Early thoughts on ZHP: Unlosing Ranger vs. Darkdeath Evilman.
By MooseyMcMan 9 Comments
So, I recently acquired a copy of ZHP, and started playing it. Here's my thoughts:
Gameplay
For such an odd sounding game, the gameplay is pretty straightforward. It's a dungeon crawler (or roguelike, if you want to be technical). It's turn based, which is nice, and there are a lot of penalties for dying, like losing all of your money and items. Stat boosts remain though, which is awesome, because the entire point of the game is to level up and beat the final boss. Overall, the gameplay isn't really anything special, but it's good enough to be fun.Graphics
Being a PSP game, ZHP doesn't really wow from a technical perspective, but it's got a great art style. Well, it's pretty much just anime nonsense, but it fits well with the game's goofy tone, and keeps everything upbeat and cheery. Worth noting is that unlike most games with 2D sprites for characters, in this one, when you equip items/weapons, they actually change your appearance, which is great. Now I know that headgear such'n'such is made out of candles. Yup, there's a hat made out of candles.Music
The music in this game reminds me of another game. You know, that game where the music plays loudly, and constantly over the dialog. You know the one I'm talking about. The music does the same thing here, and it's pretty good too. I did turn it down a bit (and the dialog up a bit), but it's still pretty good.Story
Now here's the best part of ZHP. The plot here is simple enough, involving and evil lion-man thing, a super powered infant, a super hero who forgets to look both ways before crossing the street, training on Bizarro Earth, being married to a Prinny....Okay, so it's not that simple, and so far it's not terribly deep (pretty much the old DBZ standby of "go train to get more powerful and defeat the villain"), but the amazing writing and great voice acting are what seal the deal. The game is absolutely hilarious. It's the little things, like how Darkdeath Evilman is described as being able to "Breath fire from his mouth." I don't really want to give too many more examples, because I don't want to spoil anything for people who haven't played the game yet.
So, while I haven't had a ton of time to play the game (about three hours), I can definitely say that this is one of the (if not the) best games I have played on the PSP. If you own a PSP, and you like dungeon crawlers, and especially if you like things that are crazy and Japanese, you really need to buy this game. It's about $30 on Amazon, and it's supposed to be fairly long (the marketing for the game claimed you could play it 40 million times too).
Sadly though, I kinda of feel like my saying this is falling on deaf ears (eyes?). At this point, most people who want this game have probably already bought it. You know what would be great? If some website rose awareness for this game by playing through the entirety of it, along with color commentary. They could even put a video up every weekday.
...
Kidding! I'm just kidding.
But still. Buy this game.