Case Cover
Kingdom of Paradise
Case Cover
Game File
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment
North America Release: November 15, 2005
Number of Players: 1 - 2
Wi-Fi Mode: Ad Hoc & Infrastructure (Download only)
Kingdom of Paradise didn't really draw a lot of attention to me before it was released in North America. Although I heard a lot of good things about the game, I felt it sound complicate when I heard about the chain combos. When I brought this game & gave it a whirl, it wasn't as bad as I thought. So, how good is this game really?
About the game
The game is one of the first few action RPG games to be released in the North American market. It gives players to create their own set of sword attack chain combos with more than 150 possible combinations. Players can test out their combos by challenging another player with the Ad Hoc feature on a 1 on 1 battle. Players can also trade Kenpus (the sword attack form used in the scrolls) with each other. The Download option allows players to obtain special extra items that can't be found in the game via Infrastructure mode.
There are 5 martial clans in Ouka & Shinbu is a former disciple of the Eastern Seiryu clan. He was expelled from the clan when he read the Ancient Monument. Despite of that, he still trains himself in using the sword. One day on his way back home, he meets Sui Lin who is being chased by a group of people & he jumps in to protect her. Shinbu learns from her that she is a Seiryu disciple & their clan has been destroyed by the Kirin clan who had stolen their scared Seiryu sword. She was looking for Shinbu to get his help to revive the Seiryu clan & retrieve the sword back. This begins Shinbu's long journey in restoring peace to Ouka
Graphics
The graphics are quite good & are very close to the PS2's. The cut/event scenes uses the same graphic designs as the battle & game play. In other words, the characters don't have design changes throughout the game. Don't let the boxart fool you in thinking the game's graphics look like that because it isn't.
The animation movement is very smooth & flowing. It's almost like natural real human movements. When Shinbu starts to run, he gains momentum first before running at a constant speed. He doesn't run at the same speed when he starts moving. Also, his running form looks realistic. It doesn't look weird. When he stops running from a fast speed, he slides a bit. He doesn't come to a full stop. Also, the attack movements are quite smooth. When I say quite, I do mean quite. Depending on how you setup up your scrolls, the movements can look a bit funny at times. Or else, it will be natural real sword movements.
Music & Sounds
The music isn't bad as it has that ancient Asian feel to it. It helps set up the mood well. Even the battle music creates some tension in the fights. If you don't like the music, you can set the volume down to the lowest setting in the config.
The seiyuus (Japanese for voice actors) are so-so to me personally. Shinbu's voice was ok as the voice actor did a good job with his character. Even those grunts & screams are pretty good. The female voice actresses were a problem for me. They don't seem to act out their characters properly. When their character are suppose to get tense in some scenes, I felt they didn't really show that emotion. All of the female characters seem to talk fast in those cases, instead of sounding angry or excited. I don't know if it's because I have some sort of stereotype on English female voice actresses or they really don't do a good job. One thing about the voice acting is following the expressions of the characters. This isn't really the fault of the voice actors as you see their character's facial & body expression doesn't fit in with the tone of their voices. For example, when Sui Lin gets angry, her eyes are slightly less rounded with her eyebrows slanted to show her angrier & her teeth show a weird grin. It really looks strange. Although some of the voice actors did an decent job on expressing their emotions of their characters, the animators didn't do a good job in showing it properly. Sadly, there isn't an option for you to listen to the Japanese seiyuus, even though their names is listed in the games credits. You may want to take note that there is suggestive language in this game, but it's seldom spoken. So, it's not a game for a younger audience.
The sound effects aren't too bad. Some of it sounds real, while some sound fake but were ok. Some of the sword swing & leg attacks were what may some of the sound effects sound fake. The breaking of barrels, carts, chairs, tables, & other items sounded realistic enough. Another good thing about the sound effects is that they aren't muffled or fuzzy. It's very clear.
