Untold Legends: Dark Kingdom (PS3) (gamespy)

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Let's try a little free association for a minute. When I say, "Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance," what's the first thing that pops into your head? How about "Champions of Norrath"? If you thought of words that are even remotely synonymous with "fun," then you'll probably get a kick out of Untold Legends: Dark Kingdom, because it's pretty much exactly like those two series of games smashed together, only with much better graphics. Don't get me wrong, Untold Legends on the PSP is definitely the basis for this new chapter in the Untold Legends saga, but let's face it: The action-RPG landscape is a pretty uniform hack-'n-slash place for Sony lovers.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Untold Legends series, it's a classic top-down view button-masher in an epic fantasy setting. In this one, you get to choose from three pre-made avatars: a burly, mace-wielding warrior dude, a lithe, arrow-launching ranger chick, or a spell-hurling mage fella.

Picky over Prefabs

What surprises me the most about the whole pre-formed character shtick is how confining it seems for a next-gen console with the power of the PS3. Look at the character customization options in Oblivion and you might understand where I'm coming from with this. All that power and I only have three options to choose from? Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07 and Tony Hawk's Project 8 offer more character customization than that -- in fact, those two games offer tons more. For a genre that focuses on building unique, heroic, digital alter egos, Untold Legends: Dark Kingdom starts off on a pretty generic foot, and forces you to do the same.

While lots of cool loot can be acquired from the fairly diverse assortment of evil minions, I was disappointed with the impact the gear had on the look of my hero. While you can collect a wide variety of new bits of armor, only a select few will actually change the appearance of your character; about once per level you'll gain access to a new look for your avatar. This disconnect between the amount of armor pieces you can pick up versus the limited effect they have on the look of your character seems like a throwback to the PS2 (or, shudder, the PSP), and makes the game feel like a sequel to Champions of Norrath more than a true next-gen successor. That's not a totally awful thing if you were into Champions of Norrath like I was, but the lack of technical progression is lamentable to say the least.

PSP on Your PS3

For the most part, the game plays remarkably similarly to its PSP forerunners. You run around mashing the face buttons, pummeling a never-ending stream of monsters, until the stream peters out and you are able to access a new location. Along the way, baddies and treasure chests drop all sorts of gear and life/mana-replenishing glowing balls. It's definitely a lather, rinse, repeat kind of thing, so if you're not totally into the genre, you can expect to get bored pretty quickly.

Aside from all of the monster mashing, Untold Legends: Dark Kingdom does manage to work in a few interesting puzzles. Most are your standard box-pushing or key-collecting types of affairs, but they break up the monotony of mindlessly slaying creep after creep, so I call them points in the plus category. If you're looking for serious brain-busters on the order of ICO, you'll be disappointed, but otherwise these little diversions make for some decent variety.

Of course, there are also some "quests" that are mind-numbing roadblocks where you have to annihilate ridiculous numbers of foes in order to knock down a flaming barrier. One in particular stands out in my mind from the Cursed Caves level, where endless waves of undead spawned repeatedly until, blistered and raw, my thumbs were finally granted a reprieve when the luminous wall that blocked my path vanished. I seriously had to slaughter hundreds of these stupid skeletons in order to progress. I mean, I leveled up four times, but it felt like the definition of tedium to actually play through it.

There are also a few boss battles thrown into the mix, and each has some kind of trick to it beyond just slashing the crap out of a giant spider/minotaur/octopus/insert-monster-type-here. The fight against the Lightstone Golem is a good example of the clever boss fights in Untold Legends as you can't actually hurt him until you figure out how to destroy all of the columns surrounding him. On the other hand, the last boss of the Kiln level (the Ashen Beast) was a major pain for me because his weakness was intensely tough to figure out (and no, I'm not going to spoil it for you -- you must suffer as I have).

Heroic Opportunities

As opposed to most other PS3 titles, there are a surprising number of people slicing, dicing and incinerating online in Untold Legends. I found several rooms that were remarkably hospitable to newcomers (which could be because so many players are newbs at this point). It was easy to browse the game rooms and even easier to jump in and start brawling with my newfound chums. Many players would drop their excess items so that I could gear up in no time at all.

Still, it's probably better for you to try to fire up a new online game if you're just arriving to the online party. It was tough to hop into a game where people had been playing awhile, because, if you're just starting out at level one, the more challenging enemies can make it difficult to stay alive long enough to gain those sweet, sweet experience points. At the same time, entering a game in progress can also be a little jarring if you haven't been battling it out with a crew from the get-go. I also noticed some network lag that caused a handful of enemies to seemingly teleport around, but in most cases it didn't cause too much trouble -- it was just a little disconcerting.

Flashes in the Pan

Untold Legends: Dark Kingdom has a limited crafting system that uses a universal currency called "essence." You can fashion armor, jewels to snap into your weapon, or just replenish your health and mana reserves by hitting up the floaty-ball checkpoints strewn throughout the levels. You'll learn how to create better and better gear as the game progresses, and, generally speaking, the armor you can build is almost always superior to the stuff you pick up off of the mounds of dead left in your wake.

Your weapon can be equipped with four jewels that augment your melee attacks in some way or provide other kinds of bonuses. My favorite jewel occasionally procs (fancy MMO-speak for "does its thing") and creates a small demonic shade minion to fight at my side. It comes in especially handy when playing the mage because the shade can run interference while I chuck chain lightning at monsters from a safe distance. Other jewels have more obvious benefits, like increasing your maximum health and mana, and some really powerful jewels have a combination of effects.

Better Left Untold?

Bottom line: Untold Legends: Dark Kingdom is essentially a PS2 game with snappier graphics. Granted, the snappy graphics are pretty boss, even in standard definition (and you'll notice a difference if you use an S-Video cable instead of the plain old composites), but that's just not enough to warrant the label next-gen -- not when you've got a machine as powerful as the PS3 flaunting its Cell processor.

That said, it's still a solid game in terms of the fact that, if you're into it, it is decently fun. You have to be accustomed to the action-RPG genre to really enjoy it, and by that I mean that you have to be prepared for the camera issues that naturally seem to go along with this type of game. Seriously, the camera in this game isn't just bad, it eats babies. But if you liked Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance and Champions of Norrath (and you still haven't had enough), then Untold Legends: Dark Kingdom will do you right.