If you grow weary of stereotypical Japanese RPG adventurers traipsing into dungeons to fight evil, Sony feels your pain. Yuusha no Kuse ni Namaikida (loosely interpreted as "the nerve of these heroes" or "don't be so bold just because you are heroes") allows you to punish stereotypical would-be JRPG adventurers by crafting a dungeon ecosystem of creatures that defend a Dracula-like devil.
Dungeon makers are hardly new territory, but this one is distinguished by its simple and unique approach -- digging with a pickaxe. In fact, moving the onscreen pickaxe cursor and pressing the square button to dig accomplishes nearly every necessary action in this game. At the most basic level you'll be digging passageways by destroying blocks of soil located horizontally or vertically from already dug spaces. But digging nutrient-rich or magic-rich soil (as opposed to plain soil) also births monsters. These monsters are the only line of defense against infiltrators that attempt to reach, tie up, and then drag the devil character out of the dungeon (if they succeed, it's game over). Hence the story mode consists of many waves of the following:
1. Build/maintain your army of dungeon monsters until the wave of heroes arrives.
2. Place the devil somewhere in the dungeon while the action is stopped.
3. Continue to play (or wait) as the hero(es) fight(s) through the dungeon in an attempt to capture the devil character.
4. If successful, upgrade your monsters.
With only a pickaxe at your disposal, it seems difficult to imagine creating a legion of dungeon monsters. But this is the brilliance of the game. The weakest monster birthed from nutrient-rich soil is a green slime. Its lifecycle involves drawing nutrients from the soil and depositing them at other locations, but it eventually ceases locomotion to become a plant. With enough surrounding soil at its rooted location, the plant will bloom into a flower and birth more green slimes.
If the soil block has accumulated more than the barest amount of nutrients, a stronger monster will emerge, such as a fly larvae that will pupate after eating some of its primary food source: green slimes. The most nutrient-rich soil usually gives birth to sword-wielding lizards (that feed exclusively on carnivorous flies) who can reproduce using dens they create. However, digging all around a nutrient-dense soil block before breaking it produces a demon doorway instead, and demons can alter the stats of your entire monster ecosystem (even though they tend to not be the best choice for attacking the hero directly). Moreover, the three levels of nutrient saturation have a converse in magic, where you can create an ecosystem of elementals, fairy-like liliths, and fire-breathing dragons.
If all of this sounds complex, that's because it is. Yuusha's story mode is relatively short -- clearly meant to be replayed many times for a higher score and ranking. Even the training mode isn't just a tutorial; it presents a number of challenges that explain the intricacies of food chain and ecosystem balance that allow you to build a stronger army faster without endangering any one creature's food supply. The whole experience feels like some grand mashup of SimLife, Desktop Tower Defense, Pac-Man Championship Edition, and an 8-bit RPG while resembling any one of them hardly at all. And it's addictive as hell.
Aside from the dense, nuanced gameplay, the game has a charmingly spare presentation. The environments and fonts are rendered in classic 8-bit style, and the simple, repetitive music and cheesy sound effects are both amusing and stylistically appropriate. In addition to the Story Mode and Training Mode challenges, Yuusha also offers the Versus Mode, allowing you to edit heroes and let your friends deal with them (albeit on the same PSP).
\I also found a psp theme. There's been quite a few mentionable releases for the PSP lately, including Prinny, Disgaea 2, this, Star Ocean 1+2, and more, so I might have to buy one for a third time. Then I'll play it for 10 minutes, shove it in the drawer, and sell it 6 months later.
