Recently I have been playing Untold Legends : Brotherhood of the Blade on my Sony PSP. This is an overhead D&D-style action RPG that is obviously heavily influenced by the PC game Diablo. From a glance it looks a hell of a lot like Diablo but since you control your character directly rather than a mouse it plays a bit like the old game Gauntlet but the combat consists of mostly hitting the buttons repeatedly with not much strategy.
You start the game off and pick a type of class then you are asked to go on various quests by the townsfolk that you are protecting from the monsters but almost all the quest have to do with going to a place, killing all the monsters in your path, killing some monster and going back with some magic trinket. The landscapes and dungeons are dynamically generated and are never exactly the same again much like Diablo. The game can be played multi-player with other PSP nerds helping your on a quest but not over the internet.
As you fight you earn experience points, upgrade your fighter and get new gear. The 3d graphics and animation are really good and you can take out small armies of graphically slick monsters by pounding some buttons. The music is mostly non existent.
The quests tend to blend in together and can get monotonous. This is not the most in depth game out there but it is fun to play. There is a PS2 game called Champions of Norrath that this game is based on but I have not played it. It is a well done Diablo clone and is one of the better PSP games on the market that does not involve driving or sports.
You said you never played Champions of Norrath, well know you have, because this game is EXACTLY the same friggin game. I played it for a bit on someone else's PSP. I agree with your review totally, just a button masher played just for kicks. But it's exactly like Champions, except lower quality in the ways of depth and abilities.
BTW, I recently picked up River City Ransom EX a few weeks ago, because of your review a while back. It's a blast! Thanks!
Dude, this game blows. I picked it up on the day the PSP was released - and sold it a week later. There is -zero- sill involved. You simply hack your way through the game. That's it. The dynamically created underground levels did nothing but piss me off. It (the game) would create the levels and resulted in a giant maze with dead-ends everywhere. LOTS of back-tracking. I'd pass on this game; it needs work.