The story and premise of PoPoLoCrois is a very simple one. Given that it’s one game based on two, it’s split into two “books”. The game is set in the fictitious world of PoPoLoCrois, where you play as ten-year old Prince Pietro. Just after he was born, the land was attacked by the Ice Demon, who enveloped everything in a permanent winter. Pietro’s mother saves the day but has to sacrifice her soul in the process. On his tenth birthday, Pietro finds out that his mother is “alive”, but in a deep sleep, and the story starts off with the Prince setting out to find a way to save his mother. The story isn’t particularly revelatory, but it happens to be one of the game’s stronger points. While the premise and dialogue appear to be simple on the surface, there is actually a whole lot more than meets the eye. It’s a shame that it's easy to miss, but it happens to give the game a lot of personality. There are a lot of varied and entertaining characters to meet and many of the main characters have distinctive tones in their dialogue. Some can be quite entertaining and humorous. The story builds off meagre beginnings but contains plenty of emotion and builds on itself. It’s quite a charming, if not overly cute package.
A role-player for sissies?
As mentioned, PoPoLoCrois is a remade compilation of the first two PS1 titles of the same name. So you’ve almost got two games for the price of one here, but you are still only likely to get a maximum of 30 hours out of this one package. It’s quite popular back in Japan, with a lot of merchandise and even cartoons spinning off it. However, this is the first foray for the franchise outside of Japan. As can be seen from any screenshot, the game is quite the throw back to traditional RPGs. However, PoPoLoCrois came after the golden days of the SNES RPGs and it tried to usher in a variation of the genre. PoPoLoCrois is widely considered as a beginner’s RPG, and its introduction on the PSP doesn’t change this.
Basically, it plays like your traditional RPG with quest completing, leveling up, item collecting and random turn-based battles, but with one small twist: it's very, very easy. Anyone who has played virtually any RPG before should have very little difficulty getting through the game. Played from an isometric perspective, you guide your little team around to points that are flagged on your map. Oddly, you don’t see yourself on the map but the maps happen to be detailed enough to figure out where you are. Along the way, you collect items of varied importance and meet people of varying interest. Unfortunately, there is much to do outside of following the path of the quest, though the few small detours can sometimes lead to some handy treasures.
While we are unable to comment on the changes that have been made on PoPoLoCrois when compred to its original form, it is known that the battle system has been overhauled. Battles are still turn-based but they are now played out on a grid and each character has a Final Fantasy-style gauge that measures whose turn it is. Basically, at the beginning of your turn, you can attack, use a spell/item, focus or run. When choosing attack, you can move your character across the permitted grids up to the enemy and perform a physical attack when you overlap on to the enemy’s grid and the squares flash red. Spells will generally indicate how they strike and it’s up to you to utilise them as you see fit. What makes this system intriguing is that you have to take your position into consideration. The environment gets in the way and it is beneficial for you to get the enemies from the side and behind. Other factors to consider include enemies that can attack all your characters at once if they’re in a straight line, or the addition of summons and combination/focus attacks that are fun to experiment with.
What an odd bunch.
The battle system is a nice and nifty improvement to your basic turn-based system, but there are a few issues that hold the game back. The system itself pretty much leaves you a sitting duck for a counter-attack if you don’t kill the enemy in one hit, something that is a primary concern in boss battles and is virtually devoid of tactical nous in constricted environments. Throughout the entire game you are barely challenged, as most of the random battles are completely devoid of difficulty. This is simply because the progression of the game will see you constantly strong enough to defeat any of the enemies with ease, you will virtually always find enough healing items and you earn a ridiculous amount of money. If you are stuck in an area, it’s often because you have yet to talk to the right person. Running away costs money but it’s actually easier to finish off the battle. What's more, throughout our time playing, we never once died at the hands of an enemy.
There’s the issue of way too many random battles. Battles eventually become a nuisance, because you’re fighting them almost every couple of steps. Really, it’s nothing to sneeze at, because they get really, really annoying. Especially when you are traversing back through a dungeon and you just want to get back to where you started. It doesn’t help that there is too much backtracking involved. There is something of a balance issue that crops up at times as well. Your team chops and changes quite regularly but sometimes a character won’t have the necessary attributes to fill their “role”. Then of course, there is the fact that you will be dealing massive amounts of damage to an enemy and they’ll do very little. Boss fights only take long because the boss will often have an exceptionally large amount of HP.
In terms of being tailored for portability PoPoLoCrois has a save feature that allows you to save on the go, so there is no need to worry about extended play on the go. However, in terms of translation to the PSP, the game is very disappointing. The game is a technical botch job. Before every battle, before every entry into a town or building, before every significant encounter, before every special move and any time you try to open the menu or map, players are treated to a pause as the game tries to load itself. There have been games that are much more demanding, system-wise, that have performed better on the PSP and PoPoLoCrois even comes out of Sony’s own development stable. Frankly, there's no excuse for a game that is basically a juiced-up SNES title to be performing so poorly. Perhaps it was a problem stemming from the original PS1 version?
It only had 3 hit points...
PoPoLoCrois has quite a unique presentation. It’s in the same vein as Wind Waker with what some may consider an overly cutesy style, but it actually suits the game reasonably well. The graphics are anime inspired and they translate well, especially into some of the game’s anime cut scenes. Otherwise, you’re left with 2-D styled graphics on an isometric perspective. It’s too bad that underneath the vibrant colours and round faces, there lies some poor technology. The screen is constantly tearing as you run around and at times it can get quite annoying (and painful) but the most embarrassing aspect is the slowdown. There are a couple of points in the game where you will experience some terrible frame-rates, but often you’re only walking through a city. For a game that may have run reasonably well on the SNES, it's unacceptable for a game to be afflicted in such a manner in this day and age. Sound-wise, the game holds up much better. The game is full of soothing and easy-going tunes that tend to set the scene for the game exceptionally well. Voicing is confined to cut-scenes, but it's implemented very well and the sound effects are on par with what you’d expect, though some more detail would’ve been nice.
PoPoLoCrois is chock-full of personality and charm. It’s good enough to keep both younger and older gamers interested in the story and the development of the characters. Unfortunately, the “improvements” don’t quite take the game far enough, and the result is a game that is primarily suited to younger players and those who aren’t up to more difficult RPG offerings. For anyone who grew up playing RPG games on the SNES or NES and is looking for another traditional RPG on the PSP, you may feel short-changed. Game-wise, this a nice throw-back to days gone by, but somewhat marred by technically inefficiencies and far too easy for anyone that's being playing RPGs for years. Still, despite the problems, it's actually not a bad place to start and the PAL version does have a very nice cover...
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