You’ll want to cast Nazan (bonus points if you remember that spell!) on your PlayStation Portable to blow the dust off, as there’s a hot game on the PlayStation Network that you’ll probably want to play.
Phantasy Star Portable awaits your download on the PlayStation Store, along with lots of other goodies. Finally, with this 272MB demo you can get a taste of what you’ve been missing all this time. I personally cannot wait to download and play it, but today has been totally hectic around here. In my stead, I’ve asked Destructoid contributor Adam (BlindsideDork) to give me a rundown of his impressions of the demo, and those follow below.
While I’m at it, let me take the time to say how absolutely awesome BlindsideDork is. He does a lot behind the scenes here at Destructoid with very little thanks or compensation. Hats off to you, sir.
Adam’s impressions after the jump.
- Except for the characters you make, everyone talks, which is refreshing coming from the GameCube version. Some people might not like the stationary picture for story scenes but I have to say it beats reading the text the whole time like I remember from the previous.
- It does look pretty from the opening cutscene to the open fields in multiplayer.
- It actually seems like quite a large demo. The main story missions and multiplayer seem quire robust.
- No one appears to be online but if you leave the WLAN switch on you can play the online stages by yourself. They say you should be at least 5 and with a friend.
- The overall presentation is very well done and seems polished.
- As a ranger, I do find it a little hard to aim. And they say to hold L button to lock on but either my weapons don’t lock on or it pretty much allows you to strafe. That is probably my biggest beef with it.
- As well as not being familiar with the series I am not sure what Discs are (unless i completely missed it). There is an instruction manual on the demo, but it just tells you what the controls are. But I suppose you don’t need the discs for the demo.
- You make a partner machine and I wish there were more options to choose from. Maybe it is just the demo but I wanted to pick a different class or gender but didn’t seem to be an option.
- I wish there was a way to keep the camera behind you and have more control over the camera style. Maybe a 3rd person camera?
- …and i like how there is a relatively quick way to heal yourself or switch weapons with that Action Palette they created.
- But besides these negative concerns, I was definitely impressed with the demo. Definitely am interested in picking this game up now that I’ve played it.