Gameplay
Although the game does state it has over 150 moves for you to customize, it's mainly button mashing on the O button. How the combo thing works is basically setting them up on the O button. Throughout the game, you will receive items call Kenpu from enemies, stone monuments, or treasure chests. These Kenpus contain 1 move. You will also receive scrolls from important cut events & treasure cheats. You place your found Kenpus into these scrolls to set up the chain combo attacks. So, your X button will follow the order the Kenpus are set in the scroll in a continuous movement. There are 5 Freestyle scrolls that allows you to customize how you want your attacks to be. These Freestyle scrolls are upgradeable to allow extra slots, while the set ones aren't upgradeable. This is how the attacks works.
Another attack is the Chi Arts, which is basically a magic attack used on a crowd of enemies. There are 5 elements in the Chi Arts as each of them represents a clan. Study which Chi Arts is stronger than the other from the game's manual or during game play. This is important to know since it can help you make your battles easier. Although the game makes the explanation of the Chi Arts complicated, I used refer to the colours of the Chi Arts & using the Chi Arts Setting mode to figure out which Chi Arts is stronger or weaker than the other. They can be leveled up to level 3 only.
Another attack is the Hiken Arts, which is basically Shinbu throwing his sword at the enemy. Quite useful in attacking long distance enemies. There are enemies where you can plunge the sword into their body & use Chi Arts to maximize it's damage on that single enemy. Throwing the sword leaves you defenseless to enemies attacking you. The sword comes back to you like a boomerang, but there are times you have to push X again to make it come back if it's stuck on an enemy's chest.
The battles are a bit hard to get use to at the start. When I have Shinbu attack, he tends to slide off to the sides a bit when doing his chains. Thus, giving the enemy a chance to block or escape the attack. I needed to keep my thumb on the analog stick of directional pad to keep him on course. Blocking is very important in this game or else you will get owned by monsters & the bosses. I had problems fighting Eigen, the first boss, because his attacks were too high. Two combos & I'm dead. Because I didn't know how to block at the time, I nearly gave up on the game since I couldn't beat him until my 8th or 9th try. However, there is a problem with the block feature. Even though you hold down the O button to activate the block move, you don't actually block until the enemy hits you the 2nd or 3rd time. This means, the 1st attack by the enemy with be a guarantee hit. Also, even if you are blocking, enemies behind you can still hurt you. So positioning the block is important.
Although you will get a partner with you at times to help you, he or she would be there for most of the bosses. These partners appear about 10 - 15% of your battles I think. As a side note, even if they get hit, they won't lose any life & it doesn't affect you as well. But I don't know if they will take experience points away from you.
Another thing to note is the enemy encounters. They are set at the same locations, so they aren't random.
The game is quite generous in the item department. I never brought anything in the game, especially healing items, since I get them from smashing barrels, etc. Going in or out of a map will reset the smashble items again. Saving & loading does the trick as well. Treasure chests don't work with this. But the items are random, so chances are you won't end up with the same item again. Also, not all the barrels, vases, etc will have an item. It may be empty at times. The only times I spend my money or Taichi is resting in the inn, buying meals, or upgrading my sword. By the way, Taichi isn't easy to obtain in this game. It takes awhile to be very rich. The most I got was 60,000.
For being a portable RPG game, my biggest concern where getting these type of games is the save features. Chances are you won't play a portable game more than 60 minutes when you are taking it out on the road most of the time. Kingdom of Paradise allows you to save the game anytime & anywhere. But you can't save during cut scenes or battles, which is understandable. However, some of the cut scenes can be very lengthy & some of the major boss battles can lead you to the next battle without a chance for you to save your game. This can be a problem if you only have a few minutes to play & have time constraints. Putting the game into sleep mode won't be a good idea if you plan to get back to the game after a long period of time. The PSP's sleep mode isn't designed to be like that. Also, the cut scenes can't be skipped. This is a problem for those who have seen the scenes already & want to speed up the action.
