Dragoneer's Aria is kind of the odd man out in NIS America's line-up of quality Japanese role-playing games for a number of reasons, and while the adventure you'll partake in isn't completely awful, there's a few things holding it back.

This RPG from developer Hit Maker tells the tale of Valen Kessler, a coming-of-age dragoneer about to graduate from the academy. Dragoneers are special in the world, because they are the link between humans and dragons.. and dragons are very sacred creatures in this fantasy land. To quote the marketing for the game, Dragoneers are "the protectors of the protectors." History says that there once was a holy dragon named Grinlek, challenged by a black dragon and ultimately destroyed. But Grinlek would not give up so easily - the holy dragon's soul spawned six new dragons to take his place, and with the aid of humankind's dragoneers, the black dragon was banished from the land for good. Or so they thought.

The story begins just as Valen (who could easily pass for a woman) is about to graduate from the academy. But that moment of of pride is disrupted when the academy and the surround city is attacked by a black dragon, considered to be the embodiment of evil. The capital city of Granadis is destroyed and its inhabitants are startled to see that this evil creature has returned from its exile and fear for the safety of the world's dragon guardians. So off Valen goes on his quest to ascertain the condition of the world's dragons which ultimately will lead to a showdown with the legendary black dragon. Valen's task may be great, but plenty of companions wait in the wings to help him in his cause..

First the goods news, Dragoneer's Aria features a pretty decent story because of its delivery and characters despite the fact that it is a pretty formulaic "save the world" scenario. This is due to the work of Juno Jeong, who is best known for his art director gig on NCsoft's ultra popular MMO title, Lineage. These developments bring character and dialogue that is refreshingly adult, along with a visual style that seems more suited to a Korean MMO than a hand-held action RPG for the PSP. Jeong's contributions bring crisp writing to the table along with characters that are interesting like Euphe (a healer of legendary lineage), a pirate captain named Mary (whose filthy mouth is only encompassed by her ridiculously large gun), and Ruslan (a loner elf with enough cynicism to make a clown cry).

While the game's presentation holds up pretty well (despite some oddness with animation), the actual mechanics barely work. Instead of using a traditional skill and magic system, characters have a specific set of special abilities that they can use by dipping into a shared man pool. Since all special actions require use of this mana, players have to wait for that meter to fill up before they can do anything beyond normal attacks. For every regular action you complete (attack, block, use an item, etc.) 50 points are added to the meter and every 100 points equals 1 mana point. The meter is limited to 10 mana points, which means you'll have to do a lot to fill it up. Because it takes so long to load this meter up, many times players will have to wait a long time to use the more powerful special attacks.