Legend of Heroes
7.8
10
6
6
A Tear of Cliche, but Highly Enjoyable
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Story
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Legend of Heroes: A Tear of Vermillion is a rather cliche story with many recurring themes common to many RPGs released from Japan, but the characters offer a very heart warming story despite all of the typos and grammatical mistakes. In fact, the characters and their struggle is what will draw you in despite probably having walked down this road many times before if you are a fan of the RPG genre and have played a decent number of titles within it.
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Gameplay
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Legend of Heroes features a rather interesting combat system to be honest. In this game you will enter combat when you come into contact with an enemy unit on the field, but this unit may chase after you or run away depending on how powerful you are. Once you've been joined though combat takes place in a grid less combat system where your character can move a certain distance to perform an action. Your spells also can all travel a certain distance which can make combat have a strategic feel to it since you don't want to get to far away from your target or allies if you wish to use healing spells.
I do have a few problems with the combat system though. If you cast spells in this game your character isn't able to move from their position at the start of the combat turn. This can quickly become frustrating since many enemies will sit outside your reach at the start of combat forcing you to waste a turn by not attacking. I also get annoyed with the fact that your character will skip his/her assigned action if the target is killed and won't allow you to select a new target for the spell/skill/deathly attack that you had selected to use. I'd also be a bit remiss if I didn't mention that the deathly attacks feel highly over-powered in this game. In order to use your deathly attacks you need to fill a small gauge underneath your characters portrait on the combat screen, but the gauge doesn't deplete after combat so you can reserve your deathly attacks for boss fights and make them feel way too easy.
I also have mixed feelings about the nature of single-target healing spells in this game since they can only be cast over a limited range as well. This prevents you from sitting a healer way out in the back away from the action, but also adds a strategic element to the game as well since character placement is highly important for spell casters.
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Graphics
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Graphically speaking Legend of Heroes uses an overhead view of sprite images. These sprites definitely have a lot of appeal to gamers that are looking for a game with an older look, but may push away people looking for a game more graphically advanced. Outside of the in-game graphics the game largely deploys manga-graphic cut-scenes to provide the player with information on where to go or what is going on.
My only real compliant about the graphics in this game are that some of the environments feel out of place considering the style of the characters contained within. This issue only pops up in a few environments like the path from the lookout cottage to your home village.
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Sound
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While the game lacks any voice acting talent this may work to the games advantage since it allows the player to voice the characters and leaves room for a focus on the musical scores and those scores are highly enjoyable and compliment the emotional tones being set by the story.
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Lasting Appeal
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Legend of Heroes a Tear of Vermillion is a rather lengthy game, but there isn't any post game content to explore. While the game itself is rather strong in terms of story due to how emotional and involving the characters feel I couldn't imagine replaying the game anytime soon after beating it. On the other hand there are secret items you may miss the first time through so revisiting the game with a walk through may be helpful if you have to acquire every weapon in the game.
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Scores
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Gameplay: 7
Graphics: 9
Sound: 10
Lasting Appeal: 7
Overall: 8.25
2/20/13
Pretty Good Game :)
To start off, this game really does have a lot of typos. and I mean A LOT. Usually it isn't so bad, and it easy to understand what they are at least trying to say. On the other hand, there were at least one or two instances where it was so bad that I had no idea what the heck was going on. That aside, this game isn't bad at all, I thought. The story is good, even if it is a little cliche as others were saying. It even made me cry at times (Which may not be saying much, since I cry all the time in games, books, and movies.) The graphics were pretty decent. They looked like graphics maybe from snes or genesis era, which is fine by me for a handheld. I thought the art for the characters was well done, too. Overall, although this game may not offer any new or totally unique battle systems, I still like this game overall, and I'd recommend it to any RPG fan.
5/14/11
Great and catching game, classic style
Even the storyline on the game being kind of cliche, I just couldn't wait to go back to my psp and keep playing to see what would happen next, this game is a classic turn based style RPG, and for me it just doesn't get any better than that. I own a PS3 and a Wii and I really miss this simple kind of games on this consoles, they've tried different battle styles with FF13, Disgaea, etc. But it just doesn't catch me as classic turn based does. The game is long, lots of side quests that helps you going towards your main objective, and the characters are really the heart of the game, you really feel like Mile is your best friend and I just couldn't wait to see my beloved sister Eimelle again =) This game is awesome and totally worth the investment.
6/13/10
Decent Game
I have played this game for awhile and not yet beaten it, but I can say it is a decent game. My biggest problem with it so far as been the bad translation over from Japanese. During level ups it is most noticeable and gives a confusing statement about learning a skill or leveling up. All in all, the storyline is really basic and almost childish. The game itself is completely linear, there is no way to actually derive from the path what-so-ever if one wished to. Enemies run away from you if you are too strong, that is useful. The battles in this game are turn based, but the characters move around on the field, which affects if certain attacks (yours or the enemies) can hit one or surrounding enemies or not. It can entertain a person for a while if they are just the type to enjoy turn based RPG's, but if you want something deep and strong, it is best to look around some more.
11/6/09
Much like a FF, except slightly childlike story line...
I am an addict/fan of Square and most Final Fantasy games. Except the awful spin-offs and harder to enjoy, entirely linear and third-person-shooter games. The side games are great, and I always seem to play each installment twice to figure out all the secrets. I guess you could say I LOVE RPG's! There are some that are a little too annoying and made for kids; I AM ALMOST 30, you know! However this one held my attention, and wasn't entirely for adults, I would say that anyone from 10-18 would really like the story line- if they are into RPG's; and anyone older would get embarrassed by the ridiculous and childish story line while playing it, thinking: "What would my peers think if they saw exactly what it is I am playing and what it is I am enjoying..." Yes. A very young story line, with a lot of SALOR MOON/NARATU Anime charm. Really, it reminded me of a Trigun/Inuyasha hoedown plus some childish made-for-kids anime thrown in. No adult situations, people! lol. Not that that's a bad thing! Not all RPGs can be as funny (or as adult, humor-wise) as Disgaea PLUS have the playability of Square's FF franchise. This plays like a FFI,II,III,IV,V,VI or VII; and is pretty simple, I beat it in a week. However it was fun, and you add more people to your game as you go, and then you lose and regain those people in many intervals. Lots of fun, mindless entertainment. It's not hard like Myst, but it's also not as easy as Link ;) Worth a spin around the UMD player.
1/1/09
Better than what others say.
This was the first RPG I got for my PSP two years ago and I really liked it. While the second one does a bad job of having things relevant to the story, Tears of Vermillion stays on track quite well. Also, the other characters you meet aren't boring and hold your attention. I kind of compare this one with the second one because the second one wasn't near as good as it could of been. Tears of Vermillion uses all of the character to help you find clues to the main story while the second one just used them for jokes. One thing I loved about ToV was the graphics. They're real nice and clean, but they could of used some cutscenes. That's really the only downer I found in the game. The music isn't have bad either. Since the game went down to $**, it's really worth buying. I would advise it to anyone.
10/27/08