RPGWatch Feature: The Whole Game in My Hand #7

Mike Anderson continues his one man army coverage of handheld RPGs with a seriously ridiculous amount of content - 13 reviews, including full articles on Brave Story: New Traveller and the amazing Jeanne D'Arc. Joss Whedon fans will remember a character in Angel having his sleep surgically removed so he could work 24 hours a day - Whedon got that idea from Mike.
Here's the intro of the Jeane D'Arc review:

Every child knows the story of Joan of Arc, the girl who was chosen by an armband that ended up being somewhat of an antenna to God. They know how she led an army consisting of talking lions and a wolf that speaks like Scooby-Doo and rained Fireballs on some English soldiers led by a crazy guy with multiple lives as she fought to end the English occupation.
What? That isn't the story you learned? Oh well, education continues to fail our children. Seriously, no one will mistake Level 5's wonderful new strategy-RPG game as a history lesson, as it takes broad license with the facts and timeline of her rise in fame and legend as she fought to retake occupied areas of England. The choices made were done to provide more gameplay options and help the story flow more naturally. And all of the changes made work excellently - the story and game flow along nicely and naturally, producing an excellent strategy-RPG accompanied by and excellent narrative, which is quite a rarity.

Read it all here.
More information.

Awesome piece, Mike. You almost inspire me to buy a handheld that I don't have time for, just to get value out of these articles.

Too bad they ruined settlers, I was really looking forward to that =\
And Jeanne D'Arc makes me regret I sold my psp, everywhere I go I read how great it is

Mike, you seem to play an ungodly amount of games, and on top of that find time to write about them. Kudos to you, sir!

That is a shame about The Settlers, but I've read pretty much the exact same thing in every review for the game, so it's clearly not just review/player bias or general dislike for the game/genre, but a complete failing of the game.
It's one title I was looking at as a definite candidate once I get a DS. The Settlers, and it's genre in particular, seem a god-sent match to the DS and should have been a stellar representation of what the DS can do with a strategy game.
Such a shame it went in the complete opposite direction.

Originally Posted by Gallifrey
That is a shame about The Settlers, but I've read pretty much the exact same thing in every review for the game, so it's clearly not just review/player bias or general dislike for the game/genre, but a complete failing of the game.
It's one title I was looking at as a definite candidate once I get a DS. The Settlers, and it's genre in particular, seem a god-sent match to the DS and should have been a stellar representation of what the DS can do with a strategy game.
Such a shame it went in the complete opposite direction.

When The Settlers DS is deservedly mentioned as a negative example, the much better alternative should also be shown. Every review I´ve read indicates that 1701 AD for DS is an absoutely stellar game, slightly different to the PC game, which makes perfect use of the DS´es capabilities.

The new Warhammer strategy game will launch for the DS, too.

I was checking the main page every day the last few weeks awaiting #7 and it didn't disappoint (as usual, brilliant and info-packed).

Time to look in to a slim psp it seems (as I also want a taste of the sweet frustration D&D tactics style).

Originally Posted by wynams
Time to look in to a slim psp it seems (as I also want a taste of the sweet frustration D&D tactics style).

Oh - I don't cross-post this stuff here, but I did a review of the PSP Slim at GamerDad's GameSanityBlog.

Originally Posted by Gorath
When The Settlers DS is deservedly mentioned as a negative example, the much better alternative should also be shown. Every review I´ve read indicates that 1701 AD for DS is an absoutely stellar game, slightly different to the PC game, which makes perfect use of the DS´es capabilities.

Yeah, which is another game selling the DS to me at the moment. Unfortunately, 1701 seems to not have had much, if any, of a release in North America. I can find copies on eBay from the UK and Australia, usually in the $60+ range.

Thanks for the link Mike.

I've already read that article in my PSP research, but I am sure that others "on the fence" would benefit from it.

The DS is an amazing llttle system, and good rpg/strategy games do trickle out at a fairly constant pace. Still there are downtimes with no games, or blasted exclusives (like D&D tactics … I mean, can you imagine a non-port, especially for the 2 DS screens version of a tactical D&D game??!?!?!).

What's kept me on the PSP fence this long is most of the games I want to play state load times as a con … I grew up on load times (had a turbo grafx w/ cd rom then Sega CD) and re-learning to tolerate them is not in the cards. The DS has me spoiled very much so in my intolerance of load times.

I had high hopes for Jeanne D'arc, but most of the reviews (while very glowing) outright bemoan all the loading times. Surprisingly now it appears a game unheard of to me (before reading this article) would be my first game should I take the plunge.

On Brave Story …

That includes load-times; it would be reasonable to expect that such detailed and varied graphics would lead to prolonged load-times, but that isn't the case. Loads for the various zones are perhaps 10-15 seconds, and feel entirely acceptable. The soundtrack, sound effects and voices are all very well done and complement the visuals and story - but there is no getting past the fact that this is one of the best looking games on the PSP and the load times don't suffer as a result.