Dave "Snarkasaur" Stewart of Spawn Kill writes:
"For a long while, PSP owners had a drought where RPGs were concerned. Crisis Core is a great game and Half Minute Hero is probably the most innovative RPG on any console, but compared to the massive catalog of RPGs over there on the DS, PSP owners have been poorly served. Because of this inattention, many might find Mimana Iyar Chronicles a welcome addition to the catalog. They might be blinded to its faults out of sheer need for something in the role-playing realm. They might tell people it’s a good game simply because there is so little to compare it to.
Do not be fooled, because this is not the RPG you’re looking for."
Everyone knows that a handheld owner — like PSP owners — are incredibly hard to please. Why you ask? Because we’re on the move and when we’re nowhere near home where we may have our Xbox 360 or PS3 or Wii we want to have something exciting, something that can suck us into it’s world. But then there are those games that seem amazing but end up being a complete waste. So enter Mimana Lyar Chronicle, it appears to be the first multi-game take on a world created by Japanese developer GungHo.
IGN writes: "It's entirely possible if you're the lonely and/or overly-sarcastic type that you may grow to like these characters, but the storyline peters out too early (after a merciless set of dungeons and boss fights toward the end) and what's here isn't modern enough to feel at home on the PSP, nor is it retro enough to pass as a port. This is a game that doesn't belong anywhere, and no amount of solid translation and voice work can save that".
RPGamer writes: "Lazy. Generic. Simple. Nostalgic. A light-hearted throwback to 90s gaming. Depending on your viewpoint, Mimana Iyar Chronicle is any or all of those things. It's true that the interface and graphics bring down what could have been a special gem, but the excellent voice acting and laugh-out-loud goofiness of the dialogue and the game's characters make it memorable."
If it wasn't for the map problems, I would be tempted to try this out, although I have to say that the fact that some bosses are random encounters is pretty cheap. I don't think I've ever experienced or heard of that before.
Ouch. Well, the graphics don't really do it for me anyway, and I have waaay too many games to play at the moment so at least I'm not missing out on anything. The bosses being random encounters is really stupid, I'm sorry. I don't dig that at all. What were they thinking?
I thought it had a pretty cool graphical style.