ hours into it even by myself and I didn't really touch on the multi-player. A weak story and a few camera angle bugs as well as some issues with the Lock-on system make this a good game, not a great game. I recommend sticking the money and time into it. Overall it gets an 8.0 but is close to getting a higher grade. Just needed a little more on story side.