Just started playing Brave Story: New Traveler for the PSP. I believe this one game is based on the movie by GONZO and a series of Japanese novels or was it one novel? Aww... who cares! It's nice to see a standard 
Graphics
I'll start with the graphics. Everything is rendered in 3D from the characters, to the towns,
dungeons and overworld map. While not being particularly impressive, the graphics do
look nice enough (especially considering that this is a handheld) and looks almost as good as FFX
for the PS2. So far, I've seen quite a few palette swapped sprites of the main characters
themselves which I think was a bad idea because it takes a lot out of their individuality.
Gameplay/Story (I find it hard to separate the gameplay from the story in this game)
For the gameplay, this is the part that veteran console rpg'ers will absolutely eat-up. Why? RPG
Clichés galore!
You start the game as a normal boy named Tatsuya (or whatever you named him) who is (by no
coincidence) totally engrossed in playing with his psp, much to the dismay of his female friend
Miki whom he has promised to accompany whilst walking her dog (Aww! Ain't that sweet?)
Ok, let's fast-forward a bit. Hero-kid's little Miki falls into a coma of some kind and by some
twist of fate, he is sucked into the world of Vision where all travelers may have one wish upon
meeting with the goddess; but in order to meet said goddess, the traveler must embark on a
journey all over the rpg-tastic world of Vision exploring towns and dungeons, searching for some
kinda gems because the goddess dropped her precious jewelry all over Vision (ok, I made some of
that up, but you get the general idea.)
Beep! Beep! "#3. Thinking With The Wrong Head (Hiro Rule)" Check! Hero sees helpless loli-neko-girl
armed with a bow being ganged up on by a group of wolves. Naturally, he jumps in despite never having held a real sword before.
Beep1! Beep! "#14 Garrett's Principle" Check! You are actually encouraged to barge into every open household and search the premises for any jars that might contain treasure. Yuno (aka loli catgirl) even has a treasure sensor ability that detects how many treasures you still haven't taken from a particular village or dungeon.
Well, I guess I'll stop there with the clichés here lest this review gets too spoilery. Let's talk about the gameplay a bit. There are random battles galore in this game, I'd say about the same frequency as FFIX for the psone. The battle system is nothing any gamer hasn't seen before. Turn-based with HP/BP indicators for each of the three characters in your party. BP (not blood pressure) is like the MP of this game which allows you to perform special moves and the kinda innovative (if you haven't seen this in Suikoden before) unity attacks which are team techniques which can be performed by two or more team members with varying effects like stat boosting or just doing massive damage to the enemy. The good thing is that you can recover BP by simply using normal physical attacks so that means you'll hardly find yourself in a game-over situation with no BP, no item while deep inside a high-level dungeon.
Almost all enemies have this "crazed" form where they transform into an uber version of themselves which can be triggered in different ways depending on the type of enemy.
On the field, there's this crafting system which is basically allows you to make accessories as long as you have the "diagram" and the raw materials required by that diagram (ho! hum! been there seen that.) Oh yah, some diagrams are only available through sidequests. Right now, I'm only up to chapter six but there are already multiple sidequests available this early in the game.
There's also a goldfinch brawling mini-game which has multiplayer functions that I haven't tried yet. Goldfinches are the mascot characters of Brave Story. They're small, cute and fat birds of varying colors that you can catch in habitats scattered througout the game. You can then pit your goldfinches against that of the goldfinch brawlers within the dungeons of Vision in order to get a "goldfinch feather" ... unfortunately, I seem to be in the early parts of the game so I'm not sure what good collecting goldfinch feathers are.
Sound
Pretty good actually. The bgm are nice and catchy, though not too flashy nor memorable (kinda reminds me of Wild Arms... same publisher maybe? Too lazy to check.) There's voice-acting in some special cutscenes and of course, in battle. You can even choose between the Japanese or English voice-overs.
Minor Complaints
-The difficulty level is a bit on the easy side
-Colors are a bit washed out
-Animations are good but could be smoother (I'm spoiled by FF VII: Crisis Core)
-Too many random battles
-Palette Swapped Main characters is a nono!
Over-all
Brave Story certainly isn't the best rpg of its kind, but it is a good, solid console-style rpg that uses old-school rpg elements with an easy to moderate difficulty level and charming, though kinda trite story. This one is an excellent must-have title and perhaps the first true console rpg(numerous ports aside) for PSP owners.
