Sony Online Entertainment (SOE for short) has released its first game for the PSP and it’s called “Untold Legends: Brotherhood of the Blade.” It’s already been well received by gamers, topping the charts around North American specialty retailers like EBGames and GameStop. But that aside, is the game really worth buying? Let’s find out.



As with practically all SOE games, you’ve probably figured out by now that Untold Legends is a role playing game with plenty of action thrown in. The backstory is typical of RPGs: You are in the City of Aven and strange things are happening – people are disappearing or getting poisoned, and guess what: it’s up to you (or your party) to fix everything.

First thing you do in the game is create your character - you can choose between Knight, Alchemist, Druid, or Berserker. Berserkers and Alchemists are female only, which makes you wonder how they procreate, but that’s beside the point. Each has their pros and cons, but let’s face it: in any game like this, you want the guy who can carry the most stuff and has the biggest weapon. All classes do have their quirks and benefits, but in my personal experience, you need someone who can have close combat weapons that cause maximum damage. Knight it is! You then have a limited number of points to add to your 4 character traits.



Now you’re ready to enter the dungeon and of course, you start by killing some huge spiders. The first thought you’ll have is “wow, those are huge spiders. I sure hope this game doesn’t have killer frogs.” Thankfully there aren’t any that I have encountered. After you clear them, you enter the city. The term ‘city’ is used loosely because there are plenty more buildings than there are people. You won’t mistake this for a vibrant city – no one moves except you and the monsters trying to kill you. It makes for a boring place.

There is a shopkeeper who will buy and sell goods, a teleport for easy return to levels that you’ve already gone through (and may have to go through again for subsequent quests), and a few town ‘elders’ who give you quests. The quests are usually along the lines of “go through this cave/forest/forbidden land and rescue/find something.” There is a fine line between the fun of discovery and the pain of going through every entrance in the hope that this is the one entrance you need to enter for this specific quest, and this game is closer to the latter.



The in-game action is a lot of fun at first; it is of the attack-attack-kill-repeat variety. In fact, if you’ve played Champions of Norrath on the PlayStation 2, you’ll probably be very familiar with the action of the game. You have your main weapon and then you have a special ‘magic’ power. This magic power varies by class and your level. Some of the powers are very neat to watch. A power called ‘counterattack’ puts you in a halo and anyone who attacks you will be subject to your counterattack halo and get damaged themselves. Another favorite is ‘flurry’ which spins your character around in a circle very fast causing damage to all of the monsters attacking you at the same time, albeit at a lesser amount than if you attacked each one separately.

Usually at the end of each quest there is a ‘boss’ monster that has a lot more hit points then the regular run-of –the-mill monsters. Once this monster is defeated (and for the most part they are relatively easy), they’ll drop the magic item you’ll need to bring back to the city. When you bring that magic item back to the person requesting it, you’ll usually earn extra experience points and some magical item, whether it is a new sword, or a ring, or an amulet.



The inventory system is nothing new – you have a screen for your weapons, another for your clothing (armor) and then a third screen for your specialty items like rings and so forth. Rings can add skill points or allow you to carry extra weight. A nifty feature of the game is the ability to combine weapons or armor with some of those specialty items. This way you can turn your basic every day sword into a supersword that gives extra abilities. For example, one of my favorite items in the middle levels was the “superior Serrated Stave of Earth.” When I picked it up, it was only a regular serrated stave, but by combining it with a magical skull, it had a new power to increase the chances of scoring a critical hit against a monster. Combining these items with armor will give you added intelligence or stamina. You have to use some strategy in figuring out which combination of armor or weapon and specialty item will give you the best bang for the buck. It’s a novel idea.

The one merchant in the area isn’t a very good one. The only items he seems to get are the ones your character sells to him. Since you sold them, it seems very doubtful that you would want them back. Your character ends up with quite a bit of weaponry found when you kill the monsters and their items are much, much better than what the merchant has. In fact, I would go so far to say the whole idea of collecting gold is pretty useless, because it’s not like there’s a whole lot to purchase.



At first you’ll really enjoy the game…but after about the 15th hour of doing the same thing, the game really gets tiring to the point of how stupid can these 5 citizens of the city be and can’t they do anything on their own? There are 40 “quest” adventures and over 100 levels of play, although I think you’ll have trouble finding out which “forest” you are in.

The graphics are very well done, and the detail of the attackers is intricate. Some of your attackers will have a ‘halo’ around them to show they can do additional damage to you, like freeze you or burn you, which is always nice to know ahead of time. The background music is monotonous; however the grunts and screams the monsters make sound like you are really battling these bad guys.



Unfortunately the bad guys don’t have names – although the game claims 110 unique monsters, you really don’t know much about them. I would have liked to have seen some backstory on these monsters. There’s on huge tree golem like creature that might have an interesting story, but you get nothing. Some golems have minor hit points, others have quite a bit – but you wouldn’t know it by just looking at them. It’s rather disappointing.

Finally, co-op multiplayer is supported but only in Ad-hoc mode. It’s rather unusual to me that a game made by “Sony Online Entertainment” isn’t actually online and it is extremely disappointing to me. If you’ve ever played Champions of Norrath or Everquest, you know how important online gaming is. If you have friends who also have a PSP and the game, and you’re all at the same place, you can go at it, and I’m sure it would be a blast. Those of us in rural areas who don’t have many friends who live in the same area are out of luck.



In summary, Untold Legends is a great pick up and play and slash sort of game. Long periods of playing this game will probably bore you, but if you need a quick RPG fix while commuting, it’s not bad.