Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology
Score: 78% ESRB: Teen Publisher: BANDAI NAMCO Games America, Inc. Developer: BANDAI NAMCO Games America, Inc. Media: UMD/1 Players: 1 Genre: RPG/ Action/ Fighting
Graphics & Sound: Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology comes from a solid, Action/RPG heritage. Dungeons are rendered in glorious 3D, looking every bit like a behind-the-back action title. The textures and artwork aren't anything groundbreaking, even for PSP, but the characters are creatively realized and have lots of diversity thanks to frequent costume and gear changes. Overall, the graphics are done well with good variety. Enemies come in many shapes and sizes and have some great animation effects. When battles occur and the perspective switches to a top-down view of the field, there is plenty of action. The characters will announce their spells unless you turn this feature off, and they'll say other witty things once the battle is finished. In other areas of the game, there are cut-scenes with voice talent that is actually quite good. These scenes are presented with talking heads done in anime style and help to move the story along. The biggest issue with both graphics, sound, and music is that the game moves slowly and spins out the story at a snail's pace. You can try to accelerate things by choosing missions related to story elements, but you then run the risk of adventuring ahead of your characters' levels. The result is that you'll see the "Game Over" screen more frequently...
Gameplay: If you think you don't like Action/RPG titles, you may still want to give Radiant Mythology a chance. There are a few great things about the game. One is the large cast of characters. As the main player, you can still recruit dozens of heroes (these are confusingly called a "NPC" in the game's lingo) to help you along the way. Building a party is tied to a few other interesting gameplay elements. As in real life, if you aren't well liked you won't find it easy to surround yourself with loyal followers. In Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology, you will have opportunities to interact with some key people and build your reputation. If these people don't believe in you, they won't be inclined to join your party. There are other, lesser heroes that can be pulled in to form a party, but you still have to make a good showing for these folks. If you accept missions and fail, you'll let people down and lose respect. The game's job system makes building the party more fun. As you experiment with different jobs, you'll find that you need to create a different type of party. You'll also come back at times to recruit and find that your former colleagues have changed jobs. The impact of changing jobs can be profound since you begin each new job at Level One. If you switch back to a job you held previously, you will regain all your earned levels in that job but during the early period of each job, you will have to be careful about entering certain dungeons. The story of Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology revolves around saving the world (all in a day's work for any self-respecting RPG hero) from a devastating threat with your impromptu band of heroes and a talking, flying cat creature. There are sidebar story elements but everything hinges on exploration, gathering items and cranking up those experience levels. One neat twist here is the addition of crafting skill. Almost every item you buy in the town's store can be crafted once you have gained enough experience. Not every experiment with crafting will result in a valuable item, but you will increase your crafting level just by trying and sometimes failing. The raw materials needed for crafting are found by prospecting in dungeons and collecting items dropped by monsters. The game can feel a bit formulaic at times in its repetition, but there are enough novel gameplay elements and storylines to keep RGP fans going.
Difficulty: The hardest and least rewarding part of Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology is unfortunately the first hour or two. In this period, you are grinding through solo, trying to prove yourself enough to join Ad Libitum, the underground organization that is working to subvert this world's evil forces. Playing solo means that you are constantly grinding levels and gathering items that you can just barely craft into useful recipes. Once you gain the power to recruit other party members, the game totally changes. You also get the ability at that point to change jobs which opens up a large stock of items and weapons previously inaccessible. Further along, you will find that the level of challenge is appropriate and determined largely by how strategically you manage your party. The mechanics of managing a party are challenging enough for any RPG veteran to love, but are they so complex that only a RPG veteran could love them? Players will decide, but I suspect more than a few people will fail to dig deep enough to really fall in love with the idea of one player controlling a party of up to four heroes. Ironically, for those that do master the game's mechanics, dungeon crawling can start to feel routine quickly. Not enough new monsters are introduced in the first ten hours of the game and not nearly enough dungeon real estate shows up in that time.
Game Mechanics: Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology takes an interesting approach to adapting Action/RPG dynamics to a large party format. Instead of going round-robin and controlling each character, you can essentially program what each character will do in battle. This goes for the main character as well as the so-called NPCs. You can customize how much focus each character will have on magic, what distance from monsters the characters will keep, and what type of monsters each character will attack. Once this is done for a character, your preferences are saved for the duration of that party's adventure. Even the main character can be set to auto, so that you as the player can just watch battles play out. This was my ultimate preference and it kept things from feeling tedious. If you choose to control a character, you really have to control them. Unlike a traditional RPG where you just select Attack, Defend, Item, etc., you really have to move your character around the field and take on each monster. You can see monsters depicted as single figures when you are exploring the dungeon, but once you get into battle you find out what number of monsters or combination of monsters you really have to face. There are no random encounters, but controlling the characters yourself can still feel like a fair amount of work. You can save the game anywhere outside the dungeon and in some save points contained in each dungeon. Fans of the series will appreciate some continuity from previous games in certain characters. The storyline is decent but fairly "stock in trade" for RPG fans. The mechanics of the game are probably the most interesting thing in terms of offering neat party-building options, a decent job system, and crafting skills coupled with collecting. The replay value is almost nil because there is such a steep ramp to get established in the game. This offering feels like a good, solid addition to the PSP RPG library, but nothing likely to stir passion among new or old fans of the genre.
-Fridtjof, GameVortex Communications AKA Matt Paddock
Bomberman Live Forza 2 Motorsport