Blade Dancer: Lineage of Light PSP Review

Generally storylines in Japanese RPGS have been as generic and predictable as this opening paragraph of this review that you currently have your eyeballs laid up on. Destruction of world looms, teenager usually with spiky hair and psychological demons steps up to save it. There are exceptions, but Blade Dancer: Lineage of Light certainly isn’t one of them at least in regards to its narrative.

You play the spiky haired teenager Lance, a young swordsman who travels to the island of Foo to merely test his sword skills, but of course he soon ends up on a mission to save the world from destruction, unsurprisingly offering him ample time to test the swing of his sword arm.

The storyline may be largely generic, but the gameplay is a tad more inventive. As always you’ll be battling an assortment of beasties, purchasing stronger weapons and armour and finding items encased in chests that are bizarrely scattered around the countryside.

A welcome touch is the fact that you are able to see your adversaries roaming the landscape, allowing you to pick and choose your fights as you see fit. Enemies are represented by differently coloured skulls, allowing you to see how hard of a fight you’re in for beforehand. Stronger enemies will try and pick a fight with you, whilst weaker ones will scurry in fear and even merge with other enemies, thus making them stronger.

In Blade Dancer, just about every item can be crafted, negating the need to traipse back to the closet town to stock up on your diminishing items. It’s particularly a real godsend when you consider that weapons eventually break. Crafting itself is fun and diehard RPG fans will no doubt have fun tinkering with the system.

Load times are simply unacceptable, a statement that is appearing in all too many PSP reviews and one that once again rings true here. We also don’t appreciate having to target a person before we’re able to chat with them. Opening chests and doors is done in much the same needlessly tedious way.

The game has a multiplayer mode, which disappointedly doesn’t allow you to play the main game, but rather sees you and up to three other people possessing a copy of the game, tackling dungeons together. Some powerful items can be discovered, whilst playing this, which can then be utilized in the main game.

Whilst this writer doesn’t doubt that there’s a lot of fun RPGS, many will agree that it’s normally the story that primarily drives them forward in such a game. Featuring an entertaining but predictable storyline, Blade Dancer is rare in that we play it mainly for the gameplay rather than an enthralling yarn. Blade Dancer: Lineage of Light is certainly a welcome addition to the PSP’s RPG library!

7/10