Title Riviera: The Promised Land Date 08.01.2007 Genre RPG Platform Sony PSP Developer Sting Publisher Atlus USA

So far this game has been released twice on two previous handhelds, the Wonderswan and the GBA, but neither have come close to this version, this is clearly the best of the three.

A small summary of the prologue to the story would be 1000 years ago the land of Utgard (The demon land) were attacking Asgard (The god's land). As the war went on, the gods were about to die and because of this they made a major violation in their rules and summoned out winged reapers now known as the "grim angels". After the war ended, they trusted the land Riviera (The sprites land) with all their knowledge and power wanting it back 1000 years later.

The game now begins after these 1000 years have passed and the demons have struck again. Hector (the grim angel's leader) assigns two grim angels named Ein and Ledah to investigate what is going on and also to retrieve the power back from the sprites. Your main role is Ein; Ein is unsure about harming the sprites, he appears to have a pure heart. Ledah however appears heartless and just wants the assignment done. As you progress through the game you will come to see as to who Ein is, how he feels and what his role in the game is.

The game system works very well, you have the game blocked into chapters and each chapter has sub chapters, there are 8 chapters in this game and numerous subchapters. Every time a subchapter is cleared you will get the opportunity to save.

With battling you will typically have (except at the beginning), a total of 3 members on the battle field. You can choose between 2 on the back and one on the front or two on the front and one on the back before you battle. Then you can choose items for battling, healing or increasing your stats. Each these items though (except the grim angel's weapons known as "diviners") have a limit as to how many times you can use them, once you have reached the limit, the weapon or item will shatter and can no longer be used until it is replaced.

They also added a feature called the overdrive, this enables you to use extra powerful attacks (like limit break on Final Fantasy 7), in order to do this though you need to have enabled the attack. To enable the attack you must first use it enough times to fill up the meter, enabling the attack also increases you stats as well. Once you have enabled it you must increase the overdrive bar. With the overdrive bar you have 3 levels certain attacks use higher levels, so some may need 1 and others may need 3. In order to power it up you must either get hit or attack the enemies and then you can use an overdrive attack when you have reached that level. There are also though certain attacks which break the overdrive bar, so you must be careful and use those wisely.

With the moving around it has an odd system, you can move by selecting an icon on the screen which will take you a certain direction. But there is also this "looking" feature; this feature enables you to look at chests and things around you though, the only downside to this feature however though is that you must use TP (trigger points) which you gain during battle victories.

As far as the soundtrack goes it is beautiful. The music as you prepare for a battle gets you pumped up and eager to play, as well all the battle music giving you that determination to play on and win the fight. Even the exploring music sounds so inspirational strangely. I did also like the fact that they added some voice acting which neither the wonderswan nor GBA had or if they did have did well. The graphics as well look remade to best they could, the arenas look so much clearer and are no longer murky like on the two previous versions.

Overall, I highly recommend that you do buy this game immediately. It is one of the most addictive RPG ports recently made.

Game Score

B+

Reviewed By: Sam Marks