Considering Sony marketed it with about as much enthusiasm as 1 out of 10 dentists when it comes to toothpaste, the PlayStation Vita was always destined to be a bit of a hidden gem of a handheld. You could say then that basically every game on it, minus, of course, Top Trumps Turbo, which everybody loves, is also a hidden gem. But these are just some of the Vita games that deserve a place in your hearts.
Tales of Hearts R
The excellent Nintendo DS JRPG Tales of Hearts got a wonderful update in 2013 with Tales of Hearts R, and the improvements look and sound beautiful on the PlayStation Vita. Keeping the main story and characters intact, Hearts R added new plot elements, new characters, and also threw in fun stuff like revamped 3D graphics and full voice acting for some Anime cutscenes that look very good on the Vita.
Part of the feverishly extensive Tales series, which gives us heart pain just to try and unravel, Tales of Hearts R was once a great reason to own a PS Vita in the first place, but its recognition has fallen quite a bit in recent years. This does kind of make sense, since the game hasn’t seen an additional release in over a full decade.
An action RPG in the spirit of most of the Tales franchise, Tales of Hearts R has a more dynamic combat system that feels more like a fighting game than a traditional JRPG. It’s easy to pick up, and its story of a young man named Kor helping a mysterious woman named Kohaku has character depth and variety to go along with the decent plot, though it’s not really doing anything new.
There’s something for everyone with Tales of Hearts R, with a unique accessibility to the combat system that makes it a good choice for someone who may want to cut their teeth on this genre. If you’re looking for an approachable RPG to chip away at on your Vita, look no further.
MonsterBag
While some critics felt in 2015 that MonsterBag was a little shallow or a MixedBag beyond its cute graphics and concept, we think the fun of this game far outweighs the fact that it doesn’t take a very long time to finish. Sometimes the best things don’t take long at all. Like KitKats.
Let me know your favourite choccy down below.
Surely one of the most forgotten Sony published games of all time, MonsterBag has weird, adorable monsters populating its world, which sees a monster named V trying to get close to his friend Nia. The problem comes down to Nia being from a world in which monsters are feared and persecuted, rather than here where they all congregate on an island. Discretion becomes invaluable, as MonsterBag is all about getting as close to Nia as possible without being seen. The stealth element to this game dominates the experience, so this isn’t a game for anyone who isn’t particularly fond of being a very sneaky chap. There’s also a heavy emphasis on combining that stealth with some pretty serious puzzling.
While maybe not as challenging as some might hope, there’s something about the experience and the surprising blend of sweet cartoon graphics with violent dark comedy that makes MonsterBag worth playing. It’s just really fun to play for a few hours. Not every game needs to be Hard Corps. Of Hell.
Army Corps of Hell
Imagine what’s basically a goth-as-HELL Pikmin variant, and you’ve got a pretty good idea of what to expect from the underrated Army Corps of Hell. The game received a very mixed reception from critics in 2015, with a lot of attention being focused on the game’s repetition. While those complaints aren’t necessarily wrong about this action strategy game from Square Enix, once you get into a nice flow, you do feel like Robert Smith taking some little plant people around a garden. In hell.
Taking on the role of a Demon Lord who desires to reclaim his throne, players will direct their goblin army to attack and destroy the many enemies that want to derail your train to hellish glory. It sounds like a mix of Overlord the anime and Overlord the game, doesn’t it? No Kurt Russell offspring and Nazis though.
Different units become available to you throughout the game, with further customization options from there. But really, the whole game comes down to managing your angry little army across a variety of landscapes and bashing stuff on the head. It’s good stuff.
The inclusion of the rear touchpad offers a unique challenge of controlling your minions, but yeah there isn’t a lot of depth to gameplay beyond the narrative and gameplay. But if you want to play Pikmin by way of Devil May Cry, which you should because you are alive. Yeah, great fun.
Unit 13
There’s nothing like a slightly awkward, slightly wonky shooter game on a retro handheld is there? Graduating from the Medal of Honor Heroes school of handheld wonk, Unit 13 is definitely one of those underrated Vita games that’s fallen through the cracks in the decade and change since its release in 2012. The story, let’s be clear here, isn’t particularly important, concerning a squad of elite soldiers going up against various terrorist organizations around the world. Don’t mean to get all political here, but terrorism. Not nice.
What makes Unit 13 such a blast, pun intended, is the gameplay and the unique characters available to you. And also it’s just fun to not have think much but shoot much actually. Yes.
Each operative in Unit 13 brings something wholly unique to the table. You’ve got a lunatic with a shotgun, another who emphasizes stealth and sniper tactics, a technician, an infiltrator, and others, while you’re also able to dip in and out first-person and third-person. Each character can be upgraded as you complete the various types of missions, including run-and-gun combat missions, extreme stealth missions, and even missions that arm you with a limited amount of health.
So while Unit 13’s story might not be anything spectacular, the gameplay has ample depth to go along with its great graphics and sound design. There are still a lot of people chasing high scores in this one, looking for every last reward.
Zero Escape: Virtue’s Last Reward
Despite being a sequel, you don’t need to actually play Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, 55 Burgers, 55 Fries to enjoy Zero Escape: Virtue’s Last Reward. The 2nd game in a series of cult hits blending adventure with the visual novel, Virtue’s Last Reward offers an emphasis on character and story, and how much everything you can is a stupid choice. Idiot.
Your choices deeply impact how the story of Zero Escape: Virtue’s Last Reward unfolds. The game is split into two basic parts, and the first part concerns the visual novel side of things. You are one of nine characters kidnapped by a mysterious figure known only as Zero. The visual novel element breaks down as talking to NPCs, learning about them, and making decisions.
