"The most poetic RPG ever? Touche, salesman..."

The Legend of Heroes: A Tear of Vermillion is a traditional turn-based RPG that plays much similar to the Lunar series. It is actually a remake of the first chronological story of the Gagharv series known in Japan as "The most poetic RPGs ever."

In this adventure, you join the duo of Avin and Mile in their quest across the region of El Phildin to rescue Avin's sister Eimelle and put an end to a clan called "Octum's Apostle" that worships the Dark God Octum and has been spreading an evil influence upon the world.

The graphics and audio in this game are top-notch, and the gameplay solid - as any hardcore Falcom fan would expect. All the 3D environments are rendered and a breathtaking level of detail while featuring some great cinematic weather effects, and the 2D sprites are detailed well enough to fit right in to the 3D world.

Being a part of a trilogy known as "The most poetic RPGs ever" it's no surprise that A Tear of Vermillion is bursting at it's seams with great storyline execution and fantastic character development. The story is quite possibly the most deep and dramatic storyline featured in a handheld RPG, and every character in this game makes themselves memorable with their own quirky personalities and traits. Needless to say, storyline and character development are the strongest points of this title, and it has no problem with enforcing them upon you at each and every point of the game.

The progression is very "cut and pasted". You will visit all kinds of different areas in the region of El Phildin encountering special events (which are conveniently pointed out with red markers) that will grant you whatever type of quests you need to tackle to move forward.

The battle system is fairly simple. You can use normal attacks, special attacks, and a slew of spells to take out any enemies that may come at you... but unless you happen to be religiously avoiding equipment upgrades, this game doesn't really offer much challenge at all. This is made very apparent in boss fights, which are typically underwhelming and resolved way quicker than most true RPG buffs are willing to settle for.

The problem with this title is that it takes more time to showcase it's genius than most would be willing to accept. The game is divided into four long chapters, two of which are spent mostly confirming Avin and Mile's status as an adventurer, and meeting up with all the characters that will be important in the future. It's not until the second half of the game in which the characters met earlier actually begin to portray some definition of their character, the truly amazing parts of the storyline shine, and the adventure picks up to some much-needed dungeon-crawling and boss rushing.

Unfortunate for the US audience, however, the experience will be slightly hindered by a dodgy translation. It's very good at times, and even entertaining at others, but then you're hit with something like "Avin was Fireball mastered!" that's so Japanese you'd wonder if there were even a localization specialist on board the translation crew.

Even with the lack of challenge and dodgy translation, The Legend of Heroes - A Tear of Vermillion is definitely no title to blindly pass on, as even a less-than-stellar translation can't stop this from being an excellent game.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 05/21/07