cloudine's Full Review: Warriors of The Lost Empire for PSP
The important stuff:
Warriors of the Lost Empire is a bit of a hack and slash RPG. You go through dungeons and kill monsters. Most of the time the x button will suffice to kill enemies, hence why it’s a bit of a hack and slash. However it’s not a complete hack and slash because you have moments of peace in between rooms. Chasing after monsters and trying to reach the end is actually more addicting than it sounds as monsters can gang up on you and raise the difficulty – thus forcing you to pay more attention and thus giving bouts of entertainment while distracting you from the bad aspects of the game. Attacking uses two two buttons: a strong attack and a weak but quick attack. Different types of swings and kicks are created depending on how quickly you’re moving, whether you’re jumping, how quickly you mashed the buttons, and how you combine the weak and strong attacks. This at least brings some strategy. There’s no guide to this so you’ll have to test the character out to see.
The dungeons pretty much all look alike; the monsters don’t seem to change at all in appearance; using an item can be annoying since you have to use the D-pad, while can be uncomfortable if you need to use an item as you run away; changing the camera angle can be dangerous since you have to stop moving to change it; building the attributes of your character can take forever; the game gets difficult very quickly if you don’t take the time to level and do proper equipment and magic preparations.
If I still have your attention, there is more to this review:
You have the choice of 4 typical characters: The strong but slow guy, the fast swordsman, the strong-ish woman who’s good at magic, and the quick archer woman. You can customize your characters, but not a lot. You can pick a name and the color of their clothes.
There are 3 gameplay modes: Story, Dungeon, and Multiplayer. You need to start Story mode first and pass the first dungeon to gain access to Multiplayer. You need to beat story mode to use Dungeon. Story mode starts in a town that is really more like a base camp. You can talk to 3 people: the lady who occasionally gives you stuff if you own too little of the basic items, the guy where you can trade items for other items, and the synthesizer who can affix gems to weapons to make them stronger. There is no real tutorial. You are given manuals, but only in bits and pieces. You could be a quarter of the way in the story and still not be sure what some of the numbers for a synthesis mean. As for movement controls, they come when you switch floors on the first dungeon. Just a screen with a picture of controls and what they do- still not much of a tutorial.
As if that weren’t bad enough, many items don’t have real explanations. Sure, the essential items have good descriptions or descriptive names. However knowing that an item “is best on magicians” doesn’t tell you what it does. Does it raise magic power? Does it increase the speed at which your magic bar raises? Does it decrease the cost of spells? Since a good amount of the possible items have useless descriptions, this makes wanting to keep them less interesting. Considering that you can only hold so much weight in your bag, you may give up on a great item simply because you don’t know what it does.
Speaking of Spells… When you use a spell, you are given a menu of symbols. Each symbol represents a spell. This wouldn’t be so bad if the symbols were more memorable. If you’re an intermittent player,that means you have to relearn the symbols every time – or just do what I do and remember the positions (ex. Up and down are effects, Left and Right are attacks)
The music is absolutely nothing special. Big obvious orchestra-like movements during movie scenes, followed by mystical soft music during story scenes, and creepy jungle/tomb music during dungeons. The sound effects aren’t that bad , but some of them seem out of place. Should me beating up a dog sound like I’m hitting metal just because the dog’s in defense position? For humanoid monsters it’s fine – they could be using shields or armor, but a dog? Not likely.
Just a few more annoyances…
Most monsters won’t attack unless you are really close or unless you attack them directly. If a monster is at the other side of the room and you accidentally hit it with an long-range attack aimed at a closer monster, the further monster may not acknowledge you. Sometimes if you go to another part of a map the monsters won’t follow you and you can try to attack them using long range attacks.
Also you’re given the possibility of using two sets of weapons. That means 4 weapons total (1 for each hand, twice). However there doesn’t seem to be a real advantage to have an alternate set of weapons seeing as they don’t break and they just end up taking away from your weight limit.
The game has more than enough flaws. I would not recommend it for most people. However if you’re just looking for slightly-but-not-totally-mindless play (which sometimes I like to have if I’m having a bad day), then this is a great game. Oh, and for multiplayer you can play with ONE other person, and you can trade with them.
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