Game: Untold Legends: Brotherhood of the Blade Publisher: Activision Developer: Sony Online Entertainment Wireless Multiplayer: Yes (4 player) Game Sharing: No Infrastructure Mode: No Requires Memory Stick: Yes

Untold Legends: Brotherhood of the Blade is an action role playing game not unlike the Baldur’s Gate Dark Alliance and the Diablo titles, in fact the similarities to these games are striking. We all know there have been many clones of this style of game, some good and some bad. So how does the PSP’s first offering for action RPG fans fare? Read on and find out.

The graphics in BOTB are finely detailed, the characters and monsters are rendered beautifully and the models are creative and exhibit fluid animation. There are some nice spell effects, provided you chose a character that is capable of using them. Enemies are diverse in size as well as appearance; I particularly like the large end-of-level bosses which can sometimes fill a good portion of the screen.

Impressive concept/portrait artwork is displayed on the loading screens; each picture looks striking and provides a nice distraction while the game loads.

The levels although fairly unimaginative look great. You can expect the usual towns, sewers, caverns, forests and deserts with even some rain and snow as well which is a nice touch.

The graphics also have a few glitches. Occasionally the levels become a bit choppy in areas, with some exhibiting motion blurring side-effects while sometimes the shadows will appear slightly distorted.

The in-game camera angle can be rotated and a 2 mode zoom function is also available. However the zoom function is not really that useful as the zoomed in mode is too close to really see what you’re doing. It is only really good for inspection of the eye-candy. I would have liked a variable zoom to get a better combination of close up action that didn’t detract from the gameplay.

FMV cutscenes and intro would have been awesome but you’ll have to settle for the nice pics with overlaid text.

The music in this game is fitting, with a dramatic score, which while not earth shattering, suits this genre well. Although I wish the music in the main city, Aven would alternate with another track, as it becomes very repetitive after a while, especially as this is the hub location for buying, selling and obtaining new quests and you’ll spend a lot of time here.

The sound effects are solid; you’ll hear trickling water in the catacombs, muddy footsteps in caves and the all important thudding, skittering or wing-beating sound of approaching enemies. The battle sound effects are good and I particularly like the sound of the spirits/ghosts and the dying throes of the skeleton warriors.

One aspect I disliked was the speech. Where is it? Was it excluded to make the game more portable in terms of language? Personally, I hate having to wade through text when so many other games provide full speech and the UMD’s 1.8G capacity should allow for this. This said there isn’t a huge volume of text presented and perhaps I am forgetting the fact that up until a year ago the only real speech on a handheld was limited to a few mono-syllable utterances from Mario or Luigi’s on the GBA?! :)

The gameplay of BOTB is close to that of Diablo or Dark Alliance. Which I don’t necessarily think is a bad thing; it’s just not very original and because it’s been done to death it can be quite repetitive. The game follows a fairly linear approach which involves lots of monster killing, followed by some treasure collection and then progression to a new quest which is then followed by more of the same. It would have been nice to have a few puzzles to solve along the way too.

Each of the four characters has unique abilities that can be boosted and progressed as your character gains more experience. Your choice of character will determine the style of combat you’ll need to employ as well as restrict the types of weapons, armour and items you can make use of. A skills tree (again similar to Diablo II) displays your current special abilities and their levels. These abilities can be mapped to the triangle and circle in-game so they can be accessed quickly, which is handy.

The story is pretty unoriginal and you don’t really care too much for what’s being said, it’s more a case of “ok skip this text just tell me where I have to go to next!” Why does the first mission always involve a tavern that gets infested with giant spiders or rats? Why do the sewers under the city always house the evil causing all the problems? Etc. Ad Nausea.

Even though the levels appear to be randomly generated, they are fairly bland and don’t require much thought apart from navigating from point A to B.

Completing quests, collecting items and gaining experience are the key aspects to the gameplay and this in turn encourages you to keep fighting and exploring new areas. Even if you don’t need the items, you can sell them at the store in the city, Aven. The game also employs item upgrades using artefacts that can be discovered or purchased, again similar to the gem slot item upgrades in Diablo II. These aspects become repetitive but it does become addictive too.

The load times are probably one of the more annoying aspects of the game and sometimes detract from the gameplay. On average you have to wait at least 20 seconds for each level to load. Early in the game you will die and transition between areas more often and this means lots of level loading. The art on the loading screens does help, but eventually it recycles and there is no progress bar. Even the character sheet screens are sometimes sluggish while it loads the items up. More loading means more UMD access which in turn means more battery draining and less time playing the game. This said it’s certainly no Midnight Club in terms of loading and later in the game you spend more time in each level so eventually you welcome the break for loading as it occurs less frequently.

Multiplayer is probably one of the better prospects for this title. I remember the first time I linked up Diablo II and played with 4 people and it was a blast, unfortunately I haven’t had the opportunity to play this game multiplayer but I’m assuming the co-operative aspect will add a new dimension to the game which is promising. There is no game-sharing option (as one should expect given the sheer volume of data (and loading)) in this game so you will need to convince your mates to buy a copy or just make new friends who already have one!

Sony Online Entertainment developed the Everquest series so it’s surprising that the game has no infrastructure mode for playing online, this would have extended the life and provided a more unique experience for this game.

This game is quite easy to pick up, lots of button mashing ensures little brain power and there doesn’t seem to be any mind-bending puzzles in the game. The game will still take time to complete due to the sheer volume of levels, enemies, and quests.

Some of the button combinations like switching between melee and ranged weapons (R + X) are initially cumbersome but you’ll get the hang of it very quickly.

The menus and process of levelling up are quite intuitive as well, so this will ensure BOTB will appeal to a wide age group.

This game will take a decent amount of time to finish so will provide good value. However I would hazard a guess that only the diehard fans will want to complete the same quest structure with all four characters as it would become quite repetitive. I would think after completion, replay value would be low.

However, the multiplayer gaming should encourage replay, during and after completing the single player missions, which is promising. Although finding multiple people with a PSP and BOTB might be a challenge in itself - perhaps you should attend the MyPSP gaming meet-ups to resolve this problem! :) This game would have really benefited from an infrastructure mode that allowed internet gaming.

The loading times are a bit of a pain sometimes, combine this with wi-fi action and you may drain your battery sooner than you would like, which is not good for long playtime in transit. However, access to a power-point will ensure you can sit on the couch and play this game for as long as you’d like.

Another note is that BOTB was the first game to hang my PSP :(. The loading screen hung and the only way I could get my PSP going again was to take the battery out and put it back in again. Lucky this only happened once!

Even though the storyline is mediocre, the levels are unimaginative and the gameplay become repetitive after a while; a multiplayer action-RPG game that you can take on the move and play at a moments notice is an awesome addition to your collection.

BOTB boasts 100 odd levels, 110 unique monsters, 40 quests and mountains of booty, which will provide hours of entertainment for fans of this genre. The wireless multiplayer option is a cool feature for inclusion on the PSP (internet would have been better) and while the loading times can be annoying, you’ll still get your action RPG fix from this game.

In summary, BOTB is a PSP action RPG clone. It’s not very original, but it’s still a solid game for the PSP, leveraging the popular hack ’n’ slash style adored by the masses. Hopefully the recently announced sequel will improve on some of issues and provide a more unique experience.

Graphics: 8
Sound: 7
Gameplay: 6
Difficulty: 6
Value: 7


Score: 7.0