I spent a little time last night exploring the Playstation Store, and I really had no idea how robust its catalog is. Turns out that a rather large helping of PSP games are available in digital versions as well as UMD. I had no idea! Guess that just goes to show how far out of the loop I am these days.
Anyway, the object of my desire, Persona 3 Portable, is still costs a little more than I can justify spending at the moment, and I think with some dedicated hunting I could track down a physical copy for less, so I let it go for now. I did notice that there was a sequel to Steambot Chronicles though! And you know how I love my Steambot Chronicles.
The odd thing about it is that the download was only around 128MB. It’s supposed to be a full game, so that seems small to me. Isn’t that small? Maybe I just read it wrong. Then again, it only took ten minutes to download, so…
Size notwithstanding, it does seem like there’s quite a bit here. Any important conversations are fully voice-acted, and the game is all in 3D graphics, so no loss there. I’ve only spent half an hour with it and most of that was story blah blah blahing, so I can’t vouch for how big the game world is, but hub town is pretty big! And the gameplay seems to be identical to that of its older brother, but with what is seeming to be a much fluffier story (re: robot fighting tournament). Oh, and the loading times are super short compared to those in the PS2 game, so booya there.
I know it’s weird, but I think about Steambot Chronicles now and then, considering replaying it. Hopefully this new game will fill that hole, and maybe it’ll have some of the things I would have liked in the original. There’s one particular thing I’d like to see here, which is dungeons. The original game was a fairly open-ended game, but as far as the story goes it was almost all outdoor setpieces. There were three optional dungeons, however, that you could explore and find treasure in. This is also where you’d go for a challenge, as some of the toughest enemies were hiding in these caves. But as I said, there were only three, and I don’t remember any of them being very long. They may have had random elements though?
More to the point, I think the game would only be better with even a little more focus on these dungeons. They can still be optional, because half the fun is not being forced to do something. But they need to be a little meatier! Make at least one a real challenge, with tens of floors and save/refuel points and a boss/bosses. I think all the treasure was salable junk in the original game, so make these dungeon dives really worth the trouble by putting exclusive equipment down there.
Even if the dungeons aren’t revamped, and even if they don’t exist in this sequel, I’m hoping that it’s an otherwise fun game. Re-reading my article on it reminds me of a few of the rough spots in the original, but I only remember being nothing but delighted while playing it.