Through its first two installments, The Legend of Heroes has been one of the most mundane franchises in the history of RPG franchises. Last Fall I gave the second installment a mediocre score of 5.5, and from all accounts the first game in the series isn’t any better. Now the third has arrived, and unfortunately it sticks to the status quo and fails to advance the series in any meaningful way. While it is probably the best game in the trilogy, it’s still no match for most of the PSP’s already weak RPG lineup.
In fact, even though Song of the Ocean makes incremental improvements in almost every area, it still shares virtually the same strengths and weaknesses as Prophecy of the Moonlight Witch. Strengths include the soundtrack, likable characters, and charming graphics, while weaknesses include a generic storyline, horrible translation, and average RPG gameplay.
This time around, the game adds the main character’s grandpa (and pet) to the standard hero/heroine duo, as you’ll set out on your adventure with Forte, Una, grandpa McBain, and his dog Jan. McBain is an accomplished troubadour, living out his retirement with Forte and his parents. Grandson Forte is an up and coming teenager, still deciding the direction he wants his musical career to take after focusing on learning the kithara. Finally, Una is the prospective love interest for Forte, and also an accomplished piccolo player. This should sound very familiar to players of the last game, as Una and Forte are very similar to that game’s Chris and Jurio.
Like the last game, each of these main characters is charming and well developed. Forte constantly shows unwavering determination, Una is cute and energetic, and McBain dispenses wisdom throughout the adventure while focusing on the sole goal of finding the legendary Water Melody. It’s finding the Water Melody that drives most of the adventure. Said to hold great power, the words making up the Water Melody have been scattered on Resonance Stones throughout the land. After McBain receives a package from his old friend Shao regarding the melody, and finds a magic map revealing the location of the stones, he decides to set out on one last adventure with Forte and Una. Together they form the McBain Company, a traveling group of troubadours that tour the world, locating the stones and performing along the way.
Since you’re following a map while looking for Resonance Stones, the game’s storyline plays out in very straightforward fashion. Sure, you’ll have different situations to deal with in each town you visit, but these quests are almost always of the fetch variety that has you running from point A to point B and back again. Although the game will occasionally warp you back to your destination after rescuing someone or finding a certain object, more often than not you’re forced to trudge back to your destination. As you can imagine, that grows old very quickly and adds plenty of artificial length that does nothing to enhance the story.
Although the characters are likable, you’ll have to fight through a horrible translation to squeeze what storyline there is out of this game. Apparently Namco Bandai didn’t learn its lesson after the debacle that was the last game’s dialog, as it’s just as bad this time around. Gems that are technically correct, but sound horrible, such as "It's a beautiful scenery!" (as the main characters stand on a hillside looking out over a valley) are found throughout the game. If characters pointing out the obvious or making statements no one would in real life was all there was to it, the dialog and translation would merely be bad. Unfortunately, it’s even worse because there are also plenty of instances of wrong verb tenses, incomplete sentences, sentences starting out with lower-case words, and more to give an editor fits throughout the entire game. Honestly, I don’t think I went through a single multi-sentence conversation without seeing some sort of grammatical mistake, which is dumbfounding in the worst way.
Battles are turn-based, with the fastest characters going first during each turn, with a standard set of attack, magic, and other options. Characters with a full power meter can execute finishing moves that trump the next character’s turn at anytime during battle however by pressing the Circle button. These do add some strategy, as using them during a strong opponent’s turn will cancel its action until the next turn. There is also Ensemble Magic that combines attacks from two characters, with the most effective type of magic against a particular enemy given priority during the attack. So like most things in this game, the battle system has seen a few incremental improvements over the last game, but not enough to truly innovate.
A nice wrinkle to the game is that it’s compatible with save data from the first two installments, which unlocks special battles with characters from those games. These are unlocked by using tuning forks found standing throughout the land. This is a nice bonus for players that made it through the first two games in the series (it made me feel rewarded for holding onto that saved data), and something that more developers should do to recognize longtime fans of their franchises.
Graphically, Song of the Ocean shares the same look as the first two games in the series. The graphics are simple but charming, with detailed character portraits that use several poses each, and a good bit of detail in the environment. Speaking of which, environments are a mixture of 2D objects and 3D areas that works pretty well. Towns look a bit too similar to each other however, even across borders as you make your way from country to country, and are laid out in similar patterns that make each area feel the same.
Given that the storyline revolves around the power of music, you would expect that it would feature a great soundtrack. That is indeed the case here, with a good selection of exploration music that ranges from subdued to up-tempo. The ditties the characters learn throughout their adventure are also pretty catchy, and help keep you motivated to move forward in the game and discover new tunes to play at performances. At times it almost feels like the composers knew that this was their chance to really shine, and delivered an excellent performance that lives up to the game’s premise.
Bottom Line:
Some incremental improvements keep this from being a complete disaster, and it is better than the last Legend of Heroes title, but it’s still a strictly by-the-numbers RPG that fails to fix the major problems already present in the franchise. Worse, the horrible translation alone nearly kills what otherwise has the potential to be a charming little story. So even though this is technically a better game than The Legend of Heroes II, I'm giving it the same score because it fails to move the franchise forward in any meaningful way.
If you enjoyed the first two games you’ll probably enjoy this one too (especially since your loyalty has been rewarded with the save data compatibility), but players simply looking for a good portable RPG should try one of the system’s better options like PoPoLoCrois or Monster Kingdom: Jewel Summoner.
| Pros: | Cons: | Final Score: |
|---|---|---|
|
| 5.5 |
Posted: 2007-03-26 15:24:13 PST