Kingdom of Paradise
Otherwise known as, “a world without Xbox 360,” in Sony’s mind…
Tags: Kingdom of Paradise Categories: PSP Reviews, Reviews
Posted by Craig "American Idle" Hansen on Nov 21st, 2005
| Title | Players | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Kingdom of Paradise (title page) | 1 | ||
| Developer | Publisher | Genre | Online |
| Action RPG | Yes | ||
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Following the trail blazed by Untold Legends on PSP, Sony’s latest action RPG adventure for their handheld system is Kingdom of Paradise, a game that goes great lengths to look and feel like a PS2 title. Yet, unlike many early PSP titles, Kingdom of Paradise is not, and never has been a PS2 title. Choosing to lead their third parties by example, Sony has taken a game with deep game play, that could have been successful on PS2, and made it not only a PSP original, but a PSP exclusive, to boot! Close to being one of the best-looking titles on PSP right now, Kingdom of Paradise is a feast for eyes on the go. The game opens with a lot of exposition, as most RPGs do, but when it finally settles down and lets you play, the basic game play is solid, at least at first.
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The trouble, however, really comes up in how soon the game really challenges you. After throwing some road-bandits at you, early in the game, you haven’t even had enough combat experience to reach Level 2 yet before you’re confronted with a very problematic challenge: a young kid wants to join your small party, but first he wants you to teach him a “lesson.” Of course, in RPGs, this means a fight to the death! (Or a knockout. Whatever.) Only trouble is, this “kid” is way more powerful than you. The game has taken absolutely no time to teach you how to take advantage of chi moves and some of the more powerful aspects of the combat engine, and about all you can do is flash that sword, baby. Trouble is, the snot-nose is about twice as fast as you, no matter how good a button-masher you are. To add insult to injury, the kid gets off combos that whittle away about 30-50 hp per combo while you’re lucky to get 5 hp damage out of a successful melee clash. Of course, this means you die.
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That’d be fine if it was one of those RPGs were it’s a battle you were intended to lose to advance the story. Not here, though. In Kingdom of Paradise, you’re meant to whoop that kid and if he kills you, it’s a “Game Over” screen and an invitation to restart and try again; the story won’t move forward until you do, and you’re less than an hour into the game. This is the kind of overmatched gonzo challenge that can cause casual gamers to label a game a piece of crap and take it back to the store for trade-in credit. In this case, though, it’d be a shame to do so. That’s because aside from some impossibly-hard combat early on, meant to force you into learning chi attacks and such, Kingdom of Paradise actually does reward the persistent gamer. Best on a martial arts theme, the game calls to mind the Legend of Legaia series, if only mildly. The game is lengthy, searching out new combat moves can get addictive and the overall look and design of the game provides some of the best PSP eye-candy to date.
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Far less than a year into the lifespan of the PSP (in North America) and already there’s about a half-dozen RPGs on the system. Here’s the list: Untold Legends, Popolocrois, X-Men Legends II, Lord of the Rings Tactics and Kingdom of Paradise; that’s not even to mention the forthcoming Legend of Heroes, which rounds out the half-dozen. Not a bad list. Sony definitely seems to understand what has made PSone and PS2 hits and now seems determined to use the same formula for success with PSP; namely, to keep RPG fans happy. Of course, some may argue that few of these titles are “big.” Well, let’s look at that; of that list, only X-Men Legends II is a port and even that title had nine extra missions not found on console versions. So out of six RPGs so far, only one is a console port. The rest are either original to PSP, or in the case of PopoloCrois, updated from a much earlier generation of hardware. Lord of the Rings Tactics may not seem hot right now, but that’s only because the big LotR trilogy of movies is finally complete; it’s still a viable license. And it’s not even a port of last Christmas’ GBA title, because the PSP LOTR Tactics features the main cast, an all-new storyline and more depth.
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All that said, Kingdom of Paradise isn’t without a few faults. For example, I wasted a ton of healing potions by accidentally hitting the triangle button. Rather than a shoulder button, the “use readied item” command is the triangle button, which means you really have to concentrate on laying off the top button unless you like wasting healing potions; if you waste them, there’s not a lot of shops or money to spend at them in the early going, so you’ll kick yourself for the waste. Fortunately, some healing potions can get picked up along the way, as you defeat enemies. Also, missions and direction aren’t always clear in the game, which makes figuring out what you want to do next a little tough since the paths you travel have plenty of side-roads. Even so, the combat is quick, clean fun and once you master some chi skills so you’re not overpowered by little snot-nose runts who want you to teach them a lesson, it’s actually quite a bit of fun.
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You play as Shinbu, an outcast from a military unit. Almost immediately, you meet up with gal who’s looking for you but doesn’t know you’re the person she’s looking for. That makes for a bit of light fun but is quickly dispensed with. Once it’s all sorted, the game begins in earnest; not bitter, Shinbu would like to regain his honor and so when he learns from the gal that his old unit’s been wiped out and only the two of them can rebuild it, he agrees, even though he modestly insists she ought to be the head of it, rather than him. Wow, when’s the last time you met someone who got fired and still held the company that did it to him in high regard? Shinbu’s a saint, folks.
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Anyway, there’s a wide cast of characters you’ll come across, some fairly neat bosses, and probably more hours of gaming than you might expect from a modest UMD title; at least 20 hours, not counting downloadable content via WiFi. The biggest weak point of the game is that only chi skills are truly effective in combat (it’s the only way to get past that snot-nose, for example) and that makes the swordplay seem pointless, so some more work could have been done on balancing the game a bit more. That said, you’ll still enjoy Kingdom of Paradise enough that you won’t be pining for the very-poor Lunar sequel on DS, Lunar: Dragon Song. Believe me, folks, this is one time were Nintendo got the big name-brand franchise and Sony ended up with the better title.
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
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+ Great eye-candy title. + Deep story offering well over 20 hours of game play. |
7.7 |
| What Doesn't | |
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– Really hard battles offered early into the game, before you even know the controls. – Triangle button triggers use of a readied item; might be best not to ready any healing potions, or you’ll waste ‘em! – Game isn’t very balanced, which is a shame. |
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| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| Kingdom of Paradise is addictive fun if you can overcome the handful of negatives early on. | |
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Tags: Kingdom of Paradise
Posted by Craig "American Idle" Hansen on Nov 21st, 2005 and is filed under PSP Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
