Brave Story: New Traveler is unlike other Playstation Portable RPGs. It is an original RPG specifically for PSP, and not a port of a decent PSOne RPG. It isn’t (for the most part) an entry in or spin-off from a well-established franchise like Final Fantasy. It’s also a pretty good game.
I’m a big fan of the Playstation Portable. It’s a marvelous piece of engineering. When considering the sheer amount of technology packed into the unit and the fact that it all more or less works, it’s hard not to be impressed. The only real problem with the PSP is that while it’s had a lot of decent 8/10-scoring games that are basically worth playing, most of them are action or racing titles. Burnout, Wipeout, Metal Gear Solid, Grand Theft Auto, Ratchet and Clank, and Siphon Filter come to mind. These are landmark games because they are just like PS2 action games. This is fine, but when I’m on the bus or riding in a car or taking a dump, I don’t always have time a 3-lap go around a racetrack or a 20-minute-long sneaking session through a terrorist stronghold. Sometimes, I just have time for a random battle or two. From the first day I had a PSP, I’ve really wanted a high-quality, old-fashioned RPG, complete with fetch-quests and lots of random battles — preferably without insane load times (I really, really wanted to like PoPoLoCrois). Unfortunately, the PSP RPG scene has been completely dominated by half-hearted, laggy ports of old Japanese titles for PSOne or PC that were never good enough to make the localization cut back in the early 2000s.
Enter Brave Story: New Traveler. This is a game that really came out of nowhere! I follow video game news and gossip pretty closely (I load up on game podcasts for my daily hour-long double commutes), and the only place that had ever mentioned Brave Story was www.rpgamer.com. Their hype was lukewarm at best, and their early review was less than enthusiastic — I chalk it up to the game not having enough emo. Other review outlets, however, are receiving the game extremely well. 1Up’s critic went so far as to call it the best RPG currently available on PSP. Following that review, I picked the game up on release day, and after a thorough scolding from an overweight Gamestop employee who must have assumed that I cared about his unsolicited advice, I had this curious title in my hot little mits!
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