Review: Hexyz Force (PSP)
Sting is one of my favorite lesser-known developers. They are mostly known on our shores for Dept. Heaven, a series of genre-bending portable games thus far including Riviera: The Promised Land (a choose your own adventure book, dating sim RPG), Yggdra Union: We’ll Never Fight Alone (a card system, turn based and real time strategy RPG) and Knights in the Nightmare (a touch screen, bullet hell shmup strategy RPG). They have also developed a few less “adventurous” games and Hexyz Force falls into this category, being a pretty standard turn based RPG. But seeing as traditional RPGs from Japan have come in far less numbers this generation, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Right off, one unique aspect of Hexyz Force is that you get to choose to play as one of two characters, each with their own story. And while the game you play is mostly the same, the stories are pretty different. Cecilia, the female lead’s story revolves around the mythology of the game world while Levant, the male lead’s story revolves around a war between different nations/races.
The game itself is a turn based RPG with some rather unique elements. For starters, you have two types of equipment, Ragnafacts, your mainstay permanent equipment which offer unlimited usage at the cost of varying skill points depending on the attack used, and Spiritfacts, which typically have more powerful skills but offer limited usage before they can no longer be used. Each character is able to have several weapons of both types on hand at any time. While the concept of limited use weapons may seem off, you are able to craft new ones at any time and you’re always in good supply of crafting materials. Just think of them as any other type of limited use healing/attacking items in an RPG, which is basically what they are.
With that, there are no shops in the game and no currency. You’ll acquire crafting materials after every battle, from treasure chests and from rechargeable mining points on each map (towns and dungeons). You’ll create your weapons and armor this way. You will also receive Force Points after each battle. These points are used to level up your Ragnafacts and you get to choose whether to spend your points to unlock new skills, increase their attack strength or lower the cost of skill use. Force Points can also be used for other things, such as exchanging them for rarer materials from certain mining points or for unlocking door in dungeons. The crafting system and the use of Force Points to power your equipment offer a delicious amount of customizable and unique strategy, which makes Hexyz Force stand out a little bit.
The flow of the game is fairly typical for the genre; you’ll watch a few cut scenes explaining your next goal, visit a town to gather extra information or obtain side quests and then venture out to the next dungeon to face a boss or two. There is no explorable “overworld” map area; you’ll select your destination from a map once you exit your current location. Dungeons start off pretty small (maybe a little too small) but you’ll eventually work your way up to a few massive areas later in the game. Different dungeon areas may have some exploration gimmicks, such as needing to locate switches and such to open up further areas.
The battles remind me of PS1 era turn based RPGs. While normally they are pretty slow with flashy animation and the camera swinging around to make them look interesting, my preference is to give a quick press of the R button upon entering a battle which speeds everything up, bringing the battles up to pace with the likes of the very enjoyable and speedy Dragon Quest DS games. This battle speed up option made the game much more enjoyable to me. I only wished that there was an option to permanently enable it, rather than needing to turn it on in each battle.
A normal game of Hexyz Force should take you about fifteen to twenty hours, depending on your playing style, and this is where my main issue with the game comes in. I actually don’t MIND a shorter RPG. A great, brisk RPG is always better than a poor or mediocre RPG that drags on forever. Hexyz Force, however, has some content that would better fill a game twice its length. There are certain aspects of the game (all optional, mind you) that drag the pace of the game down if you choose to pursue them. And most of them are poorly laid out. Certain side quests and mining for certain materials to make rarer items end up being a back and forth between a quest point or mining point and getting through a few battles to trigger the quest point to progress or refill the mining point. And ultimately, the pay off for these is usually close to (and sometime just) nothing. So, why is this added content a sore point? It’s optional and it’s nice to have, right? Some people may feel that way, sure. In my opinion though, it clouds an otherwise tight pacing. When these things are presented to the player, you will naturally feel inclined to check them out in most cases. It’s not necessarily a BAD thing and it’s in no means anything that should affect your decision to play the game, I just personally think that removing some of this fluff content, the overall game would just FEEL better. (Check out Ys: The Ark of Napishtim or the upcoming Ys: The Oath in Felghana (both for PSP) to gauge how a shorter RPG without useless filler just feels tighter. Maybe you’ll agree with me, maybe not.)
So, enough about all this game play talk, eh? This is an RPG and I don’t care how it plays, I want to know about the characters and the story! Fair enough, while I personally play RPGs for the G (it stands for “game,” just in case), A LOT of people are only interested in RPGs for the story aspect. If that’s what you’re looking for I can say that the characters and story in Hexyz Force are pretty typical JRPG fare. It doesn’t try to break new ground; it just plays out its story as many before it have, with characters similar to many before it. This could be good or bad depending on your personal tastes. On Cecilia’s side, you learn about the game world, about Force, about its Creation and its impending Destruction. Cecilia is a holy cleric who has been, against her wants, tasked to protect a series of monoliths that are being targeted for sealing a God of Destruction. On Levant’s side, you’ll get a more human story involving warring nations, an assassination, racial conflicts and a rebel force. Naturally the two stories cross paths from time to time and come to one in the end. Playing as one character you’ll run into the other from time to time and may get slightly involved in the story of their side before heading back on your main path. Personally, Levant’s tale seemed a bit more interesting to me and a little less clichéd.
Not to get too detailed or start getting spoilers out, but I felt I should mention that you’ll come to a point where the stories become one and you’ll be in charge of the entire cast of characters as you take on the final leg of the journey. What this does is throw A LOT of extra stuff at you with very little time to acclimate to it (literally an hour or two from the final battles). You’re likely to just plow through the final dungeon without changing your party or battle plans too much. It would have been much more interesting to have each character have a unique ending and upon completing both, you’d get a short bonus scenario that at that point merges the two parties and stories.
The graphics of the game are actually pretty good, for the most part. The character models are excellent while background graphics are about in the middle of what I’ve seen from other games on the PSP. The colors really pop on the PSP’s screen though. You have full camera control in towns and dungeons except for a few specific maps that have set camera angels. The animated cut scenes are very well animated and are easily the most visually pleasing aspect of the game along with the full screen illustrated character images.
The music is good, not great. I feel this is pretty subjective though. The game doesn’t feature very strong themes and melodies of your NES/SNES era RPGs but it also doesn’t get completely as bland with middling synth arrangements as a lot of PS1/PS2 era RPGs tended to have. You’ll be pleased while playing but you may not take the music home with you. The voices are excellent and used sparingly, for cut scenes and battles quotes. All of the characters sound strong and there’s no awkward performances. The small amount of fully voiced scenes could prevent this from sticking out, but even with what’s there, it sounds great, which is usual for Atlus localizations.
Overall, Hexyz Force is a GREAT game. With JRPGs trying to go in so many different directions lately, it’s actually nice to see something a little more traditional. And even in being so, the game does offer up some great ideas in its character/equipment growth systems. The pacing and length of the game are right in tune for a portable adventure (taking into note some issues I had with useless side quests and obsessive item crafting) and it offers up two different tales if you want more out of it after beating it once. If you’re a fan of lighter toned PS1 era turn based JRPGs, Hexyz Force is going to be right up your alley.
