PopoloCrois is turned based role playing game (RPG) for the PlayStation Portable. It offers classical RPG game play with beautiful, but short anime-like cut scenes. The game's tone is very young in that everything about it seems to be tailored to a young generation. With that said, this game is rated "E for Everyone" for a reason. The story, the characters, and the simplicity of the game play make this a pretty basic RPG. Still, the game is fun enough and should please gamers of all ages.

The story takes place in the kingdom of PopoloCrois. Ten years prior to the present time of the game, an evil magician was terrorizing the good people of PopoloCrois and the surrounding lands. This evil magician is known only as the Ice Demon. The Ice Demon brought terror and covered the land with freezing ice. It took the might of a powerful good white dragon to stop the Ice Demon. The dragon sacrificed her life to banish the Ice Demon to the underworld, known as the World of Darkness.

At the same time, the Queen of PopoloCrois Seina fell into a mysterious coma. This hurt King Paulo and he decided it would be best to raise their child Pietro without telling him about his mother's condition. Perhaps this is the reason why, but Pietro grew up a sad boy. He had everything and anything could want, but he was always sad. On the day of his tenth birthday, Pietro stumbled into a forbidden tower and found his mother and learned the truth. From this point on, Pietro decided to make it his life goal to save his mother.

During Pietro's trials, he meets many friends to help him along the way including the forest witch Narcia, the good hearted warrior White Knight, the manic inventor Gami Gami Devil, and others. Pietro and his friends also find out there is more to it than just saving his mother from her mysterious coma. The Ice Demon's four favored generals are executing a plan to free the Ice Demon from his prison and once again bring terror to the world. Soon Pietro and his friends must not only save his mother, but the world!

Gameplay:

The game play is pretty similar to a lot of RPGs out there. You can have up to four characters in your party at a time, which is determined by which part of the story you are at. You can control Peitro and can move around towns and a world map. When you are in hostile designated areas you will encounter monsters randomly. The combat is turn based with a grid based system. In general the game play is fairly simplistic, but still pretty fun.

The battle system functions like many other RPGs. The characters and monsters have a turn gauge. The higher agility your character has, the faster the turn gauge fills up. Movement in battle is determined by the character's movement level. Characters can move anywhere on the battle grid within their designated move grid. The actions characters can make include melee attack (standard attack with your weapon), focused attack (charge up for a critical attack), special skills (use your magic abilities), items (use an item), or flee (run away!). Additionally, some characters can be paired together for focused attacks to perform special attacks.

The unfortunate news is that after a while the combat gets tedious. There comes a point when instead of using tact, it feels like you are simply going through the motions. The battles start to get repetitive, because they aren't that difficult. Some of the end bosses can be defeated pretty quickly by using focused attacks and having one character repeatedly using items like a "Forest Shower" (restores 100 HP to all party members). Most random encountered battles can be handled by Pietro alone.

The good news is that the battle system includes an automated attack/defend control. You can set your characters to have the computer control them. The automatic mode offers several different options that include attack (only with melee, no special skills), defensive (do not engage enemies and try to heal other party members), and full assault (use special skills without regard). This is a nice addition that helps save time and effort by automatically issuing commands to your characters when you are engaged in frequent tedious battles. You can turn this on or off at anytime, whether in battle or not.

Another aspect of this game as found with most RPGs are the puzzles/obstacles you need to overcome to get through a certain stage. The puzzles/obstacles PopoloCrois offers are not the slightest bit challenging. They tend to take very little time to accomplish. Most of the time you spend with them is moving from point A to point B.

In the end PopoloCrois comes off as a very basic game for the RPG genre. While it is not nearly as inventive or detailed as some console games, it still is fun. The game does not require a lot of thinking to get through, or tact to survive the battles, but it does produce a kiddy storyline that is enjoyable to sit through and the classic elements to a role playing game. If at all, RPG enthusiasts should enjoy playing through PopoloCrois.

Graphics:

The graphics driving PopoloCrois offer a soothing 2D graphical experience. Gamers familiar with older console RPGs should appreciate the classical look and feel. The game utilizes colors well and provides a fair amount of detail for characters and environments. The game includes anime cut scenes that look great.

Audio:

The audio is fairly simplistic and provides some generic background music. The sound effects are handled well and add to the gaming experience. The real winner in this department is the voiceovers in conjunction with the anime-like cut scenes. They helped turn a simplistic story into something entertaining.

Conclusion:

While I may not have sounded excited or exhilarated about PopoloCrois, and some might even take my comments at calling PopoloCrois a simplistic game negatively, it is not intended that way. I enjoyed playing the game. The story was a little too kiddy for my tastes, but still enjoyable. Overall the game is fun and offers RPG enthusiasts a solid game with plenty of animation and voice-overs to keep you entertained. It kept me busy for about 25 hours start to finish.

* This game requires your PSP's firmware to be at least version 2.00. The UMD disc contains an installer for version 2.00.

** The four screen shots presented in this review come from the Agetec Website.