PoPoLoCrois
Ultra-cute 2-for-1.
Published: December 12, 2005
Along with Beyond the Beyond and Wild ARMs, PoPoLoCrois was one of the first RPGs on the original PlayStation. It was cutesy, but not especially remarkable otherwise, and though it avoided being just plain horrible like Beyond the Beyond, it really just slid off into the void of launch titles that the PS one had.
Now, it’s come to the PSP. It’s an unceremonious sort of thing, because the game is just that plain. What it does, other RPGs do with more flair and personality, and that’s probably the game’s biggest flaw (beyond the load times for everything). Agetec’s translation matches the generally vanilla feeling of the game itself by not working in any sort of personality, so you’re made to just digest things as they are without any sort of coaxing.
PoPoLoCrois feels a bit like a stew that’s been going for too long. There’s all these ingredients that you recognize, and at times you can almost glom onto a familiar bit of texture, but the whole mess has been boiled down into a singular flavor with no real highlights. It’s a competent role-playing game -- or technically two, since it’s the first two PlayStation games mushed together with a little bridge between them so as to make one extra-lengthy experience – but you aren’t going to find anything particularly exciting here.
The story goes a little something like this: Pietro is a 10 year-old prince growing up in a kingdom laying in a sort of peaceful dormancy after a dragon defeated an ice demon that threatened to plunge the realm into eternal winter or something equally chilly. The dragon also happened to be Pietro’s mom transformed, and though the kid was told by pops that mom was killed by the demon as the dragon was pulled back into his world, the truth is that mom is just, well, sleeping. It’s a deep sleep, the kind you don’t really wake from, but that doesn’t stop Pietro from sneaking out in an adorable quest to save her. Awwww...
The plot mushrooms out from there nicely, and introduces the boy to the concept of interacting with people that don’t know his lineage, and of course the greater task becomes the cliché of saving the world, but it’s still a well-populated cliché. Predictability creeps in fairly often, but at least the game doesn’t try too hard to rock the boat, and thus ends up being palatable, if nothing else.
Pietro roams the world in a classic isometric top-down view at mach speed. Literally, his running speed throws most screen objects into a blur, and you’ll have to hold down X to keep him moving at a slow enough pace to interact with things. Why this wasn’t reversed I’ll never know, but it’s safe to say that it will take hours to come to grips with either precisely navigating things to arrive where you want on the first stop or learning to slow things down at the right time. The fact that things move on the diagonals does not bode well for the PSP’s d-pad, and it’s a shame.
Still, the game does do some things particularly well. The towns and villages that dot the wide expanse of Pietro’s journey crop up organically, just materializing as part of the scenery rather than requiring an extensive loading screen – at least for the smaller towns. The same goes for the random encounters; as you zip around from town to town, the game will suddenly lurch into a fight right there in the same countryside you’re walking around in.
Now, it’s come to the PSP. It’s an unceremonious sort of thing, because the game is just that plain. What it does, other RPGs do with more flair and personality, and that’s probably the game’s biggest flaw (beyond the load times for everything). Agetec’s translation matches the generally vanilla feeling of the game itself by not working in any sort of personality, so you’re made to just digest things as they are without any sort of coaxing.
PoPoLoCrois feels a bit like a stew that’s been going for too long. There’s all these ingredients that you recognize, and at times you can almost glom onto a familiar bit of texture, but the whole mess has been boiled down into a singular flavor with no real highlights. It’s a competent role-playing game -- or technically two, since it’s the first two PlayStation games mushed together with a little bridge between them so as to make one extra-lengthy experience – but you aren’t going to find anything particularly exciting here.
The story goes a little something like this: Pietro is a 10 year-old prince growing up in a kingdom laying in a sort of peaceful dormancy after a dragon defeated an ice demon that threatened to plunge the realm into eternal winter or something equally chilly. The dragon also happened to be Pietro’s mom transformed, and though the kid was told by pops that mom was killed by the demon as the dragon was pulled back into his world, the truth is that mom is just, well, sleeping. It’s a deep sleep, the kind you don’t really wake from, but that doesn’t stop Pietro from sneaking out in an adorable quest to save her. Awwww...
The plot mushrooms out from there nicely, and introduces the boy to the concept of interacting with people that don’t know his lineage, and of course the greater task becomes the cliché of saving the world, but it’s still a well-populated cliché. Predictability creeps in fairly often, but at least the game doesn’t try too hard to rock the boat, and thus ends up being palatable, if nothing else.
Pietro roams the world in a classic isometric top-down view at mach speed. Literally, his running speed throws most screen objects into a blur, and you’ll have to hold down X to keep him moving at a slow enough pace to interact with things. Why this wasn’t reversed I’ll never know, but it’s safe to say that it will take hours to come to grips with either precisely navigating things to arrive where you want on the first stop or learning to slow things down at the right time. The fact that things move on the diagonals does not bode well for the PSP’s d-pad, and it’s a shame.
Still, the game does do some things particularly well. The towns and villages that dot the wide expanse of Pietro’s journey crop up organically, just materializing as part of the scenery rather than requiring an extensive loading screen – at least for the smaller towns. The same goes for the random encounters; as you zip around from town to town, the game will suddenly lurch into a fight right there in the same countryside you’re walking around in.
