Mytran Wars Review for PlayStation Portable (PSP)

System: PSP	Review Rating Legend
Dev: Stormregion	1.0 - 1.9 = Avoid	4.0 - 4.4 = Great
Pub: Deep Silver	2.0 - 2.4 = Poor	4.5 - 4.9 = Must Buy
Release: Oct. 22, 2009	2.5 - 2.9 = Average	5.0 = The Best
Players: 1-2	3.0 - 3.4 = Fair
ESRB Rating: Teen	3.5 - 3.9 = Good

Making matters worse, your enemies have the same advantage. So, if you commit to attacking one foe, you're basically forced to bum-rush them with every unit you have and praying you do enough damage to kill them before your turn is over. If you fail, they will cure themselves at the start of the enemy phase, effectively making your previous turn amount to a huge waste of time. Part of the strategy in a good SRPG comes from learning to approach a group of enemies and slowly taking them down through various means; this tactic isn't even possible in Mytran Wars. The developers could have even compensated by lessening the enemy count, but you are often so overwhelmed that even with the recharge time on curing there are too many enemies to make your actions worthwhile. Not even the elemental properties of each unit, whose strengths and weaknesses between units could have theoretically played a bigger part in making the game seem more balanced and fair, really make a difference.

Mytran Wars screenshot

Objectives are often infuriatingly vague, as well. For instance, near the one-third mark of the game is an escort mission that instructs you to travel across a winding canyon. When you finally slog your way to the waypoint, a message appears, saying that a big bruiser mech that's been in your party is dropping out. The brusier, although "dropping", still functioned and now had a self-destruct command for unknown reasons. It took about half an hour to figure out to use the self-destruct command to blow a hole in the canyon wall to continue down another path-a realization I came to on entirely on my own. The objectives hadn't changed, and there were no prompts about what to do.

Similarly, if you're supposed to, say, capture an alien base but accidentally end up destroying it, the mission doesn't end. Incompetent design like this is everywhere in Mytran Wars, and it will make you want to smash your PSP against the nearest wall. Finally, battle speeds and animations and are irritatingly slow, dragging out the length of the game's overly long 30 level campaign. These can be turned off, but only at the cost of you being blindsided by enemies that seemingly drop from the sky.

Unless you're really, really into SRPGs, the flaws in Mytran Wars' mechanics almost completely cripple the game. I can't in good conscience recommend it to anyone, nor can I be any clearer than that. Do yourself a favor-play War of the Lions instead.

By Steve Haske
CCC Freelance Writer

RATING OUT OF 5

RATING DESCRIPTION

4.0

Graphics
Mytran Wars' visuals are one of the few things the developers didn't screw up too much.

4.0

Control
Controls exactly how you would expect a strategy RPG to. It can sometimes be hard to tell which grid the cursor is highlighting.

1.0

Music / Sound FX / Voice Acting
The music is a limited collection of forgettable, mid-nineties techno tracks, and the sound is passable. The voice acting will make your ears bleed.

1.0

Play Value
If the fate of most badly designed games is to suffer an excruciatingly slow end by falling on their own swords, Mytran Wars is so awful it doesn't have a sword with which to end it all, and it is instead forced to starve to death.

1.4

Overall Rating - Avoid
Not an average. See Rating legend above for a final score breakdown.

Game Features:

Motion-comic cutscenes.

30 mission single-player campaign.

Two player ad-hoc multiplayer.

Unlockable extras, secret mission objectives, and 250 item upgrades on six different ability trees.

Four total unlockable campaigns.