One thing the PSP launch seemed to be missing was a good old fashioned role playing game. There wasn’t a Final Fantasy, a Breath of Fire or even an EverQuest. But hidden deep amongst the popular franchises, a small action RPG was hiding on the shelves just waiting to be discovered. That game is Untold Legends and it has risen above nonexistent expectations to become one of the best selling titles of the launch. Why might you ask? Well let’s just say every gamer needs a little hacking and slashing to keep them sane on the road and Untold Legends is the perfect remedy. Blending the elements of the console Champions of Norrath series and introducing a new world has created a unique experience that will last gamers for hours and hours on end.
It’s not perfect by any means of course. Untold is essentially a victim of its own restrictive design and being a launch title on a portable platform doesn’t give it the most room to flesh out. We have seen this game many times over the last few years with Baldur’s Gate: Deadly Alliance, Fallout and then Champions of Norrath. Pretty much all of those games played the same and the only things that set them apart were the worlds they were placed in. There is only so much you can do with a game where you create a hero and go on a series of missions through oddly similar dungeons for forty hours. Champions of Norrath perfected this type of game and to have the same people put a game like it on the PSP is comforting. We could have had any old piece of crap thrown onto a disc but Sony Online knows what they are doing. Untold isn’t as fully featured as Champions of Norrath and hopefully that’s just giving it room to grow through sequels, but overall it’s a very fun title, probably one of the games you will spend the most time with in the first few months of the PSPs birth.
As with all of these types of games, you are given a brief introduction to the world and the conflict is explained. You load up the main menu and choose to create a new character. You are given the option of choosing from four different classes like the Knight, Alchemist, Beserker and Druid. Each of these classes have strengths and weaknesses, all of which you will learn from firsthand experience. The best class to start out with is the Knight. While the game becomes significantly harder for them later on, they provide a good starting insight on how to play the game. The other classes have more defined features and require more strategy in terms of using defensive abilities and using magic.
After you select your character, you are thrown into the world of Aven. You are given your first measly mission and sent off. The missions range from finding cures to poisons or of course the old RPG staple, killing rats. As you kill more and more enemies you gain experience points which eventually lead to your character gaining a level. Once you do you have the option of assigning points to each individual area of your character including Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence and Stamina. Depending on how many points you devote to a specific area your character will become much stronger and skilled with it. Putting more points to strength can help out when you need to deal the damage, but that could lead to a cost of not having enough HP to withstand large scale attacks. Its your decision to make and you will be the one forced to live with your decision and work around it. Also when you level up you can assign skill points to certain weapon and armor proficiencies along with learning new skills and spells. This is a very important aspect of the game that players need to concentrate on. If you don’t concentrate on getting the most important things, the game could become very hard and fast.
Combat is essentially a behind the scenes endeavor. You press the X button to attack and depending on the behind the scenes rolls, you deal a certain amount of damage to your opponent. The higher your minimum attack rating is, the more you will be able to do even in your weakest state. Enemies often attack you in groups so moving around and attacking more than one enemy is far wiser than sitting killing one while having your health depleted from all sides. You will encounter many types of enemies, cursed spiders, skeletons, blobs, three eyes monsters; you name it and its there. The AI isn’t particularly smart so everything ends up being a hack and slash affair that becomes repetitive only when the odds aren’t in your favor. The boss battles are the encounters you need to watch out for. When you near a boss, a health bar emerges and you begin a battle with some sort of super monster. Whether it’s a giant spider or a lava monster it doesn’t matter, all that matters is making sure you have plenty of healing items, because every single time you encounter one, it is most likely much more powerful than you.
While the story isn’t particularly deep, the characters and the environments around you set up Aven as a very rich but troubled world. Sony Online has stated they plan on using Aven in future games and I honestly can’t wait. The obvious Norrath (EverQuest) similarities are there, but there is just something about Aven that stands out a little more than the typical generic fare. The game will take you about twenty to thirty hours to complete and depending on your first experience, you will most likely be back for more.
The game features an ad-hoc multiplayer mode and you can play through single player with up to four players, bringing your characters along. It’s a bit disappointing that the game isn’t online because for starters the developers are called Sony Online, the pioneers of online role playing games. You would think they would have included it, but for whatever reason, it can be forgiven because there is always room for that feature in Untold Legends 2 (announced).
