PoPoLoCrois PSP review

Frankly, if someone called Prince Pietro of Popolocrois walked into my house brandishing a sword I’d be displeased. If he then proceeded to open a chest into which I’d placed my life-savings, well, it wouldn’t be pretty. Fortunately, this is Britain, my life-savings are in a building society and a merry bunch known as ‘the Police’ are there for anyone foolhardy enough to try their hand breaking and entering.

To be fair, I wouldn’t be best pleased if my name was ‘Prince Pietro’ either, as it would mean that my mother’s spirit had been stolen by the Ice King. Of course, I’d then feel obliged to leave the comforts of my palace, get my sword out and retrieve said spirit in order to stop living on takeaway food and recycling underwear. Mothers, after all, are a valuable commodity.

Battle-Wearied

Granted, there’s nothing very new about RPGs in which houses and the contents of chests are considered public domain – in fact, it seems like a requirement. The likes of the Final Fantasy and Zelda series have been doing it for years. Unfortunately, there’s nothing very new about PoPoLoCrois in general. It seems really, just to be, well… a fairly standard RPG. Battles, for example, appear randomly when you’re travelling in-between villages or in wooded areas. While this, in itself, isn’t a problem, with a fairly varied and numerous supply of enemies to face, the fact that these battles occur every… few… seconds… really does get pretty grating if you’re looking to get somewhere.

It’s made worse by the fact that the battles aren’t actually very exciting with visually uninspiring magic and physical attacks. By default, they’re even set to Automatic which means you often get the dubious pleasure of watching your characters get defeated by weak monsters (the PSP it seems, isn’t great at handling combat for you). While switching to the manual mode can make battles a little more entertaining, this slows down the pace of the game yet more. For a game on a portable system, you’d be forgiven for expecting gameplay that was slightly more pick-up-and-play friendly. The limited opportunities for a game-save (you can do this in inns and after special events) are not much of an issue unless you’d like to

Well Travelled

Though your quest could be considered stressful (unless you don’t consider battling unpleasant monsters whilst striving to rescue your mother’s spirit to be stressful), PoPoLoCrois does little to bring about any real emotional gravitas. This isn’t necessarily a criticism as no-one really wants to be weeping into their PSP during a tube-journey. However, seasoned RPG players may find the game’s overall feel a bit hollow. Such light-hearted questing is then, odd and perhaps uncomfortable for some, but ultimately appropriate for the game.

Your travels are made more pleasurable thanks to the pretty and varied locations on offer – villages sport quaint houses with suitably quaint inhabitants. Though the graphical style in which they’re displayed isn’t the kind of thing that’ll make your console break into a sweat with an isometric, pixel-art-esque style, they are, well… quaint. Music that goes down the quaint route as PoPoLoCrois’ has largely done, treads a thin line between suitability and mind-rotting tedium. Though the game has a reasonably large selection of music to ease questing, exposure to the soundtrack for long-enough, brings it into the latter category.

A Dream World?

PoPoLoCrois’ main downfall is that it really doesn’t bring anything new or original to the RPG arena – entirely forgivable as, in its PSP incarnation, the game’s a re-release of PoPoLoCrois I & II, a previously Japan only series. It isn’t then, a particularly new game - hence the lack of anything much to set it apart from any other RPG.

This means that, for experienced RPG players there’s little to justify the purchase other than the fact it’s a fairly lengthy (weighing in at 30 hours) piece of standard role-playing fare. For a young gamer or just someone looking for a light-hearted role-playing game, PoPoLoCrois is a far better fit. Despite the rigours of frequent battles, slightly hollow overall feel and sometimes taxing music it’s got no glaring problems or critical flaws. It’s got all the chest-exploring action of your typical RPG, just not a huge amount else.