Kingdom Of Paradise Reviews

The crooked man song. The movie, a spin-off of The Conjuring franchise, focuses on a character from an English nursery rhyme called 'There Was a Crooked Man'.

Three hundred years ago, the known world consisted of nine continents spread across a vast ocean. Ohka was the center of this world, ruled by five martial art houses, until Sema, one of the continents. Nov 15, 2005  While Kingdom of Paradise does have several faults, the most hindering being the camera and the lack of a proper blocking mechanism, the game is still the best RPG on the PSP, and also one of the handheld’s better games. All this publication's reviews.

Review: Kingdom of Paradise (PSP)Kingdomof Paradise (PSP)ByMichael PalisanoKingdom of Paradise for the PSP is asurprisingly deep RPG that allows players to create a great number of attacks.The swordplay system allows you to create your own style of attacks usingspecial moves and potions to increase your skills. The game follows mostrole-playing conventions otherwise as you traverse a large map of differentareas, facing off against dozens of enemies in real-time battles.

From a visualstandpoint, the game excels with a robust storyline unfolding rapidly. Whilethere isn't much competition on the PSP, Kingdom of Paradise is a solidlyentertaining role-playing adventure that should keep you busy for quite sometime.Set in feudal Japan, Kingdom of Paradise isset in the mystical Ouka and follows its protagonist Shinbu as he tries to findthe Kirin Clan who massacred his erstwhile temple. On his quest, he'll find thatthe sole survivor of the attack was a young girl named Sui Lin who has becomethe new leader of the sect. Shinbu walks into these events but has no claim onthe temple since he left them behind several years before. During his youngerdays, he'd actually been kicked out for disobeying the master's orders. WhileKingdom of Paradise's structure and style follows most RPG conventions, itoffers a few unique mechanics all its own to keep things fresh. The game followsthe action from an overhead perspective, with most actions occurring in realtime.

KOH's game world and environments are quite massive, with the mapunfolding slowly as you reach new areas. This gives the player plenty of roomfor exploration and discovery. During the game, your objectives are to reachcertain areas of the map, and fight the hordes of beasts who attack you. Unlikethe turn-based approach in most role-playing game, each battle takes place inreal time, and you'll usually find yourself surrounded by multiple enemies, allof whom must be defeated in order to move on.

You aren't alone in these battles,since Sui Lin accompanies you throughout. She is a decidedly effective swordsmanas well.

Most of the enemies put up little resistance, at least early on.However, the game throws more intelligent foes, including massively challengingbosses come at you during its later stages to make things more interesting.Duringthe game, you'll collect a variety of items including scrolls, weapons, healthpower-ups and other items. These can then be equipped with your character, whichcan be done on the menu screens. The menus themselves are fairly easy tonavigate, making it easy to see what you have in your inventory. However, thissystem can also be confusing since some items need to be equipped before theycan be used.

That said, the really interesting part of Kingdom of Paradise liesin its extensive use of swords, which is almost a mini-game in and of itself.You begin the game with a standard sword and a few rudimentary weapons, but canearn, use and combine these to create some incredibly effective weapons. Inaddition, you can use scrolls to add special moves to your attacks, giving you aversatile arsenal which lets you battle foes with less predictability. You'llneed to understand several facets of the game in order to use all your powerseffectively. The first of these are the Bugei Scrolls, which contain all themoves your character can perform. They are collected throughout the game invarious locations such as treasure chests and can also be found when you kill anenemy.

There are two basic types of these scrolls, Clan and Freestyle. Clanscrolls contain the moves passed down from the elder members of your clan, whilethe Freestyle scrolls allow you to create your own sets of moves and comboattacks. Additionally, when you obtain a special sword, you can use the specialChi Attacks by using their character's Chi Arts menu, where you can select whichattack to use, then can enable these attacks by holding down an attack. Eachtime they're used, they drain the Chi Energy, and are thus limited in use. Thesetwo systems add a lot of complexity to the gameplay, making it much deeper thanthe standard hack and slash it seems to be at first.While the role-playing aspects are solid,Kingdom of Paradise's graphics excel by PSP standards. The game's naturalenvironments are richly developed with a series of elaborate villages you canexplore. Each of these features a number of NPC's to interact with, giving eachone a semblance of life.

