Black Rock Shooter The Game was released in August 25, 2011 in Japan and 2 years later in 2013 it came out in the west, based on an anime of the same name. I am really surprised this game was able to be release in the west, especially this late into the PSP's life cycle, by 2013, the PSP was almost dead and the PSVita was already out for an year.
It was developed by Imageepoch, and published by NISA outside of Japan, and this is the reason why I played this game, Imageepoch was a developement studio that was only around for 10 years before going bankrupt , despite that they maneged to make quite a lot of goods games, specially on the PSP, Sol trigger and 7th Dragon 2020 in special are some of my favorite PSP games, while I never watched the anime in which this game is based on or have any interest in watching it to being with, I knew it was something worth playing because Imageepoch name on it, but was it worth my time or is it just another anime crash grab?
Gameplay
As I said in the title of this review this game is a JRPG Rail shooter Hybrid, but what does that mean exactly ?
Similar to any normal JRPG, this has exploration segments where you walk on field, explore the level, find treasures chests, enemies appear on the field like most JRPG released after the PS2, when you enter in contact with one of them a battle will initiate, in them you can shoot bullets with the Square button, evade an enemy attack with the Circle button, Evade in this game means your character will move to one of 2 position in the battle field, defend with the Cross button, which only reduces damage taken, the R bottom Plus a Face button will activate a special ability that you equipped before battle, and the analogue will move the aim, thankful the game has a strong target lock so you will rarely miss an enemy.
To avoid being able to spam those attack infinity, there's an action bar in the bottom right, the more action you do, the more it will fill up, when you aren't doing anything the bar will deplete, if it reaches 100% Your character will be overheated and unable to do action until the bar is completely empty, that mean its always important to keep an eye on the bottom half bar if you don't want to be unable, avoid an enemy attack in the middle of a battle.
While special actions don't affect the heat bar they have a cool down of their own, this special ability go from special attack to self buff, and using them strategically can be key in boss fights.
They are acquired by unlocking achievements, however most of them are something as trivial as kill X amount of Y enemy, which you would already do by playing normally anyway.
I haven't played any game that plays like this , it's a really unique combination, and it has a lot of cool stuff about it and it is fun to play specially when you are trying to fight against new enemy types and boss fights.
Normal encounter against regular enemies do get repetitive really fast, specially considering a lot of enemies are just recolored version of other enemies you saw in early leaves, this game feels very repetitive, a lot of time you will just walk forward kill the same enemy formation you already kill a million times before, doing the same thing you did to kill them flawlessly countless time, these battle are really easy and I did 80% of them without taking damage, the saving grace is that the game is only about 7 hours long and despite that flaw ,it plays unlike anything I have played before, if it was any longer, the game would feel to long, the game tried to break the monotony in the second level with motorcycle segments but I really didn't like them and they overstayed their welcome.
I wish they made a spiritual sequel and build upon the base gameplay to create something truly special.
With that said, boss fights in this game unlike regular battles can be extremely challenging, some while hard are fair and fun to fight while other specially in the mid game, feel like bullshit, because during thoses bosses attack patterns are hard to analise making them almost impossible to avoid some attacks , but they at least break the monotony, of the rest of the game.
Story
I don't have any idea how does it compare to the source material as I said before , I didn't what the anime this is based from or the manga that's also based on it.
The story is about Grey, a Cyborg, created to be a fighing machine, she's humanity last hope, because an Alian invasion destroyed most of humanity.
It's the weaker part of this game, in the first 3 levels you have too many character that don't have much personality beside being a stereotype, and you barely have anytime to care about them, at the end of the second level and in third level the game focus in 2 character which works really well and it is what it should have done from the start, level 3 in particular I feel like it's the strongest part of this game story wise.
Sadly from level 4 and onward you are mostly alone of with another character that I don't like, and the game doesn't seem to like it either considering what happen to them to the end.
The antagonist aren't very interesting either, they are just generic anime villains, the 2 girls in special, feel very troopy and I hate them, they are just annoying anime girls, that only a gooner would like, the main vilian and the plot twist, around their indenity, feel very obivious in retrospect, and I feel very stupid to not have it figured out early, but I probably didn't connceted the big bright dots because I didn't care for this game's story.
The Ending felt rush, like they run out of budget or something like that, and left many plot holes, maybe in the the source material, they might explained the plot holes, and gave a more sastifying ending.
Music
The music was composed by Manabu Namiki, he is also the man behind the music in most DoDonPachi games and other cave's bullet hell, and if you haven't litsen to those game's OST, you have to make yourself a favour and litsen to them, because they are a treat to the ears, this game is no different a lot of music from it feels like something that would belong in a DoDonPachi game, however the OST isn't perfect because a lot of music speciall in the mid to late game is very low key, which I feel like it's a waste of Manabu's talent, because he's really good at bombastic music, not ambitent music.Graphics
Imageepoch made some pretty good looking PSP games, despite this cleary being a budget title, it looks beatifull for a PSP game, and on par with many other PSP games with higher budgets, I don't think this belongs ammongs the best looking PSP game, the Third birhtday was released in the same year for example, and a lot of envirmentes are repeative and feel empty, The first and forth level might have a lot of repetve assets but I do really like how pretty the destroyed city alongside the golden hour loos great way to start the game, and the forth level is supposed to be a maze and it's pretty florest , however character models are detailed ,expressive and fluid, despite in my opion the game has some pretty ugly character desing, special the main protagonist, the highlight of this game graphic would be the cutcene before boss battle where character, specially the main protagonist are expressive, along side cool action sequence.Pros
- + Unique Gameplay
- + Expressive character
- + Great music
- + Fun boss fights
- + Third level story beats
Cons
- - Uninteresting antagonist
- - Repetitive gameplay
- - Character Design
7
Gameplay
It was the first and only attempt into making a JRPG Rail shooter thing, While it has a lot of cool gameplay ideas, it doesn't change the fact that I am doing the same thing for most of the game.
9
Graphics
It was a late anime style PSP game that was a budget title, I couldn't ask for something prettier honestly , there are game on the PSP that look better but this isn't far either.
6
Story
Cool moments in the 3rd level doesn't change the fact that this game had too many uninteresting characters , with a plot twist that made me realized how little I care about this game's plot.
8
Sound
Having the composer of DoDonPachi was a really good idea by the devs, however I wish they made more bombastic music and less ambient ones
3
Replayability
There's some content after beating the game, and you can revisit levels, however as I said before this game was very repetitive and play more of it would make me go insane
7.5
out of 10
Overall
I am not sure who would I recommend this game to, besides fans of the anime and people who are curious about it, it's a competent product but not something I would go out of my way to recommend.
