Brave Story stars a young boy named Tatsuya ( although you can rename him ), a boy in modern day Japan. I renamed my character to Yokomoto to keep in sync with the game setting and will use his name for the rest of this review. He's your average boy in every way; in fact, the first time we see him, he's playing his own PSP. Unfortunately, not long after the story begins, Yokomoto's best friend Miki falls into a mysterious coma that medical science can't explain, and Yokomoto is offered a chance to save her. A mysterious voice offers to send Yokomoto to another world called Vision, where he'll complete a quest to meet the Goddess who created Vision, and he can get a single wish granted. Naturally, he accepts without hesitation and before he can blink, he's transported to Vision, given a sword and some armor and sets out on his quest.
The plot of Brave Story isn't particularly groundbreaking, but the real charm is in the characters, not the plot. Although Yokomoto is a classic "mute protagonist" ( the silent leader of the cause ) like Chrono Trigger's Crono or Suikoden's McDohl, he is joined by a number of unique characters on his quest. His first ally, for example, is a flamboyant catgirl ( Brave Traveler's world have them known as "kitkin" ) named Yuno, who generally serves as the mouthpiece for the silent Yokomoto. Speech audi in the game is scattered here and there in segments though. Most of the storyline is set in text reading . Your party of characters will quickly grow, adding everything from giant lizard men to the hero of the Brave Story anime. The characters generally don't have long symbolic stories and deep entrenched plot; they're just fun people with whom to travel.
If you've ever played an RPG, you can jump right into Brave Story and grasp most of the mechanics right off the bat ( the way a game should be ) Yokomoto and two other party members battle evil together as a party in turn-based, menu-driven combat. Thankfully, there are a number of mechanics that transform simple combat into something a little more interesting. In the world of Brave Story, Bravura or special techniques run off Brave Points or BP, instead of magic. Brave Points function not unlike magic points does in most RPGs, but recovering it is a significantly different task. Every time a character attacks, the party's Bravery meter begins to build. Each attack causes the character to regenerate a few Brave Points, determined by how high the bravery meter is. That means that if your party manages to work out a long combo, you can start busting out special moves and regaining all your BP after each attack. The catch is that if you heal or boost your stats instead of attacking, the Bravery meter resets to zero. It's an interesting mechanic, and one that manages to give you the ability to use special moves often, yet make you think twice about pumping out healing spells every round.
At first when you character is starting out Brave Point useage will be very limited. You can level up rather quickly, by defeating enemies in combat. Once you level up to about about level 10, you'll see that you'll be able to use your Bravura points quite regularly. You'll also notice, each character in your party will possess unique bravura skills.
Another fun element is the Unity Attacks, which are powerful techniques that require two or more party members to activate. As your party fights together, the members become closer friends, and once they've battled together for a specific amount of time, they gain the ability to perform a number of Unity Attacks. They're powerful, but they come with a catch: Each member involved has to use BP to activate it, so busting out three Unity Attacks a round is bound to drop your Brave Points to zero in a matter of seconds, unless you're very careful.
However, even outside of Unity Attacks, learning how to make your party work together is to your benefit. When an enemy is killed by a regular attack, there is a chance that the character who defeated them will get a free Extra Attack, which allows him to instantly launch a second regular attack on an adjacent enemy. Of course, if you just let anyone get the kill, your weakest character may be the one to launch the subsequent attack, but with intelligent planning, you can end fights much faster by letting your heavy physical fighters get multiple attacks each round.
Some enemies have specific aspects on which you'll need to keep a close eye because they can severely influence the battle results. Besides the usual elemental strengths and weaknesses, each foe also has a Tribal weakness, which is based on what kind of creature they are. For example, some attacks do extra damage to bug enemies, while others are effective against humanoid enemies. Since enemies can hit fairly hard. Learning to use their Tribal weaknesses allows you to beat down tough foes that would normally cause you trouble.
Not all enemies are going to fall so easily though. Some have the potential to go into a Crazed state, which causes them to grow to massive size and make them significantly stronger and tougher to defeat. A neat aspect of the Crazed state is that the enemies drop different items than their calmer counterparts, so it may be in your party's best interest to let them go crazy. Pay particular attention to your characters weaknesses and strategize your attacks as crazed enemies will have boosted stats and will become alot more powerful and harder to defeat. They also will inflict substantial damage to your charcters when it's their turn to attack.
