I’ll level with you: there was some pleasure in writing this review. It’s hard not to feel a small amount of guilt when you rubbish a game – especially an RPG. To essentially judge that the astonishing number of man hours planning, designing, balancing, play-testing, marketing and doing PR on a title were basically a waste (at least in terms of merit if not financially) is a heavy burden. But when a game falls on shoddy localisation and translation it’s hard to forgive.

Also: how satisfying it was to write the final sentence below and to then see that EG’s editor left it in. He understands my pain.

“A simple and easy to understand scenario and system will get people of all ages and both sexes to enjoy playing casual RPG games.”

There’s so much between those lines it’s a marvel they managed to squeeze it into the PSP’s 480×272 start-up screen.

The key words in there, both literal and inferred, describing this game and to whom it should appeal are: “simple”, “easy”, “casual”, “the elderly” and “girls”. Not things one traditionally associates with any type of videogame, let alone orthodox 12-year-old Korean-pretending-to-be-Japanese RPGs.

Right. Before we cover our adjectives in Astonishia’s blood lets make a few things clear. Simplicity and ease of understanding are good and rare things in videogames. Titles that appeal to both ages and are inclusive of all sexes are similarly commendable; but the key to both these things isn’t in dumbing down – it’s in clear, concise form and function.

It’s in game mechanics that are understood in a moment but savoured and unravelled through a lifetime; it’s in making straight and fast and easy in-roads to fun and payoff for a player so that the eyes of those unwilling to contend with the ugly and lazy gaming conventions that hardened players happily excuse, sparkle with understanding and fresh delight.

It’s Tetris; it’s Super Monkey Ball, EyeToy, LocoRoco, Dance Dance Revolution. It’s Advance Wars; that Nintendo difference.

It’s also known as being good at your job.

And that is what’s so infuriating about Astonishia Story’s little preplay caveat: it’s pure spin. It’s parading stupidity for simplicity; claiming superficiality as elegance; passing off the base and obvious as premeditated inclusiveness and marketing what was bland, ineffective and derivative in 1994 as colourful, interesting and novel in 2006.

OK; that’s probably enough spittle-flecked preaching for one introduction. Some instruction manual points to put the youngsters in the cheap seats at ease:

You can read the rest here