Got a copy of Rezel Cross from Play-Asia.com and managed to spent an hour with the game so far. There are a few complaints but generally it’s a good hour so far, here’s my little preview, with full review coming soon. Please bear in mind that this is actually the Chinese version of the game, which was released last February. The Japanese version of the game is set for this September.

A short intro, using the in-game graphics, will greets you before the game starts and I must say I am really disappointed. The graphics look really plain, the animation was poor and there is a distinct lack of facial expression from the characters. Thankfully, it was short and things got a lot better after this.

Update: The review is now up here.

The game then sent me to a village and the simplistic backgrounds in the intro were replaced by this amazing watercolored environment and the characters were in matching colors as well. And thanks to the reduced size, they looks a lot better as well. When interacting with others, there is a nicely illustrated portrait with different expressions depending on the dialogs. The XMB-based menu is quite natural to use though not as responsive as the real thing. There are some voice-overs in Japanese with Chinese subtitle throughout the game.

After several dialogs (and there are plenty of them), I venture out of the village for the first time and the game has this really nice map (the nicest I have seen so far in any game) with dots on them. And maybe I am just starting out, so there aren’t too many option but go to the next closest area. Once in that particular area, you will find yourself in this 2D watercolored forest with paths on them. And so far they basically serve no real purpose other than meeting with other characters or encountering random battles. The game will jump into a fighting scene once it detected enemies, and things are a lot like Sony’s other RPG Brave Story here, with turn based battle system and nice monsters design.

So that’s all I have for the game so far as I ran out of my battery. Stay tuned for the game full review here soon. If you read Chinese, get the game at Play-Asia.com for only $15.92. I have read some feedbacks on the game so far and apparently the story is the highlights of the game, with rather unimpressive gameplay, so I am not sure if this is a good import if you plan to do so. Here’s a pair of scans from the English manual. Click here for more Rezel Cross screens.

Posted in PSP on Thursday, July 5th, 2007 at 10:15 pm | Comments Feed | Leave a response | Trackback