Review – Phantasy Star Portable (PSP)

Phantasy Star Portable commits a number of cardinal sins; a portable game that’s delivered in half-hour slogs instead of bus-ride chunks, a Neo-Phantasy Star game without online play; failing expectations is one of Portable’s calling cards.

The game cribs heavily from the tragically anime-inspired cyber punk world of Phantasy Star Universe and its expansion, Ambition of the Illuminus, giving players every weapon and item from those games, plus a few PSP exclusives too. Then again, you’ll have to put up with rabbit-eared cyborgs and ambiguous gender uglies as penance for your content gluttony.

Seeing as it’s mostly designed outside of typically restrained, portable conventions, Phantasy Star is bursting with weapons, items and armour; its endless menus almost too sprawling for the PSP’s giant screen. Dungeon crawling, hack-and-slashing, loot whoring, level grinding fanatics will undoubtedly find a lot to love. The sprawling and challenging single player campaign can suck countless hours from you, as you deck your character out with powerful weaponry, stylish armour, S class gear and a Sega Saturn Mag.

There’s even a slither of tactical opportunity and timing-related nuance to the combat to satiate those put off by the crawl in dungeon crawl and the grind in level grinding; ranged and melee weapons can be switched on the fly and a keen understanding of each weapon can improve rate of fire or damage.

The game isn’t entirely based on Phantasy Star Universe, and features a number of updates to keep things fresh; the hub world is reduced to a series of menus for snappy transport, item drop rates are increased dramatically and the game’s difficulty has been slightly decreased to speed up progression. The complex and boring crafting system has been dropped in favour of PSO’s regular item drops too, helping keep the game’s tempo high.

Lacking online play is an obvious disappointment so, outside of jerry-rigging PS3’s Japanese only Ad-hoc Party, you’re stuck with any friends you can find close by. The local multiplayer does have a penchant for nasty frame rates and pop-up, especially with three or four players, but effectively captures the Phantasy Star vibe.

When it comes to portable Phantasy Star games, you’ve got a choice to make; wait for Phantasy Star Zero, which crams online play and hideous 3D graphics into a tiny DS cart, or stick with Portable, which does a mostly successful job of forcing the Phantasy Star Universe in your pocket.