Written By: John Perkowski

The PSP has no shortage of RPGs so it takes a rare or unusual one to get our attention. When we found out there was a non-Japanese RPG, we jumped at the chance. It's not that we dislike Japanese RPGs; rather one can only subsist on so many Legend of Heroes, Monster Summoners, and Untold Legends before they all start to blend into one. Thankfully, Kuju and Atari have brought us a portable version of the legendary Dungeons and Dragons, called Dungeons and Dragons: Tactics. Will it manage to separate itself from its bountiful brethren?

To start with, it has to be said that this is the game for the Hardcore RPG crowd. Unless your ready to knuckle down and learn how the D20 system works, you in for a tough time. This entails learning about flanking modifiers, attack rolls, initiative modifiers, movement and speed penalties, and encumbrance. Still, if you tough it out and learn about the game, there is a lot of fun to be had.

When you first boot up, you can either choose from pre-generated party members or create your own from scratch. Generating your own from scratch takes a lot longer, but if you have a specific party idea in mind, up to six members can be created with no problems. Once you start generation, you get to choose a race, basic stats, assign skills, pick special abilities, and assign how your character looks. It's all very smooth, but menu driven. One of the more unnecessary overlooks in the game is that you don't auto-save at all, so make sure once you are done generating your characters, you jump right into the campaign to save your game. It's not as bad as the half-hour it takes to get through the training in Harvest Moon: Innocent Life, but it's close.

Once generation is done, you can go through some basic tutorials for the game. As an established D&D Gamemaster, I can see how they kept all of the rules in tact, but sometimes they kept rules where it wasn't necessary. For example weather you are in combat or not, you still move like you are. This makes getting through some areas (however small) take a little longer than necessary. Additionally, you can't revisit missions previously defeated to collect treasure you left behind due to encumbrance issues. This is illogical for D&D and makes the campaign mode feel like a series of unconnected events rather than one epic quest.

The missions themselves are varied but nothing unusual. You have your standard hunt and kill everything, but it does change up a bit with rescue missions and escape missions. The areas themselves are a nice blend of traditional D&D haunts: Crypts, Forests, Mines, Towns, Castles, and Caves. The character models, in game, are less fortunate. All enemies tend to blend together after a while, although to its credit the game offers many different types of enemies. Elves, zombies, humans, goblins, wolves, birds, and the obligatory Dragon (of course) all make an appearance for your party to fight with.

Multiplayer is a place where the game could have shined a great deal, but it sort of falls flat. For one, you can't use your own characters in multiplayer. You have to use the pregenerated ones. For another, weapons and equipment from the main campaign don't carry over into multiplayer. Lastly, you can't run the main campaign together. You’re limited to a series of mini-quests which aren't related to one another or a deathmatch option. These are somewhat confusing multiplayer choices as the above options would extend the playtime of the already considerable single player a great deal. Worst though, is the game only support local wireless. Internet play is a sure thing for D&D players, and the PSP has the capability. It should have been a no-brainer.

Though the tone of this review was overall less favorable, I can tell you that if you are looking for a great turn based strategy RPG for your PSP, this is the one to get. It's got depth to spare, a lengthy campaign, and hundreds of ways to progress though the same mission. A buy for those hardcore fans, but causal players should give it a pass.