Corpse Party - PSP Review

The first corpse party caught my eye because it looked like an RPG with a horror theme when the first screenshots and text about it came out a few years ago. I had never heard of the series and did not know that it had in fact originated as an RPG Maker project. The PSP has played host to a lot of RPG games over the years, and given the visuals I made the mistake of thinking that this would be as well.

Instead it is more of an interactive tale than an outright game. You still walk about and experience plenty of trial (and even more) error as you get to witness the often grizzly demises of students who attempted a ritual gone very wrong.

Graphics - 7:

They get the job done, at least from an overhead standpoint as you walk about. That being said, the actual character art is good. You do not get much in the way of animation, but if you enjoy anime artwork, then you will likely find the graphics here to be more pleasing than not.


Sound & Music - 9:

The music is good, but better than that are the sound effects. Like other games lucky to be localized at all, you are listening to the Japanese dialog (just like say, Record of Agarest War). I was fine with that - it was not terribly distracting, but you do have a lot of reading on your hands. Luckily the sound effects are not only effective in quality, but usually expertly timed as well. For some people, I know not having English voice actors is a deal-killer, but I was just fine without them.


Gameplay - 6:

Things could be a bit better here. You largely walk around and advance text. There are some things that would have been nice however, that show up in the spin-off Book of Shadows. For example, it would be nice to skip blocks of text - and even nicer still would have been the ability to save at any time and anywhere. There is a lot of replay value to be had in this title,given the various (and often gruesome outcomes) - but having to go back 10-20 minutes to your last save so frequently did wear on my patience some.


Intangibles - 7:

I would say it took a little over 10 hours to complete Corpse Party, which is not horrible for a narration heavy title like this. There are some extra chapters you can access as well. If you plan to play both games, there is an option to bring your save data from this over to the Book of Shadows spin-off.


Overall - 7.25:

I really did enjoy Corpse Party. The characters were generally interesting - I actually cared what happened to them. Some were better fleshed out than others, but the content was chilling and effective in making you a participant in this horror title. If not for the redundancy in death, it would have been even better, because those demises can often come out of nowhere and sometimes feel 'cheap'. Overall though, it was a fun experience that left me wanting more.


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5 comments:

  1. Hmm, this game looks like it could be a borderline hentai game, lol. Just sayin. Good review, yo.

    ReplyDelete
  2. LOL - thanks for dropping by, Tom!


    It never travels into that territory, but both this and the follow-up Book of Shadows have some serious 'fan service'. Book of Shadows for example has two younger female characters in a bath. You don't -see- anything and nothing explicit is described, but they do skirt around the topic just a bit,

    ReplyDelete
  3. Did you ever play Kara no Shoujo?


    I never finished Corpse Party because I insanely suck at the running away from ghosts parts, but story and character-wise I very much enjoyed it as far as I've played.. which isn't very far. *sigh*


    I'm not sure if I'll ever finish it, because the whole having to do long parts over and over if you die just really sucks for someone who fails as much as me. Is Book of Shadows playable even if you never finished the first or should I better watch a let's play of the first to completely enjoy it?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Kara no Shoujo - I have not, unfortunately. I've read about it, but never had the chance to get my mitts on it.


    I do hear you - redoing those long stretches over and over again is just... it's frustrating at best, and as you've demonstrated, kind of a game-killer at worst. Book of Shadows is *playable*, but I admit the story would be much harder to follow along with if you haven't played through the original.. It would probably make sense to get the cliff notes on what you 'missed' before giving Book of Shadows a go, if you're resigned to not beating the original.


    Thanks for dropping in!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Even if it's a h-game and pretty gory, I can only recommemd Kara no Shoujo. Awesome writing. I really hope the second one will get localised at some point as well.. :)


    I guess I'll watch a let's play of Corpse Party some time then.. I'd probably go back to the game if it wasn't on my other PSN account and I'd have to reset my Vita and set it all up again to switch to that account.. ^^;

    ReplyDelete

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