Falcom Japan has long been famous for its quality PC titles such as their super fast paced action RPG “Ys” and the more story oriented “Eiyuu Densetsu (Legend of Heroes)” series. Recently, many of these PC titles have been ported over to the PSP format and the latest one is “Legend of Heroes VI: Sora no Kiseki FC (First Chapter)”. While the game itself doesn’t come in an extravagant packaging as the original PC version, Falcom seems to have made a good job of moving it over to the handheld and added a few extra things.


The PSP port features a few more
extras than just a new logo and title screen.
Our story takes place in Liberl Kingdom and begins in a small peaceful town known as Rolent. There, little Estelle is sitting in a warm, comfortable looking home waiting for her dad to come home. The Bracer’s Guild had phoned telling her that he would be back from his long journey for the evening but he’s late. Just as Estelle looks out the window pondering where her father Cassius could be, her father comes through the door holding a surprise in his arms. It was a badly wounded little boy who was around the same age as Estelle.


After fixing him up in a bed, the curious Estelle asks who the little boy was going as far as thinking her father’s cheated on her mother. The boy suddenly wakes up and to Estelle’s surprise, he shouts at Cassius as if there was some feud between them, threatening to fight back. Estelle manages to quieten the little boy down with her stern manner and violently jumping on the bed.


Little Estelle accuses her daddy of having an affair.

After the same beautiful opening seen in the PC version, years have passed and our mysterious little boy Joshua and Estelle have grown up. It seems they’ve been training to join the Bracer’s Guild, a guild established to maintain peace around the kingdom by helping eliminate monsters and other miscellaneous tasks. Today was the big test with their tutor, Scherazard before they became official associate members of the guild. This is where you go through a tutorial of the game’s workings and the epic story begins as the Liberl Kingdom becomes the centre of chaos and betrayal takes place.

Battles in the game are turn based as with all RPGs but you can actually see the enemy this time instead of random encounters. Also, by running into an enemy, from the back you can earn yourself a pre-emptive advantage at the start of a battle, allowing you to have a free attack first.

Once battles are initiated, a bar at the side of the screen gives you an idea of who will be attacking next. This helps you effectively kill off any enemies that maybe of threat to you or delay any high damage spells. You also see that certain turns have certain bonuses attached such as a temporary boost to your STR stat. Characters move about on a square grid and apart from the attack command, you can also cast magic (known as “Arts”) which use up Energy Points (EP) and use items. Everytime you attack an enemy, you accumulate some CP (“Craft Points”) and these can be used to execute special attacks. Once you’ve fully accumulated a full 100 CP you can unleash a character’s “S Break” by hitting the fiery red button next to their portrait and this can be executed anytime without having to wait your turn. All pretty straight forward so far.