One certainty about the PSP when it comes to games released in the handheld's launch window is that Sony and their third party developers have pretty much covered all the bases. You've got a number of solid action, racing, sports, puzzle and fighting games to keep you busy (and more likely than not buying an extra rechargeable battery and Memory Stick Duo or two), and if you happen to pick up Untold Legends: Brotherhood of the Blade, you're getting a great portable action RPG as well. It's a rather well made and lengthy game full of miles of dungeons to crawl, plenty of monsters to kill, and thousands of weapons and items to find. While it's got a few flaws, hack and slash fans and dungeon crawl addicts will absolutely love what's here.

Untold Legends starts off in the land of Aven, continent of Unataca, and shares no connection with either Sony Online Entertainment's Everquest or Champions of Norrath games, in case you were curious. You choose from one of four character classes, Knight (Male), Alchemist (Female), Druid (Male), and Berserker (Female), and you're limited to a few hair and skin color choices. The only other way to alter your character's appearance is by equipping new weapons and armor, and you'll come across hundreds of items as the game progresses. The plot takes quite a while to get going and like any RPG is loaded with familiar sub quests galore. As the game progresses, the plot becomes more involving and twisty, making the initial hours of both wondering and wandering pay off. Thematically, however, no new ground is broken, and I've a feeling that SOE wasn't intending to raise the bar in that area anyway.

Nevertheless, your primary concern is dealing with the assorted monsters the game sends your way, rather than examining any lasting emotional impact of the plot. The game uses the familiar slightly top-down perspective found in the Baldur's Gate and Champions of Norrath games, and SOE has done a great job at bringing much of that feel to the PSP. What you'll definitely notice right away in combat is how monsters race after you at amazing speed, should you try and run from a fight. This forces you to play carefully throughout the adventure, especially as there are a number of areas where you'll run into strong enemies who can gang up on you if you're careless. I picked the Alchemist for my first time through, as I like using spells and ranged weapons to keep trouble from getting too close. Interestingly enough, my spell casting was eventually mixed equally with my melee fighting, especially with the powerful weapons I was granted after completing a few quests.

Fortunately, the controls are well thought out and manage to become second nature after a dungeon or two; the key to fully enjoying Untold Legends is mastering the use of the right trigger in conjunction with the PSP's face keys to perform actions such as camera rotation and zooming, blocking attacks and using power potions. Amusingly enough, with almost every PSP game I've played, I've had to remind myself that comparing the handheld to a home console is an apples and oranges affair. Thanks to the excellent visual quality of the unit (you have to love that wide screen), it's quite easy to forget that you're playing a handheld and don't have the luxury of the PlayStation 2's dual analog sticks, but that's more a testament to how mind-blowing the PSP is as a gaming system.

Back to the questing and you can go almost anywhere in the game, as long as you can find an entrance and an open exit. Not only does this earn you much-needed experience points and plenty of cool items, but you can also get a sneak peek at what's in store for you when you actually need to visit these areas. While the overworld maps are consistent, the game offers up 100+ areas that include randomized dungeon designs both large and small, meaning that you'll never see the exact same dungeon twice. Your appreciation of these areas depends mainly on how much logic you apply to the whole random dungeon idea; if you're a stickler for RPG detail (or an architecture major who's a gamer) then the fairly haphazard room placement in the majority of the underworld layouts will make you sneer, while if you're simply out for a good monster slaying time then you'll want to come back for more as much and as often as you can stand. As great as the game is on the road, I found myself playing much of the game at home just because I always kept going until my PSP battery needed recharging.

You'll soon find yourself encumbered by loads of dropped goods, but fortunately you can return to Aven and sell off what you don't need, then teleport right back to where you left off. In multiplayer you can set the gold to be evenly divided, but it's first come, first served on potions, armor and weapons. Friendly trading is always a welcome option, even though you'll more than likely be trading for something that will be coughed up by an upcoming boss again anyway. You can also combine magic items with weapons or armor to create more powerful items, but you can only use one item per weapon and you can't remove it. If you're concerned about carrying more stuff and boosting your magic power, once you find or buy Virtue Stones (which add +8 Strength and +8 Intelligence to any armor or shield to which they're equipped) you'll never go without them as upgrades. One thing I'd love to see in a sequel is the ability to combine magic items in multiple slots for even more damage potential, possibly with a durability decrease penalty for the more magic you add to a weapon or armor.