Most of the populace aren't going to give away much,though occasionally you'll find a useful piece of information. Kingdom's battlesare surprisingly intense, with players surrounded by a number of other foes,with little slowdown evident. The fixed camera is decent in the explorationareas, but becomes a hindrance here since it makes it difficult to target yourattacks at specific enemies.

Making matters worse, the real-time nature of thesebattles makes it frustrating to use special attacks, causing most matches todevolve into relentless button mashing. The standard enemies don't put up muchof a fight, making these battles become monotonous quickly. However, things tendto improve later on with soldiers that are more sophisticated and boss attacks.This gives Kingdom of Paradise a decent learning curve that allows you togradually learn the special attacks, chi arts and other elements of the gameplayeasily without having to spend a lot of time on training missions. Overall, thegame's structure starts off slowly, but gradually becomes more involved.Whilethere has been a noticeable dearth of traditional role-playing titles on the PSPto date, and we're happy to report that Kingdom of Paradise fills the voidnicely.

It's deep combat system is obviously the highlight, and allows plenty offlexibility and nuance. With several layers of weapons and spells, the gamegives you many paths to choose from. The game itself is enjoyable andchallenging with an interesting story that immerses players in their quest.While it can't compete against more elaborate RPG's on other consoles, this isstill a solid looking game. From a visual standpoint, the game looks solid withexcellent character animations and effective cut-scenes that allow the story tounfold in some cool anime-style cinemas. The overall look of the game iscohesive and interesting, with a variety of special lighting and weather effectsused to add realism to the gameplay.

While there are probably a bit too manyrandom battles in the game, their real-time nature makes them exciting andchallenging. However, the focus on creating an extensive and deep combat systempays off, giving you a great deal of control of not only how your charactermoves, but also how they fight.

This gives the game a refreshingly open-endedfeel compared to many other titles, which keep the player locked in to a certainstyle throughout. Kingdom of Paradise is a solid RPG that offers a great deal ofaction and strategy, intuitive controls and, a long quest, making it anexcellent purchase for fans of the genre. Its not the smoothest or most polishedRPG on the market, but this solid title delivers an engaging gameplayexperience.Grade:B Related Articles(PSP)(PSP).

After a slow start, it seems that the PSP has had several new titles come out for it, especially with the holiday season here. While many of those games were ports of games for the PS2, Climax Entertainment has brought an original action RPG to the PSP with Kingdom of Paradise.In Kingdom of Paradise you play Shinbu, a former Eastern Seiryu Disciple that has secretly been continuing his sword training. Along the way he meets Sui Lin, the last member of the Seiryu clan, and they take their adventure together, joining with new characters along the way. They must defend their clan and restore it to its former glory.The graphics in KoP are a bit enigmatic. The faces of the characters look smooth, which really shows in the cutscenes. However, the rest of the character model looks blocky, with models where you swear you could count the number of polygons for them on your fingers and toes.

The textures on the upper bodies of the characters are very impressive, showing the designers paid a lot of attention to detail. The backgrounds look mostly like a grass background with trails and an occasional building, depending on the location. Areas are rather sparse, especially while running between towns.During the battle a lot of particle effects show up, almost to the point where the fighting looks like something from Soul Calibur. While some slashes have particle effects that follow the weapon, others are more circular in nature.

Using the Chi Arts can make an attack that looks like several miniature lighting strikes. Running in water causes the water to splash around your footsteps.The animations look smooth, and it looks like some kind of ragdoll physics is used in the graphics engine. Enemies fall back and fly into the air, landing with a realistic thud.

