Hexyz Force Reviews

Hexyz Force is a great RPG for the PSP handheld. The game is split into two campaigns, but each campaign already gives a fulfilling experience. I personally would have preferred the two campaigns to eventually unlock a third final story or chapter, but that would force people to play both campaigns so it's fine as it is now. I also like how Cecilia's story can technically be seen as a more fantasy-like, casual light-hearted story to reflect the part of the world she comes from, while Levant's story is darker. The companions accompanying each protagonist reflect that theme as well. This does not mean that dark moments don't happen in Cecilia's story and vice versa, but I appreciate the difference regardless. There's also an evil, good or even a completely neutral route to take for both campaigns which will affect the endings, adding replayability. This doesn't mean that you go on a complete genocide or something as everything is calculated by the amount of monsters you kill and if you spend the game's currency well. Everything in the world of Berge revolves around Force, sort of a currency. Force is needed for everything, from crafting armour and weapons to upgrading your character-specific weapons to even using it for story purposes. It's a very easy to understand system, and used pretty well. The only way to get force is through combat which is kind of a shame but understandable since that's most of what you'll be doing anyway. The combat itself is classic turn-based combat with its unique feature being the usage of character-specific weapons and durable weapons. The former, also called Ragnafacts, use Ragnapoints. Basically an equivalence to MP in other JRPGs and can only be used a limited amount of times before you need to restore your RP. Durable weapons can be used as alternative but as the name implies, they degrade into nothingness after a select amount of uses. It is a solid combat system, and I also greatly appreciate the ability to speed up animations so battles fly by pretty fast. Hexyz Force is a solid RPG overall, and if you are able to get your hands on it is definitely worth a shot. My main critisism would be that the story is played through two different characters, but the story progression and dungeons are pretty much the same. I won't deny that I was getting tired of visiting the same dungeon at the end of every chapter, which also houses the worst enemy in the entire game that can potentially give you a very easy game-over. It's a minor complaint on  an overall good game, but one that could potentially have made the game even better than it currently is.