"A solid game bogged down by lack of creativity and variety."

Untold Legends: The Warrior's Code is the sequel to the original Untold Legends, both exclusive to the PSP. This game stays true to its roots of the original game, as the core of the gameplay was left untouched. This game plays all too similarly to Untold Legends, and feels like little innovation was going on.

Presentation:

This is one area that The Warrior's Code has noticeably improved over the previous installment in the series. The menus now have a slick, easy to use interface that minimizes frustration. In addition to that, this game features good voiceovers that help to immerse you into the game's world. Loading times have also been reduced to a manageable amount, and are a significant improvement over Brotherhood of the Blade's unbearable load times. Overall, this game's presentation is very slick and very much improved over the original game.

Story:

The story is a weak part of this game. It never picks up throughout the whole game, even at the end. I never felt at any point in this game that I was driven by the story, and if you want to play this game keep in mind that the story will not immerse you into this game. Calling the story shallow may be even a bit friendly. Luckily, however, story sequences are fewer and farther between than the first game.

Graphics:

The graphics are subtly improved over the first game, though not to a noticeable amount. The game looks nice and runs fairly smoothly, especially considering that this is a PSP game. However, I did encounter a few slowdowns and hiccups along the way, but nothing too bothersome or interruptive to gameplay.

Sound:

I already mentioned the improved voiceovers in this game, but that's not the only good part of the sound. The audio is suited to each environment. The music is not really memorable, but rather it helps to give life to your environment and add a sense of fear, urgency, danger, or whatever the mood of the game is. The sound is not spectacular, but it's improved over the first game to an extent where you might consider actually turning the sound on and turning off your music.

Gameplay:

The meat of this game is the same as the original Untold Legends and every other game of the hack and slash genre. It consists of running around mashing x to attack, and occasionally using magic or a long ranged attack to aid your combat. The developers tried hard to spice things up by adding in beast form transformations and attacks of opportunity, but these were too infrequent to have any noticeable effect on gameplay. The beast form for each character was barely any stronger than the regular forms, and they didn't play any differently. Every now and again, when an enemy was vulnerable recovering from its attack or due to another cause, the words "Attack of Opportunity" would appear in the corner of the screen. You could then hold or tap square to deal a slightly improved amount of damage to your enemy. However, this is very rare except in boss battles. It does add another dimension to combat, but in a very small way that's hard to appreciate. There are five character classes this time around, and each one is new. However, these characters, while their attacks are different, play surprisingly similar to one another. There is no pure caster, there is no pure warrior, there is no pure long ranged archer. Each character is a blend of all styles of gameplay. The game tricks you into thinking that you can customize your characters countless ways when there's really not too many options you have. Infrastructure or ad/hoc play is this game's only saving grace. This game is an absolute blast to play online with some friends or other fans of Untold Legends. It is fun to play multiplayer, as it adds that much needed spice to gameplay by adding the aspect of teamwork. Play online or ad/hoc as much as you can. Needless to say, combat gets old very quickly if you don't play online. For experienced players of other action rpgs, this game won't be a new experience at all, and will become repetitive and boring within the first half hour of gameplay. For those new to the series, this game will be fun at first, but will become repetitive all too quickly. The offline game just needs something more to spice it up.

Overall:

This game is severely lacking in the gameplay department offline, but the added dimension of teamwork is added when playing multiplayer, which is just what this game needs to be fun. I recommend buying this if you have a wifi hotspot or some friends to play ad/hoc with. Otherwise, skip it.

6/10

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 04/12/06