The load times can vary at times. When I started the game for the 1st time, I had to wait for 30 seconds to get it going to the Main Menu. After a while, the loading time got shorten to less than 20 seconds for some reason. My assumption is that the game was checking if my PSP was version 2.00. By the way, that's the game's requirement in order to play it. If you don't have version 2.00 installed, it comes with the update on the UMD. As for the other load times, I felt it was reasonable. I had load times between 3 to 15 seconds. When you go into buildings, the game will load; which is kind of bad since some of the insides of the buildings are quite small. Luckily, most of the maps are quite big which means less load times appearing. Also, the battles happen in an instant & doesn't require the UMD to be loaded.
The game is nice enough to give you something called "Shinbu's Notes". If you don't know what to do or left the game for a while & don't remember what you need to do, this is the place to look at. However, some of the notes aren't too clear at times.
Story
The story is your basic "Save the land & restore peace" theme. The Kirin clan decides to break the peace between the 4 other clans & steal their clan swords to obtain complete control of Ouka. The story is quite simple, but effective. The flow of it is smooth & it grabbed my attention well.. It had a lot of twist & mysteries that surprised me a bit. However, some of the plot elements are quite predictable. But the story was still entertaining.
The translation from Japanese to English seems to be well done. Everything made sense & there was little to none grammatical or spelling errors. There are times where the text & speeches don't follow one another, but it's very minor. For example, the text says "Why Banko?" but the voice actor says "Why?" instead. It's nothing really major since it's still understandable. I don't know how much of the script is original during the translation process. What I mean by original is how much of the original Japanese content isn't changed or altered to fit an American audience.
The ending really blew it in my view. After defeating the final boss, I was left with many questions on how the game ended. It felt incomplete & left too many questions in my mind. Although the credit roll shows you some still picture events of what happened to some of the characters, it doesn't really explain much. A picture is worth a thousand words & I think that saying applies here as well. I had many thoughts in my head of what happened to Shinbu in the end.
Extras, Bonuses, & Secrets
When you complete the game, you will have the chance to save it & reuse all your items, Kenpus, & scrolls when you decide to play the game from the beginning again. However, you won't be ripping through the game easily with your powerful items as your level goes back to 1 with 100 HP & the enemies (from what I heard) will be harder now. However, you get a new scroll called Pure San'yuan.
The Download feature allows you to obtain special items no found in the game. Using the Infrastructure mode, you can obtain these items. However, you need passwords to get these items. You can't find the passwords in game. But you can get them easily by doing a quick search for them on the net.
Replay Value
The game is linear, so the replay value isn't very high. People have reported that the game takes around 15 hours to complete. I finished the game a little over 20 hours. Most of the time used within the 20 hours where leveling up at times & 1 major mistake I forgot to do to activate the next event. I spent a lot of time figuring out what I did wrong & ended up going back to one city to another to correct it. It was a time consuming procedure. Taking out the factors I did, it is possible to finish the game in 15 hours if you do everything correct. This could be shorten if you were able to skip the events. This shortens the game's life more. I'm not sure if the game records your time when you die & receive the "Game Over" message.
Although you get to play the game from scratch again with saved inventory, chances are you might not do it. You past the game once & you won't get anything new to the storyline by playing it again. What will possibly make you play again is finding all the Kenpus. When I finished the game, I had 80% Kenpus found & some of my scrolls weren't complete. If you want to get 100% Kenpus & fill up all your scrolls, this will cause you to play again. I don't think it's possible to get 100% from playing the game once.
Overall Conclusion
Kingdom of Paradise is an excellent action RPG game. It had a good storyline & I had a lot of fun with the battle system as I thought of ways of developing my own chains. The problem with the game is getting use to the 3D battlefield. Because the camera is set to view at certain angles, you could be running around in circles in a circular area without knowing it. Also, the game is short with 15 hours of game play. Unless you want to get 100% Kenpus, this game can be completed in half a month or the full month; even if you aren't a heavy gamer.
Overall, I give this game a 8/10. The storyline is good & the battles aren't boring with the limitless amount of combination attacks you can do, even though it's almost a button mashing game. I recommend getting this game when it goes on sale since it has short playing value & it's one of the few RPG games available in North America. Ignoring the game play time, you will enjoy it if you love action RPG games with a decent storyline.
Last updated on June 28, 2007
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