Beat on Normal with 900/1000 max hp and 800/1000 max mp, 3 combo attack (out of the max 5), and missing a lot of stuff. I mostly used the furthest zoomed out camera mode but a few times I had to zoom in to see better. The camera was not the best, especially given how much difficult platforming there was. I noticed that turning the camera while moving did not always update the movement direction and I often got brought up on stuff, including enemies. The optional menu had full custom key bindings, which should be mandatory for every game. I put item select (which I never used because I could do it in the paused inventory screen) and camera on the analog stick, and action to select; square was attack, triangle shot magic/used item, X jump, and O run. Pressing select while running did a slide, and select + magic did a big screen nuke later on. This game was very much a mixed bag for me as it had some excellent features, and others that frustrated me to no end. On the good end were the story and characters. The humor was a good laugh and the almost Borg like nature of the villain was fascinating, turning people and animals into cyborg monsters. The women were especially hot with the princess taking the #1 spot, despite the graphics. I did the fortune teller quiz and got the Baron's daughter as my ideal match. Most of the puzzles were very creative. I liked how early puzzles taught the mechanics of the late game by showing what elemental objects could do, and that obvious side puzzles without objects showed that magic would take the place of objects. It was satisfying to get each new elemental ring and go back to solve previously unsolvable puzzles. However many of the puzzles were down right frustrating, especially when a time limit was involved. The puzzle challenge significantly increased at the whale dungeon and it was here that I began consulting a walkthrough to help with any puzzle that I did not figure out within a few minutes. The most challenging puzzles were usually skill based that required trying it over and over until either memorization or luck caused the win. For 1 puzzle here I had to look up a YouTube video. It was a simple jump to a hole that closed way too fast, and failing to reach it in time meant fighting enemies to try again. I failed several times before I watched someone else do it; just a diagonal jump followed by running. By far the most frustrating puzzle was at the lava falls in the volcano, where I had to jump up a series of falling platforms. This was so difficult because of the camera angle making it extremely difficult to tell when the platforms were in position to reach and jump from. I failed so many times that I had to return to the healing point 7 times just from falling into the lava, which only did 30 damage. There were a lot of puzzles where after finally beating them my only thought was "thank fuck, now where is the save point so I never have to do that again". Would have been better played with save states.

After this was the dungeon that unlocked flight travel, where I thought there was some kind of magic seal that forced solving puzzles the old fashioned way. But no it turned out that I just put my magic ring in a different slot and did not switch to that slot after I removed all healing items from the quick slots due to accidental use. The other major frustrating flaw was the combat. On 1 hand it was cool that the guy was using a 2 handed sword with significant reach. On the other, the combat was straight up obnoxious. Every god damn time I took damage the hero fell on his ass and took SEVERAL seconds to get back up. Thank fuck he was invulnerable during that time, but why the hell design something that did nothing but waste time? This single aspect made me hate the combat so much, but it gets worse. Enemies get the same treatment, being knocked down and invulnerable after taking any damage, wasting even more time. Early combat was hit an enemy then run away until they got back up and did the cheap shot that would happen if you stayed close. It got a little better as optional puzzle pieces were turned in for combo attacks, which allowed you to hit enemies more than once in a flurry. It was important not to be running while attacking because he would do only a single hit that carried so much momentum that he would slide forward as if on ice. This caused me so much unnecessary contact damage, especially during boss fights. Occasionally it was a good idea to do charge attacks aimed slightly to the side like jousting, but most times it was best to walk painfully slow or come to a complete stop before attacking. I somewhat regret playing on Normal because enemies took a lot of hits to kill and hit like trucks. I relied far more on magic, especially late game against the most dangerous enemies. Oh and most enemies had obnoxious movement patterns and attacks, like moving fast, charges, flight, teleporting etc. I liked using air magic to stun them, and late game upgraded the air ring to level 3 for the big screen nuke, which was by far the best way to deal with multiple enemies at once. Anything else was just too risky to my hp. There were no defensive moves other than passively blocking projectiles while standing still. Earth magic did a little area nuke, water drained hp but did low damage, and fire was the highest single damage. After getting the dragon I did some side content and tried out the mini games. I am usually not a fan of silly mini games. I failed the mandatory bull runner mini game several times but checkpoint saves were good. I hate runner games. The fact that a boss fight was directly after without a save point in between was ridiculous, but I never died at the boss so not sure what would happen. The mine cart mini game was good. I had zero interest in doing the 3 optional mini games at the beginning forest, only trying the RC car a couple times. Didnt even try the dog or bomb ones. Probably should have done the bomb game for the last max hp up. Then I used up my 99 darts at the dart throwing mini game. This gave me a head ache and was a huge slog. It would have been better with a cross hair. I did manage to get a 5X bulls eye once, but after using up all those darts I only made about 6000 points, not even close to the 30k needed for the best shield. No way in hell am I grinding that. I spent it on level 3 air ring (totally worth it) and level 2 earth ring, which I never used. I liked the concept of finding darts from enemies but this mini game sucked. I never tried the bull fights. Last I did the arcade. The shooter game was the best, being a ridiculously difficult bullet hell shoot em up. I got to stage 9 or 10. The racing game was not my style as I missed every pickup and crashed within 10 seconds. The pac man game was lame but gave way more rewards than the shooter despite only getting to stage 3. It was hilarious that Ruby was the enemy, then at stage 3 it changed to her dad. He was slower but it was hard enough getting to him. The racing game bugged me out by making all characters vanish so all I could see was little circle shadows. I opted not to save there just in case and the game locked up my PSP when I exited to the world map. Oh well at least I did not spend long there. I had the 2 mp rings, which were great for general combat and puzzles, but wanted the attack and defense rings for bosses. It was a tough call whether to grind pac man for the arcade currency or the piggy bank in the bull town to simply buy enough currency for the rings, but I instead opted to skip either and finish the game as I was. I needed about 2k more gold to buy both rings but also spent almost that much restocking healing items during the final dungeon. Bosses were sometimes obnoxious but figuring out the pattern made most of them fairly easy. I actually used more healing items failing at platforming and against regular enemies than bosses, except for the final boss. I opted not to go outside again to restock healing items, so began the fight with 0 herbs, around 5 or 6 tonics, 9 elixirs, and 6 panacea. The final boss had so much difficult to avoid damage that I used everything except 1 panacea and at that point was resolved to watch the ending online if I died rather than try again. But I won. It took a while to learn the patterns. The trick to the phase 2 mech thing was to switch between the fore and hind legs since his attack could not hit next to the other leg. The key to phase 3 was to hide in the back against the big green attack, and run around the perimeter for the others, weaving past his hands when they were away, then jump attack when he moved forward. The time limit after to get out through the turning room could have been annoying but I just followed the walkthrough. I'm not risking getting game over due to a time limit after barely scraping by the tedious final boss.

I liked some of this game and it would definitely be worth watching the story scenes again. Most of the characters deserve to return in another game or medium. The music was pretty good with the villain theme especially standing out; that creepy music box theme combined with the whole wind up clockwork cyborg aspect of the game. However the frustrating combat and platforming mean I would never want to play this again, and would not want to max out everything using those stupid mini games.

6.8/10