Heroes Phantasia is a crossover anime RPG project by Namco Bandai, Witchcraft, and a slew of other companies. Taking a look at this game, one might think that it's a project of epic proportions. In a sense...I suppose you could say that. Back in the day, crossover games were somewhat experimental... More

Heroes Phantasia is a crossover anime RPG project by Namco Bandai, Witchcraft, and a slew of other companies. Taking a look at this game, one might think that it's a project of epic proportions. In a sense...I suppose you could say that. Back in the day, crossover games were somewhat experimental. Now, you can find them all over the place. Back in say 1995 (assuming all of today's anime existed back then), a game where Lina Inverse could fight on the same team as Hagi would have been a fairytale. A game like this now though? It doesn't really surprise me. Naturally, to give the game some sort of direction or purpose, the game has a story that (with the help of some original characters) works as a way to tie all the characters in somewhat effectively while at the same time, alienating each other just enough so that the game remains something of a "gaiden" (side story) at best. This is done by having long conversational points throughout the entire game where it seems like the developer(s) tried really hard to have most (if not, all) the characters chime in during many of the story scenes. You can choose a male (Eiji Watari) or female (Shinobu Fudou) agent of S.I.R (Sawada International Research), a private research firm in the "Real" world. You can change the agents names if you like, though the name of your assistant can't be changed and she is the same regardless of who you are (Michie Sawada). Basically, your agent goes to meet members of HOLY (from s-CRY-ed) to investigate some strange info. As you're walking around in HOLY's facility, a surprise attack from a "native alter" vigilante named Kazuma (also from s-CRY-ed) causes panic and the alarm to go off. Your agent gets caught up in the mess and you are suspected of having something to do with the break-in which causes members of HOLY to chase you around. Your agent can't fight initially so when Asuka of HOLY engages you and wants to fight, you are saved from strangers from another world, namely Lina and Gourry. To make a long story short, you meet a princess of another world, you get a treasured weapon to fight evil, things happen, and it's up to you to save the world for the princess. Original evil people appear (along with many villains from the other series) and you do stuff. I can tell you right now though that the game is extremely repetitious in both design and function. There are no spells, no real status ailments, and no major items or equipment (you can wear accessories). Most characters have one special attack for the entire game (Lina can get more than one and a couple others can change attacks). As you can imagine, that means the game gets old pretty fast. The game literally has like five different enemies in the whole game...there are more bosses than enemies. That said, you fight a lot of the same villains a crapload of times...and basic animations vary from character to character, though most are pretty lousy. The special attacks look great, but most of them end with the same lazy explosions and/or sparks. The overworld visuals are actually okay; nothing special, but it's not bad. The game is almost always a smooth 60fps which makes battles move at a slick and fast pace, which is pretty good. The gameplay is just as limited as the visuals. Many feel that this is like an anime crossover version of Valkyrie Profile, but there are a number of things wrong with that assessment. For one, VP actually required strategic timing and such when swapping characters or initiating combos. In HP, the game has a character swap system where you switch characters on the fly and make each one attack...that's it. No matter how you switch their attacks in or out, the end result is the same. For every character that attacks, your "Heroes" number increases. If everyone in your party attacks at least once, you will get a "CROSSOVER" bonus and any attacks during this time will deal super damage. Items can't be used in battle (you get healers though) and the one shop (that updates items periodically) is mainly for buying extras like character voices. You get "Blessings" that do stuff like give you x2 EXP. You can distribute "Brave" points to raise stats (you must do this for EVERY character) and different characters are better at different areas...you get over two dozen characters. I can't say much more, but one noteworthy thing about HP is the music; it's excellent, although limited in number. The original characters are also pretty cool, though obvious original villain is obvious. The game has sidequests that are very generic and simply make you roam previous dungeons finding stuff and getting mostly lame rewards. The game is one of those games that seems to drag on and when it's over, it's over. It's worth a play, but due to price gouging, the game is soon to cost far more than it's worth online (some may say it costs too much already). Find out more at: http://www.siliconera.com/2012
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Added Feb 17, 2012  

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Tags heroes  phantasia  ヒーローズファンタジア  hp  anime  crossover  rpg  playstation  portable  psp  bandai  namco 

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