Whenever you start an RPG and you’re getting to grips with whatever system of experience points, APs, SPs, spells, summons, junctioning, spheres, active time battles and so on it uses, you usually get the feeling you wish you could invent time travel and boost yourself forward a few hours ahead, just to get to the point in time when you have it all sorted out in your head and are enjoying playing with the numbers and putting things in their correct place. Popolocrois doesn’t ask you to do that, and this simplicity makes it an ideal RPG for beginners.

You play as, Pietro, a tiny kid who on his tenth birthday discovers that in fact his ma isn’t dead she’s just been unconscious for ten years hidden away in the depth’s of Pietro’s father’s castle. Turns out she’s actually a dragon that fought the Ice Demon which was terrorising the land until she stopped it, but woe upon woe her soul became trapped in the World of Darkness resulting in her inert form back in the real world. So, in light of not having a bunch of flowers and a card, Pietro gathers a few chums and sets off to get his ma the best present ever: her life back.

That’s quite the story. Popolocrois was released to astounding success in Japan on PSOne ten years ago, so much so that it spawned its own anime series and several sequels. You get animated anime cutscenes at certain points during the game; they’re quite jarring really when you’ve been levelling up tiny pixelated characters and then suddenly seeing them rounded out and shouting at you, admittedly with some great voice-acting.

The random battles are plentiful and pretty annoying, but you can set the characters to fight automatically. So you can look out the window when you’re playing it on a bus and see some of your surroundings, before going back to the screen and walking a few steps until the next random encounter. You do eventually get a spell to dispel the battles and that helps speed up all the treasure-chest hunting.

The levelling up is kept simple, perhaps to reflect the age of the main protagonist, or perhaps to stop RPG newbies getting confused. However if you’ve played and enjoyed something like Makai Kingdom then Popolocrois might be too simple and monotonous for you.

Tim Empey