Untold Legends: The Warrior's Code Review

Following Brotherhood of the Blade (which Eurogamer previously stabbed through the heart before chopping its head off for good measure), Warrior's Code thrusts players into a generic fantasy setting and challenges them to kill everything that moves. Gone are the random dungeons to be replaced by an emphasis on story, an extra playable character and a bigger online offering.

Built with all the staple action RPG ingredients, players' butcher and violate enemies in return for gold and experience. These can be spent on new attacks, increasing stats such as strength and speed, weapons and other such goodies. The five playable characters are made up of the familiar brutish, mysterious, heroic, dubious and minxy adventurers, and although there's not a sharp contrast between playing styles, there's a little variety for anyone wanting to specialise in smashing faces from a distance or smashing faces up close.

Ooh look, they're doing a little Waltz.

Although new attack methods have been added for this sequel, the fighting mechanic is still underwhelming. Characters can morph into a beastly alter-ego for a limited time providing a more powerful damage, and there are opportunity attacks and special moves to add variety. The problem is that the best form of destruction is to recklessly hammer a single button; something which quickly gets tiresome.

The enemy AI doesn't help itself, as it basically falls back on a mentality of ‘see good guy, charge at good guy'. Getting a clean shot with a ranged attack is possible, but it's easier to stand your ground and charge up an attack by holding down the X button, simply waiting for the fool to get within your swinging arc before letting him have it right in the chops. Attacks of opportunity - where an enemy lets his guard down in order for the player to take advantage of a weak spot - don't really add much to the mix either. Again, hammer the X button until he drops his guard, and then hammer it some more for good measure. There's also a worrying pause when being attacked by multiple enemies which causes the action to stutter.

Character upgrades initially seem exciting but on the battlefield it doesn't feel like you're growing or improving, just that enemies can take more damage as they grow in numbers. On the surface it seems that there's more to Warrior's Code than there was to Brotherhood of the Blade, but in practise, the streamlined inventory, the wider multiplayer options and tweaks to gameplay don't actually make much of a difference at all.

Hit the blobby thing with shiny thing, but avoid the big thing!

There are impressive, or at least entertaining, elements to Warrior's Code. The orchestral score is rousing and with its military drums, choral voices and haunting chimes it certainly sets the scene nicely. Especially once you've replaced the weak PSP headphones in favour of some bad-ass ear-goggles. In reality, I might be on the train to miserable Nuneaton, but it's nice to know I've got my own faux Hyborian Age or Middle-Earth in my palms with plenty of atmosphere to shut out the outside world. That the sharp sound effects of brutal man slaying foul villain is blighted by the drama-school screech of hideous voice acting is just something we have, in all honesty, come to expect from a video game.

The sense of scale is impressive too, and visually Warrior's Code does a good job of the environment - architecture, depth of terrain, chasms, foliage and a use of lighting and shade add a lot to the package. Unfortunately, the lack of detail elsewhere covers the diamond in too much dirt.

Where top down games such as X-Men: Legends or Baldur's Gate relish graphical intricacy and endlessly neat touches - detail and flourishes in character and items - Warrior's Code suffers from the fact that the majority of such things are just too small. It's mainly a practical problem of the PSP. A home TV with a big fat display is a great canvas to paint multiple lovely little details, but on the PSPs screen anything smaller than a playable character has a tendency to look like a colourful blob. On-screen prompts tell me I can pick up a discarded Faulty Bronze Wrist Blade (get used to the convoluted names), but in reality it just looks like any old shape. Potions and poisons are pin pricks of colour, other items are merely sparkly things. Big things look good, small thing look rubbish (although not as rubbish as ‘history'). Character design is quite intriguing, mixing the classic fantasy spikes and armour with primitive shotguns and flamethrowers, but on close inspection this also suffers from a lack of detail and definition.

Is that a roast chicken in a coat?

The addition of a two-player co-op online mode is a bonus, and with communication through prompts on the D-pad it's perhaps more fun that trundling through the single player campaign on your lonesome. The other modes - standard four-player arse kicking - pass the time, but the game isn't really built with any kind of deep or tactical deathmatch play.