Warriors of the Lost Empire Game Sample - PSP
0Warriors of the Lost Empire is a budget game that was developed by Goshow and published by UFO Interactive back in 2007. The game is extremely average in every respect, even the music, which is surprising since it was actually done by Yuzo Koshiro (of Streets of Rage fame). I was hoping to get some kickass dungeoun crawl music like the Sega CD Eye of the Beholder...never quite got that. Actually, the music composition is simple and for the most part, uninspired (the very first dungeon is great, the rest is so-so).
The story is explained somewhat in the intro, but the general idea is that you are being tested in eight dungeons to see if you can be a savior worthy of destroying evil in the most wicked of dungeons. The dialogue is so dry, even despite the lack of dialogue, that I'm hard pressed to remember the exact motive. You deal with about four or so NPCs in town...one of them being an item box. They say one page or so of text for every dungeon you clear (the exception being Aldora, who says a little more). You're stuck in one bland area for the entire game (or so I'm told) and if that sounds pretty bad, check the aggregate scores the game gets on the net; it's as bad as it sounds.
You can choose from four classes that learn a few skills for clearing dungeons, but it's mostly run-of-the-mill stuff. You get a 2-sword wielder who primarily fights with double swords, an archer, who fires arrows and two other warrior type classes. Visually, the game is okay, but the special effects are pretty minimal, with numerous attacks looking lame or uninspired. The dungeons have little variation in design, which is a little disappointing because this game isn't exactly like say...Diablo. In Diablo, you just go deeper and deeper in ONE labyrinth and yet they could afford to make this one dungeon more interesting than all the dungeons in this game combined (partly due to the randomized dungeon concept). You go to various locations on the map in WotLE, so the game could have afforded to have more interior imagination.
What hurts this game isn't the plain visuals or the unappealing audio. It's the annoying gameplay. You can only change equipment in towns...but even worse, you can only distribute stat points from leveling up in town too! You have to talk to the freaking item box just to distribute stat points. This will cause you to have to exit a dungeon unnecessarily quite a few times in the game... honestly... who the hell thought those were good ideas? You find a bow on the ground, you should be able to wear it the moment you pick it up; not a hard concept to follow... and stat points aren't even tangible! Why are they in a box back at town!? You don't fight monsters and get exp. in town, so why should your stat points be there? A town portal spell like Diablo could've made this issue much more bearable. At least that way, you can go back where you left off after dumping items and distributing stat points rather than starting from the beginning every time.
You will also have to upgrade your weapons a lot to progress through the game because you don't have money to buy stronger stuff, you can only trade for crappy items...unfortunately, UFO provided gamers with an absolutely worthless manual that provides zero helpful documentation...so going about making decent weapons without the help of FAQs and the like will require the player to invest more time into the weapon crafting process than desired. The game is playable, but it's so generic that you're better off investing time into other more competent PSP games.