[quote name='TLR']Not really used to this, so feel free to ask some questions if this doesn't tell you what you want to know.
The game's about a little boy named Tatsuya and his friend Miki, who has fallen to this near-death situation, and can only be saved by Tatsuya.
Hate to start off on a bad note, but they didn't really do to well at introducing these characters and making the gamer "feel" for them.
After playing something like Kingdom Hearts 2, I expected to get all kinds of backstory of the friendship between Tatsuya and Miki (maybe some flashbacks to a time when Tatsuya didn't ignore her so much?) so I, as the gamer, would be able to feel how intense it is for Tatsuya to see his friend suddenly winding up in a near-death situation... that just felt incredibly hurried through and left me wondering what led to her fainting into this unknown critical status, or why I should even care.
Is she suffering through some kind of mentality complex where her closeness with Tatsuya plays a big role in her stabilty? Does the fact that he's constantly ignoring her for video games even play a role in this? All of this stuff kinda just went unanswered as they rushed me into the meat of the game.
In another part of the intro, it was hinted at that I'd be able to return to the "real world" at some other points in the game, so I'm hoping a little more background will be given there or something.
May be just because I'm coming directly out of TotW and Riviera, but the lack of full voice acting in all the important cutscenes is a bit bothersome.
Fortunately, that's about all the qualms I've got.
I didn't play too much into it, because I kinda stopped in the middle of Tales of the World to give Brave Story a run, but I did get to sample a fair bit of the game's technical aspects.
World map and cave navigation is all done on an isometric world view. While the protagonist moves fast enough as is, holding circle will make him run even faster. Didn't necessarily notice any issues to nag about here...
If the trial I did not too long after starting was any indication, I'm thinking a large portion of this game's dungeons are about to have some interesting puzzles to master.
The battle system, so far, seems like an upgrade to what was in Dragon Quest VIII. You can have up to 3 party members which all have their own "Brave" abilities, that deplete "Brave Points".
In combat, this seems to have picked up the feel of action and dramatic camera angles that other PSP RPGs(Blade Dancer, to cite an example) lacked. Every strike is accompanied by a comic-book like "TRAAASH!" image(and many others of the same nature), and this feels incredibly fast-paced, considering the genre it's in. There's also some interesting timing elements where, timed correctly, you can tap X to get an additional attack for the strategic advantage. The most interesting aspect of the battle are the unison attacks. The developers have no problem keeping the battle system interesting and fresh.
Something about the graphics in this game are just awesome, I don't know what to call the effect they're using, but it looks very nice and creates a great sense of atmosphere along with this game's soundtrack.
So far, it's just a very solid and well-done game.[/quote]ok thanks,that was good.It seems like this will be the next game I pick up....