Since hearing about the release of Tehra dark warrior on the PSP I have been dying to get my hands on this game, and it has not disappointed.

You play as Tehra a creature half human half Urka’h created by both human and Urka’h to keep peace between the two race’s after centuries of war between one and other. After many years of peace there has been an attack on the humans which threatens to break the peace treaty and cause war to ravage the land of Sistar once more. Your job is to find out who caused the attack on the humans and put an end to them before war breaks out across Sistar once more.

The gameplay is your basic hack and slash adventure where you find yourself facing multiple types of enemies from Orcs, skeletons, knight and mages. Unfortunately like many other games of this genre, they tend to get a little repetitive after a while and Tehra dark warrior is no different. With constantly being given the same tasks over and over you can get bored after only a few chapters; however, stormBasic has been nice enough to include a challenge mode to break up the repetitiveness of killing enemies over and over in story mode with yes, you guessed it, killing more enemies. Actually the challenge mode is pretty cool with different challenges such as survival mode where your aim is to take out as many enemies as possible before you die, while the enemies get progressively tougher. Another challenge is to survive for a set amount of time while your health gradually decreases due to being poisoned. The only complaint I have about the challenge mode is they are too easy and too few with around five different challenges you can probably complete it in less then an hour.

Graphics wise, the game looks amazing and you would be hard pressed to tell that it’s a mini and not a full priced PSP title, and with some nice effect included such as blood spatter on the screen when attacking enemies you can see a lot of hard work went in on the visuals. The controls are responsive and fit perfectly with the game. I would have loved to be able to rotate the camera or zoom in and out, as some points you do find that your view is obscured by an obstacle or the camera is zoomed way to far in.

However I know a lot of you will want to know is it as good as God of War? Unfortunately the answer is no but that does not mean it’s a bad game for around $5. It’s great value for the money you spend. There are a few flaws with the stages being to short and having constant load times between each area but the game is less then 100MB in size compared to God of War which is over 1gig.

I did enjoy the ability to upgrade or learn new abilities with money you find through the game much like in God of War. To use each ability you need to collect mana through out the game either from killing enemies or finding mana potions in chests. One of Tehra’s abilities is to be able to transform into her Urka’h form which makes her more powerful and receive less damage from attacks. Although I would have liked to be able to transform back to my normal form rather then wait for my mana to run out which feels like a waste especially once you have killed every bad guy around and still have half your mana bar still full.

So, if you want to satisfuy your thirst for a good hack ‘n’ slash game, you should purchase Tehra Dark Warrior. With its visually stunning graphics and a story mode with three levels of difficulty, you also have a challehge mode to play.

Overall 8/10