The Legend of Heroes trilogy is a series of games developed by Falcom in the 1990s. The trilogy consisted of The Legend of Heroes III: The White Witch, The Legend of Heroes IV: A Tear of Vermillion, and The Legend of Heroes V: A Cagesong of the Ocean. Many years later, the United States has its first chance to experience the trilogy. U.S. developer Bandai has been porting the three installments to the United States on the PlayStation Portable. However, Bandai has ported the games in a different order then they were originally developed. The second installment "A Tear of Vermillion" was released as the first installment The Legend of Heroes: A Tear of Vermillion and "The White Witch" has been released as the second installment The Legend of Heroes II: Prophecy of the Moonlight Witch. Despite making the prequel the sequel, the two games are related in name only. Their stories take place in the same universe as each other, but the events, locations, and characters are disjoint.

The story begins with two characters starting on their very first adventure. The main characters are Jurio, a shy and timid fourteen year old boy, and Chris, a strong mouthed, tough fifteen year old girl. Together, the two embark on a holy tradition that most in the world do not follow anymore. Only those in Ragpick Village adhere to the age old tradition. When children reach the age of fourteen, they go into the world on a pilgrimage. The pilgrimage consists of the visitation of scared shrines in five different regions of the world. At each shrine, the youth are supposed to look into sacred mirrors to reveal mysterious about their future. The entire process is a coming-of-age ceremony for the inhabitants of Ragpick Village.

The original journey was conducted by a mysterious magical witch, who is referred to as the Moonlight Witch. She appeared from nowhere many years ago and made the journey. After she completed her journey, she was not seen or heard from again. While on the pilgrimage, Jurio and Chris meet new people and friends to help on their quest, as well as their true destinies are revealed as saviors from an unexpected evil.

Besides the story, there is little different between the two games. The game play is nearly identical and just as challenging. If you enjoyed volume one, then volume two should be fun for you. I, however, enjoyed playing through "A Tear of Vermillion", but I was bored with "Prophecy of the Moonlight Witch". The lack of variation in the game play did not work for me. Considering the fact the plotlines aren't really great, the game is not too challenging (you basically move from area to area and talk to various key non-playing characters to advance), the two games are far too similar. Spending about 30 hours with "A Tear of Vermilion" was more than enough time to invest in this type of game. Expecting to do the same with "Prophecy of the Moonlight Witch", with little variation, left me bored.

Gameplay:

Note: The majority of this section was copied and slightly modified from my review of The Legend of Heroes: A Tear of Vermillion. There is almost no difference between game play in "A Tear of Vermillion" and "Prophecy of the Moonlight Witch".

Comparable to console RPGs, The Legend of Heroes game play is nothing unique. In fact, at times it feels very rudimentary. What gives the game a crude feeling is the general game play--story flow, world navigation, battle system, etc. This is, however, not necessarily a bad thing. There are a lot of great games that flow somewhat linearly and still turn out to be darn good. However while I did enjoy "A Tear of Vermillion", "Prophecy of the Moonlight Witch" did little for me. The experience was nothing new. The started to feel very tedious and it was hard to keep playing.

The biggest drawback to this game is that it is very linear. There is not much freedom in what you as a player can do, especially when it comes to map exploration. If you try to go somewhere that won't help you advance the story, chances are one of your party members is going to pop up and say something like "we don't have time to go this way, let's go here instead". And the only reason this is useful is to pick up an item or two you didn't stock up on because you have a character in your party you didn't have previously. Or to level up because you just found out the next boss is tougher than you thought.

The story flow also follows a linear path. There are no interesting fun side quests (or even dull ones), just what you are supposed to do at the current moment. You can only go in one direction, forward. The game even helps you in this matter by providing a red exclamation mark over the characters you are supposed to talk with to advance the story. I really didn't care for this because sometimes it felt like I wasn't really playing the game as much as going through the motions.

Also as you follow this linear path, you'll find that your party will consistently change. You will have no more than four characters and no less than one in your party at all times. I've always hated games that do this, but it is tolerable because you pretty much have the same two characters in your party. Still with several different characters joining, leaving, re-joining, leaving again, etc. it can get annoying, especially when you have a unique item equipped on someone who just left your party.

This brings me to the character leveling system. Something I thought was nicely handled in regards was the experience system. Traditionally in RPGs, characters get experience after fighting a battle. After receiving a certain amount of experience, they rise in level to gain new stats, skills, etc. Since characters are always coming and going in your party, one might worry about the level imbalance, i.e. Lodi joins your party in the early stages on the game, disappears and your main characters Jurio and Chris acquire several levels while apart. Fortunately experience is weighted. The higher the level of your character, the less experience you get from a battle. This helps to balance out the level discrepancies because lower level characters will rise in level faster, with the hope to catch up with the rest of the party.

