Phantasy Star Portable

Phantasy Star Portable

It’s been close to ten years since Sonic Team released Phantasy Star Online for the ill-fated Dreamcast. The first console-based MMORPG, the game shot players into a neon space-station a thousand miles and a thousand years away from the usual Tolkein-esque fantasy settings that characterise the genre. Here up to four characters could band together and venture out onto nearby planets, questing for treasure, killing monsters and earning experience points to grow ever stronger in order to trek yet deeper into the game world.

A spearhead of technological achievement, the memories forged in Phantasy Star Online remain vivid to many players even today. But nevertheless players moved on, Sega closed down the game’s servers and World of Warcraft lured hundreds of thousands of gamers away from a science fiction future and back into a land of orcs and battleaxes. When Sega released PSO’s follow-up, Phantasy Star Universe onto Xbox 360, few took much notice, further discouraged by some awkward designed decisions and cheeky subscription-only content.

Phantasy Star Portable is a handheld version of PSU and seeks to shake up the series’ fortunes by cutting the flab and removing some of its inspiration’s mistakes. As the 18th best selling PSP title in Japan last year, it’s made some strides toward that, streamlining the PSU experience into a tight, elegant and deep action RPG perfectly suited for the handheld. The game offers a story to work through, players taking on a variety of story and free missions while levelling up and customising their character and its virtual pet (known as Partner Machinery). This character can then be taken into the multiplayer area of the game, where they join up to three other players to quest for rare items and gain experience.

This multiplayer aspect is at the game’s core but, irritatingly, can only be experienced via local wireless play. As most European gamers will struggle to find three like-minded friends with all the right software and hardware, this crucial portion of the experience is rendered a little redundant. Problematically, when you’re playing by yourself, the role of your teammates is assumed by the CPU, three AI-controlled characters whose intelligence leaves a lot to be desired. It’s still better than having to go it alone but, as your teammates will often get stuck on scenery or fail to heal at crucial moments, it can be infuriating.

Other concessions to the handheld format (the shift of the 3D hub world to simple 2D map for example) actually end up streamlining the experience, making it quicker to get to the meat of the game. With a huge range of missions to take on across multiple worlds and a gigantic range of rare weapons and items to kit out your character with Phantasy Star Portable has a lot to offer. It’s just a shame that only a few players will have the means to experience the game at its very best, with three friends sat around together.

4 out of 5