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review :: popolocrois

PoPoLoCrois

Reviewed on: Playstation Portable
Available on: Playstation Portable

In many ways this is a classic JRPG like Golden Sun or Final Fantasy where you continue the adventure of the pre-rendered characters on a quest to save the world, beginning from their own sheltered home town to places they’d only heard about in fairytales.

Players: 1 Player
Genre:
Release: 2006-06-28
Developer: G-artists
Distributor: QVS

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“Aerial Slash!”

“Wiiiind Cutter!”

You can tell when I’m playing Popolocrois. The cutesy little voices are impossible to resist. You can’t help but battle-cry along with them…

“Dragon FANG!”

Sorry… *cough* I’ll put it away now…

In many ways this is a classic JRPG like Golden Sun or Final Fantasy where you continue the adventure of the pre-rendered characters on a quest to save the world, beginning from their own sheltered home town to places they’d only heard about in fairytales.

Meet the hero, ten year old Prince Pietro, the main protagonist. At first, you are on a journey to work out why his mother won’t wake up, but this soon leads to all sorts of adventures were you meet characters such as the love interest, Narcia, the gallant White Night and the blindly jealous Gami Gami Devil to name a few. Each has certain traits which are useful in battle, as strong magic-users or powerful swordsmen, though often your party won’t be dictated by your choice, but by the game.





Fighting is rather generic, with magical attacks as well as just the normal attacks operating on a turn-based system. I must admit, it took me… a while… to work out how to turn my character in the right direction of the enemy but that was out of a stubbornness to ignore the manual in favour of throwing myself into the game headfirst (Note: it’s using the L and R triggers). Gameplay isn’t necessarily difficult but boss battles give you a decent challenge when you come across them. Random encounters are comparatively annoying. They’re not hard, but they come often enough to really get under your skin and make what should be five second run into a five minute trek, wading through the maniacal penguins, tyre-wielding pandas and (the even more out of place) platypus that attack along the way. It’s easy to be tempted by the Auto-play mode which will let the AI take over and direct your four characters into battle, leaving you twiddling your thumbs and hoping for the best if you’ve forgotten to switch to manual before a boss battle. You have options to, like in Final Fantasy, summon creatures to help you. Sheep weren’t what I had in mind but they do help somewhat.

It gets even more frustrating when you realise that each and every random encounter is preceded with a slight loading time. It’s not much, but enough to make you notice it. Frequent loads in this game are a major problem, giving you yet another reason to lay it down to the side and find something else to do. They might not be long but the frequency is enough to make the story and game play seem a little rough in places. Loading occurs not only between areas and before encounters but also in simple menu scrolling – just opening your map requires and extra bit of patience as you wait for it load. However, there is an upside to all this extra loading, as it gives a bit of an edge to the battery life while playing the game. This might help if it was engrossing and required you to sit at it for several hours, but it isn’t and it doesn’t so it might have been worth the shorter battery life if only to smoothen game play.





It is, extremely long. Much longer than you might expect from an RPG on the PSP. The two stories are broken down into books which, while a clever idea, can make the whole game feel a lot longer than it is. At around 30 or more hours, this game needs a determination to reach the finish for the sake of reaching the finish. Once you finish the first story, you might not be tempted to continue on to the second. By this, Popolocrois might be more suited to a casual gamer more likely to return to it regularly. The simple storyline makes it easy to pick it up between saves, even if they were months apart.

Between the books are a number of animated cut scenes done in the more traditional anime styles. At points I felt that the cut scenes added to the kiddie nature of the game. While cute, the simple design and condescending narrative voice over made me feel like I was playing the game of one of those picture storybooks that tell you when to turn the page.

Moving into the second story is rather abrupt because of this. Centred on the suddenly 15 year old Pietro, you reconcile yourself to Pietro’s apparently delayed puberty and start seeking a way to save his father from the evil presence that has turned him into the dreaded Lion King. It’s neither better nor worse compared to the first storyline, but again suffers from being too simple and lacking depth to draw you into the story.

Despite the lack of change in Prince Pietro’s appearance, the visuals in this are bright and appealing. Each character and their animations are charming (especially the way Pietro’s little pony tail bobs when he’s jumping in victory!) as well as the design of many of your opponents in random encounters, wacky as they are. The designs for the environments you travel through are colourful and warm, keeping you with the mood of the game.





Music throughout the game is quite good, keeping in line with the story and setting. While nothing spectacular, it’s worth noting the music doesn’t get repetitive but works well throughout the game. It also (thankfully) doesn’t get stuck in your head going round and round and round…

Popolocrois already has two successful games and an anime series preceding it overseas, events from the games have been condensed and melded together in the first half of the game for the Western audience and while working well in the game, from a story point of view, it is simple and fast-paced, lacking the depth you might be looking for in such an RPG. The classic and colourful visuals and character voices might be enough to draw a casual gamer into this game but for those looking for more depth, the simplistic nature of the game might not offer enough.

Final Verdict

Good value RPG that will draw you in with its charming 2D graphics and characters but suffers from being too simple and the story too shallow. Fun, cute but still dull.

Pros
Great characters and voices, appealing storyline, classic 2D visuals, battle cries, relaxed adventure.
Cons
Terrible narrative voice-over, veteran RPG-ers would get bored very easily, little replay value, frequent loads.

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