"Decent game, but little things bring it down below par."

When I went looking for some games for my PSP, I was enthusiastically recommended this game by a person who knew I was a fan of RPGs. I can't imagine, though, how anyone would truly get more than some trifling enjoyment out of this. The problem wasn't one single disastrous flaw that ruined any enjoyment, but lots of little things that wait around the corner to annoy you. Any of these things I could (and have) tolerated in other RPGs, but they just come together in some synergistic effect of blandness to make me lose my desire to play the game at all.

Gameplay: 5/10
The biggest issue with gameplay is that it is absolutely linear. Now, note I only played through about 10 hours of the game (which, according to the box is about 1/5 of it) before getting sick of it and returning it, but in that ten hours I felt like I was being led around by the hand. "No" says Muse, "We ought to go to Tibri first. We have important business that can't wait" as you attempt to leave any exit but that towards Tibri. "That awful smell... I'd rather not go in there" as you attempt to enter the sewers of the capital city. The quests are rather standard fare of RPGs, but you have to finish one before even considering another.

Then, there is the fighting. What could have been a good, area based fighting system suffers from being totally arbitrary. While you do have a certain distance you can move and attack (even with magic spells!) you can't really control the movement, and this can render area-based spells pretty useless, as you can't really position yourself next to the enemy properly. And it generally doesn't matter anyway because, at least for as far as I played, you don't even need your magic, just standard attacks and maybe a bit of healing. If you did use magic, however, there was a pretty generic element system where fire and water are strong against each other and earth and wind are strong against each other. Eh.

Furthermore, everyone gets spells and skills, but you just get them whenever. There's not even a real indication that you may get a spell soon, you just level up and then, whoops, there's a spell! How about that?

Story: 4/10

For as far as I played, the story seemed to be created by people with big goals and little creativity (For crying out loud, the game is called "Legend of Heroes, a Tear of Vermillion", how much more of a lofty sounding name can you want?). They had the standard stock of gods, and though I had hoped there would be a little more philosophical debate about the fact that Octum is bad and Bardus is good, and yet they are the same being, but there wasn't. Similar with the characters: The mild mannered clever boy who controls his emotions and keeps the main character in line, who is angry at seemingly everything and ready to fight at a moments notice. There's the mysteeeeeerious girl with a secret past with bandits, and a student/teacher who... um... I guess is just there to have a filler character. What are their goals? I dunno, lets pick them out of this bag labelled "Stuff that's been done." Well, you get the idea. There was little to keep me interested here.

Graphics/Sound: 7/10

Now, I did think that the game generally did look pretty good. While it could have been done, without the 3D effects, on a less powerful system, it had decent textures and some rather pleasant looking old-school style sprites, and (though this was kind of annoying) it would have a good anime-style depiction pop up for any of the main characters if they were talking. The monsters were... OK, I guess. The bosses weren't really anything special usually, but they weren't really stupid looking.

The sound effects were pleasant, but nothing special, and the music sounded good but was often poorly placed, or not really thought about it seemed, as there would frequently be a tense moment or maybe something sad, but whatever music was going would keep on playing with no change in its emotional value which caused a bit of dissonance in the scene being played out more than a few times for me. If you've played Xenosaga, you might understand what I'm referring to here.

Replayability: 3/10

Again, as I could not bring myself to spend the time to finish the game, I can not give a truly accurate depiction of its replayability for people who have played it. However, with its lack of real customization for things, and few side quests, I would consider it barely worth playing more than once, if you can manage it the first time. There are no extra goals to reach, and very few treasure chests in the terrains or battlefields, meaning you will likely not have to go back to get any hidden items, though later in the game than I got there may very well be some. It's just that nothing - plot, combat, anything - compels me to want to continue with the game, and would hardly provide a drawing point for a second go-around.

All these things have the makings of an average game, but there was more. To me, what hurt it the most was the small annoyances throughout. For instance, there were constant spelling and grammatical errors. I know some games have particularly memorable ones, but these are just careless misspellings and the occasional poor turn of phrase that makes it feel like the translators just rushed through the story in one shot with no corrections later. Also, while you'd hardly need it, you could only ever hold 10 of an item. Then there were the characters popping up, which I mentioned earlier. Also, there was the pet system, which did very little for you and seemed kind of an arbitrary thing they just threw in at the last minute because they wanted it to have something unique. Then there was the lack of control over the fighting I mentioned, the seemingly very sensitive analog stick which only wants to go on a diagonal, and the completely useless system of gaining money, where you get what I guess are objects from defeated enemies and then turn it into Rozes at any store. In the end, I just didn't feel that the game was worth playing any more. And so, as a final score, I give it a 4 out of 10. The combination of poor elements damaged it too much for my taste.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 03/01/06