Handheld
(PSP) Untold Legends: Brotherhood of the Blade
By Ryan Newman
May 3, 2005, 6 :13 am

The console variation of the PC hack-and-slash role-playing subgenre had a fantastic start, but since then it has had a bit of a problem sustaining itself.  While the titles aren’t bad, the limitations of the stripped-down design have started to show and, as a result, the games are having a hard time remaining engaging after the first few levels of exploration and excitement. When combat is the priority, too often the world and levels are ignored in favor of focusing on the tech tree and fighting styles, causing the game to wear a little thin after relatively brief periods.  While the Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance titles focused on both, providing a well-rounded experience (not only was the fighting enjoyable, but the games are set in worlds that are more than setpieces, with non-playable characters that are engaging and relatively developed), others have failed to follow suit.  Untold Legends is one of these latter titles, giving you multiple character classes and branching skill trees, but not the characters, environments, or enemies that are needed to sustain interest.

This kind of game would seem to be perfect for a handheld system - the overall stories tend to be basic, and the quests are quick and dirty.  It would seem that forging through enemies in a quest for a precious jewel on the train to work would be an ideal way to pass the time.  And this is when the game parts ways with people: what we have is a stripped-down version of a design that was stripped-down to begin with; the result is a title that is enjoyable for brief stints, but ultimately fails to be the kind of game you'll consistently reach for.  For some people, that is exactly how this game should be - after all, it is on a handheld and anything more involving might be too difficult to keep up with or might bog down a quick twenty-minute play session.  There is merit in that view, of course, but in the past few years there have been some incredibly ambitious and time-consuming games on the Game Boy Advance, and there's no reason to think the PSP won't have the same.

With four classes – alchemist, knight, berserker, and druid – the standard archetypes of fighter, magician, and the in-betweens are represented well, and there are a few alterable traits (skin color, hair style and color) to class things up a bit.  Each class has a branching skill tree that has an initial three traits (blocking, melee, and class-specific) that go down into traits that are similar between classes (the ability to carry more time; getting more experience per kill; and so on) and class specific (the knight has dual wield and the berserker has Feral Strike), with each new ability being unlocked once a certain level has been reached or points spent.  The classes don't really offer much beyond their different abilities, though, as the game lacks class-specific sidequests and story elements. Similar to console titles, spells are allocated to two face buttons by using the directional pad, and the shoulder buttons are used for power (mana) potions and health potions.  Since the game is 3D, the camera can be rotated and zoomed in our out. Unfortunately, the most efficient view is the further-out one, which can prevent you from seeing the wonderful detail on the character models and makes everything look a little bland. 

As the newly-crowned champion, it’s your job to deal with the recent eruption of hostilities between the last remaining Men and wildlife and other nefarious entities.  This generally involves killing bunches of creatures and grabbing whatever items are needed from the elder and magic peoples of the town - there are also plenty of the hated and damnable pots to break for loot, thank heavens. Initial quests involve going into the sewers and more sewers, then branching out to fight outdoors, and then in caverns, and mines, and other names for underground spaces.  There really isn’t much more to the game than that.  The locations are static, and you can't enter most buildings – instead, the static people are standing outside in their static towns.  Again, a more fleshed out world simply isn’t needed by some in a game like this, but I find it to be a key element too often overlooked because it is what can really give titles the high fantasy feel to make them more engrossing adventures.

I have a feeling that being able to go into buildings would do more harm than good, though, since the game already has a problem with loading.  Each section takes roughly thirty seconds to appear, and the same goes for starting the game up; there is also loading when viewing your inventory, when viewing items at the merchant, and, the most annoying,when bringing up portraits of people you’re talking to. All of the loading, needless to say, goes a ways into killing continuity. There are also technical problems, like slowdown and evident polygon seams in many places. The game is also pretty dark, meaning the highest brightness setting is optimal, which cuts down on the battery life considerably. 

Untold Legends certainly has the addictive appeal that the role-playing hack-and-slash titles always have; the leveling up to experiment with new skills and the adventuring to uncover cool treasure.  Oddly enough, while the Champions (of Norrath and Return to Arms) titles fail to give good loot, Untold Legends gives too much good stuff.  Often the prizes given as rewards from non-playable characters (NPCs) aren’t worth the effort because an item twice as useful can be gotten off a dead grunt – though getting good items off mini bosses isn’t nearly as common.  The ability to put charms and other items on armor and weapons is nice, and the game does a great job of showing the distinct outfits and weapons of characters when zoomed-in, so adding a fire ability to a sword makes it do more damage and look cooler.  Since the game is playable with up to three friends, it might be that the drop rate was built purposely for multiplayer and never scaled back for solo play, but regardless of the reason, finishing a quest is a somewhat muted experience.  And it’s a shame that the music is so mediocre, with a few generic tracks and sound effects that often sound like hardware malfunctions, because the frenzied combat would’ve benefited from something that got the blood going a little.

Overall: 6/10 

By no means a bad title, Untold Legends: Brotherhood of the Blade is simply a game that won’t last for the long haul.  The ability to play with friends adds a bit, since the solo game is lacking, but the game makes it hard for you to like really get into it in several ways. The need for a bright display requires it be played in shorter stints, while the simplification of an already streamlined system makes it dull to play for long stretches.  For those with a short commute or only available to play for brief periods, Untold Legends serves as a decent distraction, but ends up being little more than that.