The PSP isn't without an RPG here and there. The Legend of Heroes, Astonishia Story, Blade Dancer... all decent, but not terribly great, and for a while now PSP owners have had to make do with good. We of course wrote ourselves right into a corner with that intro, and we're not quite ready to start signaling the end of the must-have PSP RPG drought, but Valhalla Knights has certainly had enough oomph to pique our interest.

Part of it is the almost undeniable influence of one of the best games to ever hit the PS one, Vagrant Story. Though VK is most certainly a dungeon crawl, a modest departure from VS' action/strategy/RPG hybrid, the art style is certainly there. Maybe it's just that we haven't really seen many PSP games that shared VS' castle ruins-heavy approach, but the random "hey, that kinda looks like Vagrant Story" comments that kept spilling out of the lips of everyone who saw the game running certainly helped.

Or, it could just be the fact that within a few minutes of getting the basic construct of the world (here's a hint: it mixes fantasy mainstays like Halflings, Dwarves and Elves with Humans with a struggle against an ancient evil), we had to square off against a dragon. Though we certainly didn't have to fight (the control scheme, which uses both shoulders, most of the face buttons and even the d-pad in addition to maneuvering with the analog nub, is pretty daunting), it's the first taste of what's to be hours of light button mashing with some light strategy and, if we do say so ourselves, an impressive amount of difficulty.

Okay, so aesthetics and dragon intros aside, VK isn't exactly a spiritual successor to VS. For starters, from what we could tell, the storyline, involving an amnesiac man or woman (that'd be us in our create-a-character fighter, mage, priest or thief flavor; guys are stronger, girls are more agile), is a bit of a cliché o' thon. Apparently we're the descendant of Rastul, the dude who thumped on that dragon at the start of the game, and apparently there's a nearby castle that's filled with monsters. And apparently we can recruit people from guilds to join our party and tromp through the aforementioned creepy crawlie-filled castle together.

But this is developer K2, the folks behind the Tenchu series, and we were hoping that the gameplay would at least be solid. After a little introduction to Noir, the spectral sidekick that speaks directly into the main character's noggin (yes, really), we decided to poke around and found our first quest: paying the innkeeper for our little nap. After that, we headed over to the guild, grabbed a buddy to help us explore (in this case a priest for some healing backup), and headed into the mysterious castle in search of some loot to pay for our stay at the inn.

Some basic observations: when roaming around, the L button jumps into first-person mode, and R re-centers the camera. Given that you can actually see the enemies that you're going to fight against, it was prudent to actually, y'know, know where those baddies are (though there was at least a radar that gave basic info like if enemies had seen us and where they were looking). The game runs along at a great clip, and the town where we started, the castle courtyard and starting tunnels were all very nicely textured, with amble lighting with an almost blown-out look. Tapping select let us switch between characters in our party, though it didn't seem to have any real effect beyond aesthetics.