The Legend of Heroes: A Tear of Vermillion has a pretty goofy name. I'll just go with Legend of Heroes if you don't mind...

The subtext and that "vermillion" bit may be confusing, but vermillion refers to the color red or red-orange. Tear of red? Tear of blood? Does it matter? Color makes for a good segue into talking about the look of Legend of Heroes. There are neat lighting and particle effects that come into play sometimes that might make you remember you're playing on a next-generation console, but mostly this is buttery 2D goodness. Nothing about the towns or dungeons is boring, and the monsters are well done. Visually, there is always a lot going on as you explore areas. Legend of Heroes utilizes a "helper" system that shows you clues about who is important to talk with to move the story forward. Signs and books will even display little bouncing icons to show they can be read. To me, this smacks of a "starter RPG," but the cues are good for helping to move things along. Catchy tunes abound, along the lines (again) of classic RPG music and 16-bit gaming.

The measure of an RPG is rarely just the battles, the story, or the length of the game. All these things need to be well designed, since the market for RPG's on PS and PS2 was always very competitive. PSP looks to be getting ramped up for a good season of RPG gaming, with PoPoloCrois being the most obvious comparison to Legend of Heroes on the basis of style. Other games out now may have more going for them in terms of mechanics, or battle systems, but Legend of Heroes will be remembered as the first epic PSP RPG.

Epic not just for its length (~50 hours), but for its story, Legend of Heroes draws players into a world that unfolds through character interaction. Each character has a lot to say, and the pacing of the story favors patient readers rather than itchy-fingered battle junkies. There aren't even that many opportunities early in the game to just hang around in a monster-infested area and level up. Building levels is not really the point here, although gaining experience in Legend of Heroes works just like you'd expect. What is focused on a great deal is the relationship between characters, and the sense of place built from exploring towns. Non-Player Characters (NPCs) are usually the domain of more dedicated gamers, who want to make sure and get every piece of speech from every single NPC, including alternate dialogue... There are probably only three types of RPG gamers: those who don't know what an NPC is, those who talk to NPCs when the story demands it, and those who collect NPC dialogue like it was scripture. Legend of Heroes sometimes seems to push you toward talking with every NPC, and not for the purpose of collecting items either. This stress on story and dialogue may not be for everyone, but there's a good battle system underneath that makes it work.

A brother and sister broken apart by strife is how the story starts, and the brother's adventure to find out what happened to his sister is how the story unravels. Unlike some RPG's that just take a stab at hanging some narrative on whatever hack-n-slash framework they had from the beginning, Legend of Heroes really does have a cohesive plot. Cohesive by anime standards, at least... Each character who comes into the party has some motivation and is recognizable, and not always by easy stereotypes. Other nice additions to the game include an option to raise a pet, cultivating its item-collection skill through praise or scolding. Pets can also grant special status during battles.

There is little of note apart from the pet sidekick feature, as far as innovative gameplay. The creators would seem to have gone out looking for a solid RPG with some depth, rather than a flashy, hybrid RPG. The payoff is here, but only for those who are really ready to devote the time.

Legend of Heroes is one of the more "vanilla" RPG's I've played in some time. Battles take a long time to be challenging, but with the option to avoid monsters on the world map, you do not have to wade through each and every random battle. Monsters who are afraid of you show a different icon than those who are aggressive. Usually, the monsters who fear you are also those you're better off not fighting. The problem with some role-playing gameflow is that you spend too much time getting dragged into fights with subpar monsters. Various creative means have been found to avoid this, but making monster icons visible on the world map is simple enough.

Rather than highlight each and every feature of gameplay and control, suffice it to say that every standard RPG feature is here. Some are implemented better than others, but if you've even played one RPG in your life, Legend of Heroes will seem very familiar.

Control via the analog stick is nice, and it's available for use in menus, even. The menus used for controlling inventory and saving are nicely organized, and there is a separate menu for interacting with pets. This saves wading through a bigger menu or having pet commands mixed into commands for using the map or battling. Interacting with people or items is easy enough, although I found some of the "hot spots" for items and people to be hard to find. There are very basic movement options, and no option to run vs. walk. In battle, there is no A.I. control, and the choices for directing spells are sometimes confusing. Spells mostly have a radius in which they can work, and this comes across in the interface, but is only touched on a little in the manual. Timing attacks is difficult, because there is no attack "counter" or reliable gauge of order for the party attacks vs. monster attacks. Characters can charge up a special bar to unleash "deadly" attacks, and use skills that don't cost points rather than unleash magic or physical attacks.

Legend of Heroes will please the people who wanted an old school RPG, although I think that PoPoloCrois contains more of the features that hardcore RPG gamers will want. Playing a really long RPG is not a bad thing, as long as there are really 50+ hours of gaming without repetition. I didn't see much repetition in Legend of Heroes, but the pacing is slow. Slow enough to draw the game out more than might be prudent? I think there is a 30-40 hour game in here that would be much more fast paced, with more battles and open-ended gameplay to allow hardcore gamers to milk 50 hours if they wanted that much time in the game. There are some nice features that favor entry-level gamers, such as hint icons and avoidable monsters, but those same gamers may find the level of dialogue tedious. Legend of Heroes doesn't strike a perfect balance, but it will sate the appetite of RPG fans until the next big one comes along.