With all 3 Legend of Heroes (PSP) games released on these shores, I thought I oughtta make a sort of appreciation thread for them. They're old-school Lunar-esque Jappy RPGs that were originally released only in Japan as the Gagharv (whatever the fuck that is) Trilogy. We got them slightly out of order: Legend of Heroes 2 is actually the first game from the trilogy (Eiyuu Densetsu III) where as Legend of Heroes 1 is Eiyuu Densetsu IV and Legend of Heroes 3 is Eiyuu Densetsu V. Don't care? Fuck you. If yer gonna play these games -- each one is at least 50 hours -- just know 2 THEN 1 THEN 3 is the intended order. Also LULZ.
Here's the run-down of the strengths and weakness of this series:
Pluses:
+ great tile/3D graphics. OMG just OMG. The overworld is contiguous and very large, and there are loads of gorgeous environmental effects. The generic animu portraits are large and well-drawn.
+ save anywhere and a good journal system. It's easy to pick up and play and hard to get lost. No load times.
+ each game has a good 10-12 playable characters, each with different skills/spells.
+ the stories are all heartwarming adventure/fellowship Lunar-esque crapola. I put this as a plus for fruits like Himuro.
+ they are made by Falcom and have this really polished-yet-PC gaming feel to them that I like.
+ battles are fast and also have no load times.
+ some honestly difficult battles.
+ music is good-to-great.
Minuses:
- English translation runs from passable (LoH 3) to near-BoF awfulness (LoH 1 and 2, although they never reach the pits of BoF2). Also, the dialogue boxes weren't correctly resized for English text in LoH 1, so text runs OVER the boundaries of the dialogue box in a few "select a dialogue branch" instance. Yuck.
- fight graphics are simply okay. There's some cool spells, but most of the skills/spells are plain.
- it's animu through and through. Eventually, the cliches can wear on you. Thank God it's portable, so you can leave it for weeks until your soul has had time to detoxify.
- dungeons are usually a bit plain, with a few being monstrously labyrinthine and dull and others being quite clever. It's incredibly hit-or-miss. 3 is the best for this, and 1 is the worst.
Look, I'll be blunt. If you liked the Lunar games and don't mind a mediocre-to-awful translation, you'll enjoy these games. The fighting is certainly deeper than the Lunar games, and the characters have a much larger range of tatical abilities. On the other hand, if you play for the story and you need your games to read like Dragonlance-meets-Evangelion, you're fuck outta luck. The best description I can give of these games is that they are similar to B-list 16-bit RPGs, with vastly better visuals and the same dubious translation. They shit all over the godawful DS Jappy RPG lineup, excluding maybe FF3, although they look a lot better than it.
Or just say FUCK YOO DRINKY and play FF5. I won't mind. FF5 rocks.