Combat really is as easy or hard as you make it to be. If you do nothing but choose attack, waste BP and wildly flail at enemies, you can probably make your way through the game, but it won't be easy. Likewise, if you master enemy weaknesses, BP conservation and Unity Attacks, you'll find that your life is much easier ( and the game will become alot more interesting to play and a lot more fun ). Brave Story isn't the kind of RPG where you can just pound the X button and win every fight.
Outside of the main quest, Brave Story offers a number of side-quests to keep your party busy. They're mostly simple tasks ( example : finding lost items ), but the rewards are really interesting. Early on in the story, Yokomoto gets the ability to Craft items, which requires blueprints and materials. Naturally, the best way to get those materials is to perform the side-quests. The one task that really stands out is Goalfinch Brawling, where tiny multicolored birds are pitted against one another in a contest to eliminate one another. I found this part of the game to be pointless and rather stupid. So I didn't persue it, but looked upon it as an added feature that might appeal to others.
Brave Story is one of the best looking games on the PSP. The characters are large, well animated and very expressive. From the twitch of Yuno's ears to the way Yokomoto stares in admiration at Meladee during one of their Unity Attacks. The detail in the characters really does a lot to make them feel alive. Even the enemies share surprising amounts of detail, and when you're fighting identical enemies, they're not always identical. I personally get a kick out of fighting the lizards. They cock their heads around and stomp their feet in true lizard fashion and also do a pretty good job at hissing at you menacingly. Some of the same enemies you battle may be larger or smaller or differently colored, while still technically being the same species of animal. It's a detail that even high-quality RPGs would ignore. Even better, all of this graphical quality comes with some of the best loading times on the PSP. Everything loads in a matter of seconds, and it really improves the overall experience of the game.
Brave Story's gameplay experience isn't as strong as its visual aspect, but it is certainly not terrible by any means. The music is nice, if completely forgettable, and serves well as background music. Except for a very few specific cut scenes, none of the game's storyline is voiced, which surprisingly isn't too odd and helps to keep things moving as a solid pace. As I stated before, this game is pretty much solely based on text reading for it's storyline. Some parts though had you reading "far" too much text. The party ( including mute Yokomoto ) is voiced in battle, although their vocals are limited to short battle cries. The voices themselves are pretty bland and often sound too fast and unnatural, although with the exception of Yuno, none of the voices get really annoying, but they do get repetitive. Those who prefer, can even switch the voices to Japanese, although those also sound like they're trying to rush their lines.
Brave Story: New Traveler isn't innovative. It doesn't bring anything new to the RPG genre, break graphical bounds, create a revolutionary new combat system, or last 80 hours. What it is, however, is fun. Battles are swift and enjoyable, the characters are charming and likable, the side-quests are interesting and rewarding enough to keep you searching every nook and cranny of the world, and the graphics are among the best on the PSP. If you're an RPG fan with a PSP, you owe it to yourself to give Brave Story: New Traveler a shot.
My only peeves with the game is the save feature. You need to find check points in order to save your progress. It's finding them.... They are not overly abundant and some searching is required. On that note, when you want to have a go at this title, make sure you can tuck away a 1/2 hour of your time ( minimum ). This game is a time sponge will dictate alot of your time between game sittings. This is due to the fact that when you are a dungeon, you can't use a map feature ( kind of dumb ) but you can use it in the outside world. So when in a dungeon crawl, you need to use memorization of where you are going and where you have come from ( especially to find you way back out ) while at the same time triggering fights with cave dwellers in your search. A save point is normally incorporated in a dungeon, but again, it's finding it.
The japanese anime the graphics dictate is out of the norm for me as well as being geared towards a younger gamers audience. But the essential gameplay elemenst are there. And that to me is more important, so I can overlook it's graphical features. The graphics are, however, quite good and the audio stellular.
For a PSP ( where simplicity is a factor for a handheld console ), Brave Story is a pretty decent game. I didn't find it as a disappointment in purchasing it. The visuals and gameplay is there. It's a worthy game to have in your PSP library.
In closing, I Rate this game 8.5/10
