Instead of an epic quest spanning tens of hours, Half-Minute Hero offers quests that cram every RPG convention from talking to NPCs in town to battling nasty bosses into bite size chunks never longer than a couple of minutes. Its originality won it PSP Game of the Year honors in 2009, where it was aptly described as “blowing a raspberry in the face of convention.” Half-Minute Hero is one of those rare RPGs that genuinely took everything we thought we knew about Japanese-style RPGs and flipped it upside down. There is only one game in RPGFan’s review annals classified as a “? RPG,” and that game is Half-Minute Hero. Couple all this with an absolutely rousing soundtrack and you have one of the best SRPGs for the PSP. The other main characters and many side characters are compelling as well, making for an engaging adventure. Also unique is that while most JRPG protagonists are guys who are oblivious to a girl’s affections, here the protagonist is a girl who’s oblivious to a boy’s affections. Identity is a common theme in JRPGs, but this is a different take than the usual amnesia device. In perhaps the best plot in the Wild Arms series, straight-shooting heroine Clarissa Arwin grapples with the dilemma of whether some lies are worth living if it helps the greater good. The “tradition with a twist” maxim also holds true for the plot, in that it plays with RPG conventions in clever ways. Sometimes battles feel more like solving puzzles than waging wars, and that’s what makes XF stand out from the SRPG pack. Beyond the usual “kill all foes” and “kill the boss” objectives are other objectives such as stealth missions, escape missions, bodyguard missions, and more. The hex-based system, evolved from that of Wild Arms 4, offers more strategic options than typical square-based movement, and mission objectives vary greatly. In much the same way, Wild Arms XF does not reinvent the SRPG genre, but it offers a gameplay experience that requires a different line of thinking from SRPGs cut from the Final Fantasy Tactics cloth. The games don’t reinvent the wheel regarding JRPG conventions, but they put unique spins on those conventions, such as the incorporation of wild west/ cowboy elements. “Tradition with a twist” is the best way to describe the Wild Arms series. And it is with this in mind that we present our picks for RPGFan’s Top 20 PSP RPGs. Whether we spent more time during this handheld generation with Nintendo or not, there was plenty to love on the PSP. As a result, it saw not only some great ports of older games, but also great new games and portable versions of new games as they came out. The PSP may not have seen quite as much love from gamers, but the fact that it was more similar to home consoles than the competition meant that it was a more familiar platform for developers. And although both consoles had great features, the DS went on to outsell the PSP two to one.īut hey, sales, schmales. In Japan, it came on the scene just 10 days after Nintendo’s DS, but the gap was three months longer in the US. However, when it comes to handhelds, the PlayStation Portable faced an uphill climb from the day it was released. The PlayStation 2, for example, was the undeniable king of home consoles for RPGFans of its time. Over the years, those of us who love RPGs have spent a lot of time with Sony’s consoles.
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