Opinions on poorly documented imports

[celerystalker]

I love Psychic Force, as I recently mentioned here. What many people into anime probably recognize is that Taito was inspired by Studio Clamp's anime X, which featured flying psychic warriors representing the dragons of heaven and earth fighting for the apocalypse. In the late life of the original Playstation, Bandai decided to make a game based on X, and saw the outstanding template Taito had created. Instead of ripping off a ripoff, why not just pay them to use that engine and create the game for you?

Using the same engine as Psychic Force 2, X takes the high-flying projectile-oriented feel of Psychic Force and outfits it with the license it always wanted. It works. Instead of the likes of Burn and Setsuna, we now have the armies of earth and heaven, with Kamui vs Fuma looming at the forefront. This engine was made for X, and it's another great game in the Psychic Force lineage. Control is responsive, the graphics are an upgrade from the original game, and the cutscenes provided by Clamp keep you involved in the atmosphere.

If you aren't familiar with Psychic Force, it involves psychic warriors flying about a 3D, cubic arena, throwing projectiles and dashing about to get in some melee, grabs, or special attacks. It's all on a 2D plane, but the arenas are large, and the action speeds up with experience. The balance comes from attacks using varying amounts of psychic energy, some more than your initial max. As your life decreases, your max psychic energy increases, so timing is everything. In terms of X, it is straight Psychic Force with the anime characters instead.

I don't want to give away the story, as the anime is good. This game is a bunch of good decisions glued together, and will really resonate with fans of either Psychic Force the game or X the anime. It isn't perfect. It is outstanding, though. If you like either franchise. If you're into either, X marks the... yeah. Not finishing that joke. If it is in your wheelhouse, get it. It's what a licensed game ought to be.