A ‘Force’ To Be Reckoned With

Aside from a monster publisher like Square Enix, there aren’t many other companies out there that dedicate themselves to producing traditional Role Playing Games for next generation systems. That’s where a company where Atlus comes in, producing easily over a dozen high quality RPGs since it was founded in the early ’90s. With an obvious love for the genre, their games are strictly for the hardcore RPG fan- you know, the type that don’t mind dedicating hours upon hours to their games.

Make no mistake about it, “Hexyz Force” is not only a labor of love from Atlus, but is a game that will demand at least 40 hours of your time with two memorable adventures that demand patience, persistence and a love of the past games of the genre.

Feeling a bit like the original “Wild Arms” at times, with beautiful anime scenes, nearly 45 minutes in all, sprinkled in between the excellent plot-driven story, “Hexyz Force” is indeed a force to be reckoned with on Sony’s portable console.

In the end, it’s not exactly perfect, but it’s got plenty of reasons to keep your fingers glued to it.

With two campaigns to play through, one with the Cerulean Knight Levant or the youngster Cecilia, both with completely different personalities, there’s a story for everyone here. On one side, Leon definitely channels the Cloud Strife-type persona, as his battles with inner demons and inability to vent his emotions play a huge role in the tale, while Cecilia sometimes gives you the feeling she’s just a long for the ride, before understanding exactly what it is she’s fighting for. As a result of this, you’ll want to play through both campaigns [you can pick which character to play with at the start of the game] and see what the fate of Berge will eventually become. Like a great RPG and a well-told anime, both sides have great supporting characters at their side as well. As a matter of fact, sometimes you’ll even find yourself more attached to them than Leon or Cecilia. This doesn’t hurt the game by any means however, as it’s just a testament to the depth of the story.

Vincent Valentine eventually got his own game, nearly a decade after Final Fantasy VII, so why not the super, mega, totally awesome Lygar, Griek?

We’ll be waiting Atlus.

Regardless of this though, the story of “Hexyz Force” isn’t as epic as you’d like. Sometimes, you’ll feel that you’re just running from place to place, gopher-ing for one item to continue the story. These moments are few and far between, but enough to make you feel sidetracked while trying to uncover the mysteries of Berge.

Graphically, “Hexyz Force” features simple 3D sprites that are far from visionary, but are more than solid. During dialogue scenes, portraits of the characters are placed next to their words, providing a bit more allure [sometimes bringing out the “finer” qualities of the female characters as well] and adding enough polish to keep your eyes happy. Nonetheless, you’ll get aggravated whenever you stomp into a new area and see that you’re fighting essentially the same enemies [minus the boss battles of course, those are all pretty darn cool], just with different color swatches.

It worked in the original Dragon Warrior, Atlus, not anymore.

In spite of that though, a nice leveling up system that allows you to unlock new moves for your characters, a solid turn-based battle system and a nifty weapon and item creation system do more than make up for the apparent laziness of the enemy designs. Simply put, when so many elements of the game are this solid, you can look past minor imperfections and play this game all the way through.

Add in over 40 hours of gameplay in the Chef Boyardee [meat] part of the game and a few interesting side quests and it’s quite possible that “Hexyz Force” is quite possibly not only the best “new” RPG on the PSP this year, but the best in quite some time.

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About Patrick Hickey Jr. 14230 Articles
Patrick Hickey Jr. is a full-time Assistant Professor of Communication & Performing Arts and Director of the Journalism program at Kingsborough Community College and is the chairman of the City University of New York Journalism Council. He is the Founder and Editor-In-Chief of ReviewFix.com. He's also a former News Editor at NBC Local Integrated Media and National Video Games Writer at Examiner.com where his work was mentioned in National Ad campaigns by Disney, Nintendo and EA Sports. Hickey was also the Editor-In-Chief of two College Newspapers before he received his BA in Journalism from Brooklyn College. Hickey's work has been published in The New York Daily News, The New York Times, Complex, The Hockey Writers, Yahoo!, Broadway World, Examiner, NYSportScene Magazine, ProHockeyNews.com, GothamBaseball.com, The Syracuse Post-Standard, Scout.com and the official sites of the Brooklyn Aces and New York Islanders. His first book, The Minds Behind the Games: Interviews With Cult And Classic Video Game Developers was released in April 2018 and is chock full of interviews with legendary developers. His second book in the series, The Minds Behind Adventures Games, was released in December 2019. His third book, The Minds Behind Sports Games, was released in September 2020. His fourth book, The Minds Behind Shooter Games, was released in March 2021. The Minds Behind Sega Genesis Games and The Minds Behind PlayStation Games were released in 2022 and The Minds Behind PlayStation 2 was published in January 2023. Hickey is also a contracted comic book writer, currently penning his original series, "Condrey," as well as "The Job," "Brooklyn Bleeds" "Dem Gulls" and "KROOM" for Legacy Comix, where he serves as founder, owner and Editor-in-Chief. Hickey Jr. is also a voice actor, having starred in the 2018 indie hit and 2019 Switch, PS4 and Xbox One release, The Padre (also serving as English language Story Editor), from Shotgun With Glitters. The sequel, The Padre: One Shell Straight to Hell was released in February 2021- Hickey also served as a Story Editor and Lead Voiceover performer. He has also done narration and trailers for several other titles including The Kaiju Offensive, Relentless Rex and Roniu’s Tale. Hickey is also the lead voiceover performer on Mega Cat Studios’ upcoming title WrestleQuest, responsible for nearly 90 characters in the game, as well as Skybound's Renfield: Bring Your Own Blood, where he voices both Dracula and Renfield, as well as several other characters. He also stars in Ziggurat Interactive’s World Championship Boxing Manager 2, where he performs the VO of nearly every male character in the game. He also worked on the Atari VCS’s BPM Boy.

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