In terms of scale, once you get hooked on it, Untold Legends is no mere weekend rental; you'll want to level up just one more time before tackling some of the tougher enemies, despite the fact that the game allows them to also grow stronger as you play. You'll still come across weaker spiders, skeletons and human characters in areas, but each new location holds some nicely designed new enemies and mini-bosses with long life bars to whittle down and plenty of minions in tow. You can exploit the old ranged weapon or spells sent through a doorway to take out some weaker enemies from afar, but once you're noticed and in range of the enemy's weapons and spells, you need to think fast and move faster. The game drops plenty of monsters on you with no slowdown, unless you get a bunch of large creatures and some spell casters coming your way. You may or may not see the slight hit the game takes when things get busy, but if you're going to stop in the middle of a fight to gripe about it then your character deserves the death he or she is about to experience - just battle on and enjoy the ride!

Graphically, Untold Legends is pretty amazing for a handheld game. It's too easy to make home console comparisons simply because the PSP is doing stuff most gamers have never seen on a small screen, but the characters all look great and the heroes and monsters are fluidly animated. I love the little touches, like the way skeletons take a few seconds to 'die' dramatically, and the creepy smoke effect some of the possessed monsters have even after you've dispatched them. There's a nice use of tile sets for floors and dungeons, along with some decent lighting and weather effects in the outdoor areas. I'm guessing that time constraints, rather than trying to break the mold, led to the fact that there aren't a lot of breakable items, besides the cleverly disguised treasure containers. I was in shock when I came upon the first set of crates and swung my short sword and nothing happened. It's a staple of the genre at this point (and the butt of jokes of some who should know better), and I hope that SOE adds this to the list of things to improve. There's also no jumping, no traps to set off and you can't fall into any of the pits, which makes some of the dungeons a lot less deadly than they look once you're strong enough.

The sound is a mixed bag, with excellent sound effects coming from the creatures as they roar and moan and the different weapons and spells as they're swung or cast. Musically, the game oddly screams MS-DOS all the way, with basic-sounding synth themes; although it's not terrible (hell, I recently reinstalled Wizardry Gold on my PC), I was expecting something more orchestral and sweeping that took full advantage of the PSP's great sound system. Speaking of sound, there's no voice acting at all, which is too bad; the hand-drawn intro with the text crawling up the screen definitely made me feel nostalgic, but I can see some folks complaining that the intro looks a bit too much like a last-minute addition. Well, at least the artwork is nice…

The multiplayer is fun, but it's here where you can see the developer was a bit pressed for time. While you can have up to four players (each with a PSP and copy of the game) hopping in and adventuring together, you're limited to Ad Hoc play for the story mode only. Additionally, if you start a new game and more than one player selects the same character, expect a bit of confusion unless you each play around with the skin and hair tone options in the character creation screen. With four players you'll notice some lag in really busy areas, but I've never had a session freeze up or become totally unplayable. Finally, only the person hosting the game gets to save the story progress, which may be a problem depending on who you play with. However, everyone else can keep their accumulated experience, making the trade off worth a coin flip to decide who's the virtual dungeon master. The biggest factor in multiplayer is teamwork; you need to decide together which direction to head, who's going to grab the goodies in the chest, what gets divvied up - all that good stuff. There's certainly more than enough loot to go around though, so you'll want to make liberal use of the trading feature.

I could whine about the long loading times here, but it's disc media, folks - loading happens. Pretty much anything negative I have to say about the game revolves around SOE making the next one even more interactive in terms of NPC and objects in the game and adding more in the way of character customization and classes. It's kind of a drag to play a multiplayer game and have someone else wearing the same gear and swinging the same weapon (it's happened to me twice already). I'd also like to see more depth in the NPC activity roster, make these guys move around, go home once in a while, perhaps? There's also no night cycle in Aven, and it would be cool to enter more than one building in the town. In other words, as good as the game is, the operative word for the follow up is simply MORE.

I'm absolutely recommending Untold Legends: Brotherhood of the Blade to console RPG fans and anyone who's into SOE's other games. As for those on the fence, here's the straight verdict: the fairly generic plot, slim character class choices, and long loading times mean that Untold Legends isn't perfect, but when you consider that you're playing a game with visual quality that's previously only been seen on computer screens or a nice high-definition TV, it's well worth a purchase. What's here is impressive enough as a final product that any sequels will improve on the things that didn't work, and as I've said in a few other PSP reviews, I can't wait to see what's coming next. [Well, dear reader, unlike Greg at the time he wrote this review, you don't have to wait! Head over and check out our review of Untold Legends: The Warrior's Code now! Ed].

Reviewed by Greg Wilcox for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).