Blade Dancer waltzing towards European PSPs

No sooner do we cautiously admit in today's Untold Legends review that a bit of what you know can hit the spot, then the latest screens from yet another 3D world-saving RPG for PSP plonks into our consciousness.

But stay your +5 Sword of Righteous Clone Slaughtering for a moment – Blade Dancer: Lineage of Light seems to be trying to bring some innovation to the genre.

Sure, the plot finds you rocking up on the Island of Foo (reputed to be the last and surely silliest-sounding resting place of one Evil Demon Lord, but not for long we wager), there to begin your questing, monster slaughtering, item collecting and levelling up.

But there are some interesting new ideas in play too, especially compared to what will probably be its immediate rival on PSP later this year – the pretty but pretty familiar looking Dungeon Siege: Throne of Agony.

For starters, if you play Blade Dancer all day and night you'll find the same in the game – it features a realistic time system with sunrises and sunsets, which we trust the designers have worked into the quests and sub-plots, rather than just employing for eye-candy.

Of more immediately impact will likely be the way your inventory is managed. In most RPGs you can collect a huge swag of weapons and choose from them as you please, a bit like Neo in The Matrix picking from that infinite rack of guns. (The PC version of Dungeon Siege even enabled you to cart your armoury around on a mule!)

In Blade Dancer though, your weapons begin to fall apart as you use them – hit too many dragons over the head with your mace, and you'll need to buy a new one.

Alternatively, you might be able to make a replacement, if you'd previously checked out its constituents – an 'item synthesis' system enables you to mix-and-match the game's 650-plus objects to fashion new ones. One more reason to cart around a massive bag of swag then.

Combat is further complicated by a real-time battle system that enables you to power-up a meter to unleash more destructive special attacks: the more blows you land, the more it increases. And hunting out suitable fodder for your jerry-rigged armament should be eased by the way you can see your enemies on a world map, rather than simply stumbling into them randomly.

However it's the multiplayer mode that Ignition, which has picked up the game for Europe from Sony and Hitmaker in Japan, highlights as Blade Dancer's leading draw. Details are currently scant, but it seems that in place of the party of fellow adventurers you band together in single-player, you'll be able to go monster bashing with up to three friends in the network multiplayer mode.

We await more on that with interest: Blade Dancer: Lineage of Light is due to arrive in Europe in autumn. Click 'Track It!' above to collect more details as we get them.