The animation really helps you look over some of the rough edges of the grahics.The music of KoP has an eastern mysticism to it. Emphasizing minor chords and strings, it is different than what you’d expect from an action RPG. The music is done so well that you won’t mind it at all. The music arrangement is simply beautiful.The slash of a sword clangs against enemies. The Chi Arts make noise before a large clang hits the enemies. The footsteps grow louder as you run, while they are softer during walking.Voices sound good for the characters.

While there is some general cheesiness to some of the lines, most of the voice acting is actually very serious. No deadpan deliveries given here.The controls of the game are fairly simple. In fact, they might be a bit too simple. Using an item equipped from your inventory uses the L button, while changing your Bugei scroll to change your fighting combo uses the R button. Movement is controlled with the D-pad or nub. Pushing X uses the Hiken arts in combat or talks with NPCs in the area. The Hiken Arts let you throw your sword in battle.

Using Circle breaks items in the environment or attacks and defends in combat. The Triangle button uses the currently selected item. Using the Square button charges your Chi Arts and then tapping it again activates the Chi Arts.The biggest issue with the controls is the fact that the attack and defend commands are used with the same button.

Trying to defend against an attack is pretty much useless. It almost feels as if combat devolves into a bit of button mashing with an occasional Chi Arts charge and attackIn KoP, Shinbu runs from town to town in an attempt to retrieve the Seiryu Sword and bring back the Seiryu Clan. During this time Shinbu interacts with characters, collects items, grows in experience, and gains members to his adventuring party. This isn’t much different than other action RPGs, but the setting is something more from Ancient China instead of a fantasy or sci-fi setting. This change is refreshing.You customize your attacks using Bugei Scrolls. These scrolls contain Kenpu, which are attacks illustrated on the scrolls. Up to six of these scrolls can be equipped at one time and can be switched during combat.

These scrolls have combo attacks on them. If a scroll has a six-stage combo on it, you can hit the Circle button up to six times. If you hit the button less times, you break the combo.

There are five clans in the game, and each of these clans have a clan scroll based on their own fighting style.Each of the Kenpu and Chi Arts are based on five complimentary elements: Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water. Some of the elements are stronger or weaker than others, almost like a five-part Paper, Rock, Scissors game.

For example, Wood is stronger than Earth, but Metal is stronger than Wood. When battling enemies, each clan is associated with one of these elements. Each Kenpu is associated with one of these elements. Changing to a scroll with Kenpu based on an element that is stronger than the enemies’ element could tip the balance in your favor. Also, you can create a cycle by stringing moves without using the same element twice.

You can charge an attack by using several Kenpu of the same element and follow it with a complementary element. All of these options are set up in the Bugei Scrolls option in the Pause Menu.The combat mechanics are interesting and have a lot of strategy. It’s unfortunate that the combat is so disappointing. The first issue is the camera. Often times Shinbu draws his sword before you see any enemies on screen. During combat, you sometimes end up trying to run around enemies, but it’s difficult to because of the controls.

The camera doesn’t help either as there can be multiple enemies on screen that you can run into. As mentioned before, blocking is an exercise in futility.

This causes Shinbu to get hit a lot. Sometimes you can run away from the attacks, but if an enemy attacks you and gets Shinbu caught in a combo, it’s very difficult to escape it. Also, the controls don’t make the direction of your attack any easier, causing you to completely miss your target.The Chi Arts are powerful, but almost too powerful.

While you need to charge your Chi Arts for a couple of seconds, hitting the Chi Arts at the right time can blow away your enemies fairly quickly, even at the early levels of Shinbu’s character.KoP is a relatively short game, giving about 15 or so hours of gameplay, but it does have a few options to extend the gameplay. In Ad Hoc mode, you can play a “Bugei Exhibition” against another player. In this mode you can play a one-on-one battle against another person using one of your Bugei scrolls. I doubt that this mode is going to be used very much though because you’ll need to know another person with a copy of the game.In the Infrastructure mode you can download exclusive Kenpu forms, swords, and Bugei scrolls. What you need to do is get the password from a web site and then log into the PSP Infrastructure mode and enter in that password. If the password is accepted, the new item is downloaded.While these two options are nice, they don’t add that much to the value or replay of the game.