Knights in the Nightmare (PSP)

Well this post was certainly in a long time in the making considering I bought this game when it was released in the US.  I sort of put it off because it has just obnoxious amounts of loading particularly at the beginning.

loading.
now let's talk about equipping weapons
loading.
Here's how to equip weapons.
loading.
woah that's great thanks for telling me that!

Then again every single mission is.

status screen.
loading.
pre-mission cutscene
loading
flavor text for the area you are fighting in.
loading
2nd pre-mission cutscene.
loading
mission load out
loading
Mission actually starts.

Somehow I enjoyed this game despite this!  So that's a pretty big accomplishment.  Oh another huge complaint.  The second half of the game is completely and utterly frivolous.  You can tell for some reason or another they were told to make the game twice as long.  As soon as you meet the final boss: quit playing.  The following 18 missions are where the level design completely falls apart.

So I can actually talk about the game now:  It's a SRPG-Tower Defense-Bullet Hell-Mp3 Organizer.  Every review I read said the battle system is intensely complicated to understand.  It kind of is, but once you figure it out the challenge sort of evaporates.  It's a really neat system that is extremely confusing for the first third of the game and then you get a hang of it and that's about it.  The game does start at the extreme deep end (the tutorial is kind of worthless.) 

So let's see how I can describe.  You control a little wisp.  It's the soul of a dead king that is trying to take back his kingdom from the head of the Underworld, angels, his backstabbing Cardinal, and the numerous monsters he kills along the way.  The journey to the castle is pretty neat and then it ugh...

You don't have a life bar you have a Timer 60 seconds.  It doesn't drop on it's own.  It only drops when you get hit by enemy bullets or are charging an attack.  You don't attack directly.  You use your now dead loyal knights to attack.  But they don't attack directly you first have to click and drag a appropriate weapon for the knight's class  over to the knight.  Each class can only face two of the possible four directions (which is why the level design completely falls apart because it no longer takes into account the different knights.)

And you don't get just one set of 60 seconds.  There are several rounds to each mission.  Between mission you have a slot machine that comes up to decide your random enemies.  Your goal each time is (on a separate bar) have a straight line of kills.  On a boss it's just to kill the freakmonster.

All the character art for this game is straight-up ultra gorgeous.  It's pretty amazing how much character they get out of a single image for your knights and the villains.

I really did enjoy the first half of the game and strongly recommend if you want to play the most hardcore-instant street cred game you can get.  Fun fact: I had to explain this game to a nurse.  They then said they enjoyed Final Fantasy XIII. 

Getting to the POINT WHERE YOU SHOULD STOP is about 20 hours.  Which is a good length.  Though it's on portable systems, it requires so much concentration it's impossible to play if you're in a place with distractions or life happening.  I guess the later half of the game somewhat soured me, though the first half is pretty great when you don't know what the fuck you are doing but you are trying to survive.