This is a really fun and unique game.
After hunting around for a "Zeldaish" style action/RPG I came across Cladun x2. I never played Cladun: This is an RPG, but I'm thouroghly impressed by the new one. Well worth the $20 and 350MB.
The gameplay is set up to run really quickly and involve massive amounts of leveling up- grinding in a good way. Unlike most RPGs which are driven by a (seldom great) story, this game focuses on jumping into action without having to wander around and talk to villagers to figure out what to do in that classic way we've all done several times. Instead, in the village you are tasked with simply setting up one main character and several easily creatable and highly customizable sub-characters. You then outfit your guys with tons of classic armor/weapon/artifact setups and go rock some baddies in a series of progressing dungeons. I read that the learning curve was steep in both the first Cladun and this one, but I felt it was pretty easy to set up a team and conquer the first 10 or so levels without any trouble. The game is designed for true gamers and gives just the right amount of tutorial.
I love the retro feel to this NIS game, it has the same joy and appeal of playing 3D Dot Game Heros. It's like a highly polished FF3 or Link to the Past with all the fat trimmed off. I don't write many reviews, but I felt compelled to say how great I think this game is.
I'm an adult that grew up playing NES, Sega, N64, and PS2. Now I play tons of Black Ops, BF2, GT5, Red Dead, and a few others on the PS3. For the PSP I like GTA: Chinatown Wars, LBP, Metal Gear PeaceWalker, FF7, Angry Birds, MHFU and a few others but this game feels like the perfect PSP game. I've played it all day and am really looking forward to having it for a while.