The battle system plays out very similar to Lunar: The Silver Star Story. Your party and the monsters/bad guys are spread across a battle field. On the battle field, there is an invisible grid and you characters can only move a certain distance on the grid. When you are issuing your character a command, you get a movement grid which denotes the distance they can travel or the range of effect the attack/spell will cover. Sometimes the battle system feels haphazard because you will issue commands to all of your characters, then the monsters will move out of distance and your entire plan is shot. This, of course, requires you to take a different approach to tactics when issuing out your party's commands for a turn. I thought it was a pain at first, but after several battles developing battle tactics became intuitive.

The only difference in the battle systems between "A Tear of Vermillion" and "Prophecy of the Moonlight Witch" is the emphasis on pets. In "A Tear of Vermillion", you had a little creature following you around who would give you different items (i.e. healing potions), beef up your defense at the beginning of a battle, or conduct a first strike on your enemies in battle. The actions depended on what kind of food or attention the pet was given. In "Prophecy of the Moonlight Witch", there is a stronger emphasis on the pet system. You can give your pet special types of food to have special attacks or support actions.

One minor annoyance I consistently had while in combat with "A Tear of Vermillion" was the menu navigation. Many RPGs offer the option to switch cursor position from DEFAULT to MEMORY. In DEFAULT, the cursor will always default to the first menu option while MEMORY will always return to the last menu position. Like "A Tear of Vermillion", "Prophecy of the Moonlight Witch" offers no such option. It is annoying because you have to reselect each command. This can be very annoying in a turn-based combat engine when you want your characters to repeatedly use magic, attempt to steal an item from the enemy, or cover and defend.

When in battle your characters can use different techniques to defeat your enemies. There are the standard fight option to attack with your character's weapon, which includes swords, staves, spears, ranged weapons, and more. Your characters also come equipped with a variety of special actions. Each has finishing moves (deadly command in "A Tear of Vermillion"), when you fight gauge is filled, they can unleash a stronger attack. It is a lot like limit break from Final Fantasy 7, except you can still use regular attacks when you've reached your peak. This becomes important because if handled correctly, you can defeat most story bosses in a few turns. Then you have skills, which can be used at anytime and allow for stealing items, taunting enemies, etc. Magic comes in three forms, kand magic (black magic in "A Tear of Vermillion") for attack, chapel magic (white magic in "A Tear of Vermillion") for healing, and spirit magic for summon spells.

Overall, I had more fun with "A Tear of Vermillion" than "Prophecy of the Moonlight Witch". I believe this is because I was initially happy to have a turn-based RPG on the PSP. Regardless, "Prophecy of the Moonlight Witch" offers almost no difficulty in its game play, the plotline is really childish, the dialogue is really cheesy, and it has little to keep your attention. The only good thing about this game is that there is virtually no load time once the game gets started.

The graphics are a high point of this game. I thought The Legend of Heroes was visually represented well. The game looks like it is entirely a 2D game, but it does incorporate some 3D graphics which really add something to the environment detail and lighting effects. The character/monster animations also look grand. In battle there are unique animations for fighting, magic, skills, and deadly movies. Some 2D graphics are used, such as the character portraits and they vividly depict the characters.

Audio:

This department could have been better. When I first saw the stunning graphics this game has to offer, I was really shocked that the game lacked voiceovers. The addition could have really added to the experience. Along with the game's rather linear storyline, it was my biggest disappointment. What we do get is background music that works as background music. It doesn't really add to the experience or take away from it. It gets repetitive at times, but it's subtle enough that it is easy to ignore.

Conclusion:

I found The Legend of Heroes: A Tear of Vermillion to be a fun game and considering there is virtually no difference between it and The Legend of Heroes II: Prophecy of the Moonlight Witch, one might think I enjoyed the volume two. I, however, did not. After spending some time with "Prophecy of the Moonlight Witch", I have come to realize how simplistic and dull the game play is. While it can be entertaining for a while, the game lacks anything to really keep you interested. The storyline is childish, the game play is far too simplistic, the difficulty is nonexistent, and the game is too linear. In the end, The Legend of Heroes II: Prophecy of the Moonlight Witch is a game you won't be kicking yourself for missing out. However, if you loved the first, then you will enjoy this game. It offers another 25-30 hours of tedious game play.