Riviera On PSP: Media
I have to say, I'm a little surprised that Riviera: The Promised Land is being ported to the PSP. I mean, did it really do that well? When I played Riviera on my GBA a couple years ago, it was definitely a bit of a let down. Although I enjoyed the character design and the personalities of the four girl secondary characters, the whole game had a stilted, uninteresting feel. It's the kind of game that is chock full of options, with choices given to you throughout that lead to new choices and so on. So every time you play it, it could be a different experience. Even the girl you end up choosing as your favorite can have different effects.
The only problem being, do you even want to play it through again? You can never really move on your own so there isn't much of a feeling of exploration, seeing as moving can be so tedious. Having a conversation on nearly every screen can get old, and don't even get me started on dying, or making a bad decision. Having to go through the process of getting back to the screen in which you made your mistake can be a long and boring road. Battle is even stilted, as each character can only carry a few weapons with different abilities at a time, and each weapon breaks after only a few hits.
Graphics were cute on the GBA, being on the tail end of that system's life, but the PSP port looks almost identical and that's disappointing. Character sprites have a bit more lighting and the stages look to have more detail, but the game looks essentially identical. The only improvement that might be possible is some voice acting, but I have no confirmation of that. But don't let me deter you if this seems like the kind of game you might enjoy on your PSP when it releases in July, so judge for yourself at RPGamer, which has compiled a collection of english screenshots and movies.
RPG type games are pretty hard to come by on the platform.
[via RPGamer]
Pirate Prince
Posted to Video Games on 23 May 2007
Other stuff like this: atlus, ports, psp, riviera: the promised land, sony, sting
