Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology 2 (PSP)

[steaner]

There are an impressive number of PSP games here at this year's TGS and one of the games being shown off at Sony's booth is Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology 2. Based in the Tales franchise and gathering characters and locales from throughout the series, Radiant Mythology 2 is sure to appeal to fans of the long-standing RPG line. I took a few minutes to play around with Radiant Mythology 2 and see what it's bringing to the table.

The beginning of the demo (which is, may I remind you, all in Japanese) displayed a character creation screen of sorts, but I passed over this and moved right into the heart of the action. The game started off with a panel of three character portraits chatting about something or another, until I was given control of my party and let loose in a random dungeon.

The dungeon was set to a charming, lilting piece of music and ghostly lights flooded the blue walls while water flowed along the corridor edges. Before jumping into a battle, I surveyed my team and poked around in the menu for a bit, but -- as you might expect -- nothing really came of it. So I ran headfirst into a giant enemy crab.

Well, they weren't "giant" so much as "menacing," but the crabs were some of the first and only enemies I came across in the dungeon. Battles played out like other Tales games, with a 3D field you can move around freely. The Circle button is used for attacking and you can chain a variety of techniques together to keep your opponents on the defensive. On the other hand, the Square button is the designated blocking button and the D-pad can be used to modify your attacks.

Unfortunately, it's always difficult to write about an RPG with such little time to invest in the experience. From what I saw, the game looks like a fine PSP title that has an intriguing (albeit familiar) combat system and recognizable characters. We'll just have to see how the game plays out sometime in the future.