Silent Hill: Book of Memories (PS Vita) Review

RPG Elements
In addition to being a hack and slash game, Book of Memories also offers a deep RPG customization. To make your character stronger, you will have to level them up and gain experience points by killing enemies. Once you level up, you will then go through a series of stat boosting page where you can increase their strength, vitality, intelligence and many more. Just like with other action RPGs, it’s best to lean towards the build you have. You can specialize in melee, guns or swords. Also, money that you get from drops from the enemies and loot from environment will play an important role. For every zone, find the mailman who opened his shop and from there, you can buy items, artifacts that boost your stats and weapons in case the weapons you have breaks. Just remember, money will be hard to get in Book of Memories and it’s important to spend it wisely.

Four Player Co-Op
One of the exciting aspects of Book of Memories is the ability to play the game with up to four people. Since zones tends to get harder as you go deeper into the game, it’s only a matter of time until you dig in and find other people to play with. Luckily, Book of Memories has an online multiplayer which allows up to four people to jump in and go through zones. While it’s fun and makes the game easier to play with other people, the zones that you play in single player will be different to the online ones. The weapons and levels managed to carry over, but there are things that you can’t do in the multiplayer mode that you can when playing alone.

NOT

Bland Level Designs
Though the game looks decent for a handheld game, Book of Memories suffers from its bland visuals and environments. Without a map, it’s so easy to lose track of where you are at as every room looks similar and with a lot of them scattered in every zone, it’s very hard to differentiate between them. With the map displayed at the bottom, it will help you go through the zones and noting what rooms you’ve gone through. Textures are decent, but expect to be somewhat disappoint in its level design. Luckily, to make it refreshing once in a while, the theme of the rooms that you go through will change.

Few Flaws in Multiplayer
While it’s fun to jump in and play with friends online, there are flaws that you should be concerned about. Whenever you are playing with more than two people and flocking on one enemy at the same time, expect to be confused as it’s hard to determine which of the four characters you are controlling. The characters that join your game will have no markers indicating who’s who, though on the left hand screen the people you are playing with are shown with their health. The lack of markers for characters playing with you can get confusing at times, but you will see them in the map whenever you lose sight of them.

Loading times are long
Even though the game is stored on the memory card, another problem that I’ve found in Book of Memories is the long load times. Whenever you start a new zone, or booting up the game, the load times will be long and it can get annoying. Loading from one zone to another can last up to a minute, though it can be less at certain times. Since we’re playing the game digitally, we don’t know how it fairs up with the retail version.

Repetitive Nature
As with all hack and slash games, the repetitive nature will be present and those who have a low tolerance for these kind of games should stay away. As mentioned earlier, Book of Memories is a hack and slash game and from beginning to end, you will be slashing enemies nonstop. Depending on what’s fun for you, you will either love or hate the game due to its repetitive nature. Personally, I find the game to be addicting due to the fact that I want to get the best weapon and the only way to do that is to play through zones and level up along the way.

VERDICT

Gamers who own a PlayStation Vita should give Book of Memories a try as it’s a decent game on the handheld. Though it can get repetitive at times and the environments can get bland and dull, the deep RPG customization and the objective to get the best weapon will be one of the reasons you will be playing the game. Despite ditching the survival horror genre, Book of Memories still managed to retain some of the good things about the series and incorporate it to this game to make it stand out. As everyone patiently waits for Sony’s Warrior’s Lair, why not try Book of Memories? Not only you will enjoy its solid hack and slash game, it will also give you the Silent Hill flavor as well.

[Editor’s Note: Silent Hill: Book of Memories was reviewed on the PlayStation Vita platform. The game was provided to us by the publisher for review purposes.]