Then there’s the “Escape” portion of the game. This occurs when you come to certain rooms, switching to a first-person perspective as you’re now required to use everything possible to escape in one piece. The choices you make and your performance in the Escape sections will lead you to one of 24 possible endings, with the ability to carry over data from a previously finished game.
Also ported to home consoles in the late 2010s, there’s a constantly surprising amount of depth to Zero Escape: Virtue’s Last Reward, which pairs nicely with losing 30 hours of your life. If you really don’t have much going on at the minute or you really need to break in your toilet, Zero Time Dilemma is also well worth checking out.
Severed
Between the unique combat system and sheer bizarreness of the world, Severed can throw you off early on. But there’s a foundation in Severed’s story of a one-armed girl named Sasha embarking on a rescue mission in a twisted hellscape that be pretty gripping.
Playing as a woman named Sasha in the brutal dungeons of Severed, you’ll meet some impressively gruesome monsters. When people talk about exceptional aesthetics in video games, Severed deserves to be in the conversation.
The game also makes excellent use of the Vita’s touchscreen capabilities. It’s not only your primary means of controlling the game, but also your main option for communicating within the game. Severed’s gameplay emphasizes exploration and solving complex puzzles, with combat coming down to swiping the PS Vita touchscreen to use the massive sword Sasha carries around. Different enemies appearing all at once creates increasingly difficult situations, with success in this game coming down to a very different sense of timing than what you normally think of for an action game.
Listen, it is a bit like Fruit Ninja, yes. But the guys behind GuacamMelee also put a lot of thought into how to make this into more than something you last touched on your iPhone 4.
Severed delivers fast-paced, challenging action, and it’s also one of the most graphically beautiful games to ever come to the Vita. The art style here can only be described as singular, and it’s as much a pleasure to take that in as it is to master this game’s slightly difficult learning curve.
UnEpic
You might be tempted to dismiss UnEpic at first glance, but that would be a mistake. Even without the benefit of then-modern graphics, UnEpic has a distinct visual punch in its seemingly simple 2D side scrolling fun.
This Metroidvania-ish release finds you transported from our world to a sprawling, sinister castle and asks the question: “what if Alucard was just a dude?” Filled with all sorts of vicious, dangerous creatures, you’ll need to adapt to your surroundings, learn the value of exploration, and fully embrace the game’s RPG elements to come out alive.
UnEpic is a tension-building game that draws you in with its deceptive simplicity and leaves you with seemingly no choice but to press onward and deeper into this bizarre nightmare world. You’ll have a variety of weapons at your disposal, and the game also puts a lot on being able to craft potions. There’s tons of side quests and interesting NPCs to meet, and you can expect to spend approximately 20 hours getting through most of what this little whipper has to offer.
The longer you play it, the more you appreciate its depth, and the more you see why it’s one of the reasons why we love the PS Vita. Well, the Wii U was actually the first home console it came to. Talk about a rebirth.
Muramasa Rebirth
Originally released to the Wii in 2009, the amazing Muramasa: The Demon Blade got a fantastic port to the PlayStation Vita in 2013 in the form of Muramasa Rebirth.
The action RPG from Vanillaware promised a superior translation, and even if you don’t really care about that, you’re still playing one of the most graphically stunning games the PS Vita ever had. There’s a lushness to this art style that makes you wish it had been utilized on more Vita titles. Realistic is fine, but Muramasa Rebirth proves the Vita could do more.
But the game isn’t just gorgeous graphics. Muramasa Rebirth has accessible gameplay, fun combat mechanics, and the ability to play across two very distinct stories as two very different protagonists. You also get the four additional DLC stories that were originally released for the game. What really makes Muramasa Rebirth stand out however is its attention to weaponry. Blades are the main order of the day, and you’ll be able to collect more than 108 of them before it’s all said and done.
Muramasa Rebirth keeps you busy with its two gameplay modes, offering either a subdued, strategy-based affair, or something where carnage is the main word to keep in mind. No matter which mode you choose, and no matter how you take advantage of the game’s button remapping options, Muramasa Rebirth is a Vita classic that more people should make sure isn’t lost to time.
Lost Dimension
Released in 2014 for both the Vita and PS3, Lost Dimension looks like a fairly typical grid-based strategy RPG at first glance. There are move units, trigger abilities, build up assist attacks, and the like. Then it starts messing with you.
You see, each playthrough secretly assigns a handful of your party members as traitors. Your job is to work out who it is using bits of dialogue, behaviour changes, and a slightly clunky “vision” system that gives partial clues.
When you think you’ve cracked it, you vote—and whoever gets picked is erased. Get it wrong, and you’ve just thrown away a perfectly good teammate while the real traitor keeps working against you. It’s one of the first Among Us type games.
On Vita, it’s a great fit. Missions are broken into short, self-contained chunks, menus are clean and readable on the smaller screen, and the slower, turn-based pacing suits handheld play perfectly. There’s no gimmicky use of the touchscreen or rear pad, but it doesn’t need it — it’s built around pick-up-and-play sessions and just being a fun action RPG.
Reviews landed around the mid-70s, but it’s exactly the kind of odd, ambitious idea that sticks with you. It’s worth checking out because there’s nothing else quite like it on the Vita, and also because it’s the kind of idea we should have more of.
Volume
Volume comes from Mike Bithell, best known for Thomas Was Alone before this—and later John Wick Hex. He also did a couple Tron games, if you want to wipe the stink of Jared Leto off your favourite 80s IP.
Volume is a top-down stealth game that takes liberally from Metal Gear Solid DNA, specifically the VR Missions side of things, stripping everything back to pure systems.
You’re navigating abstract, neon-lit arenas, avoiding guard sightlines, triggering distractions, and gradually unlocking new tools that expand how you approach each level. There’s no combat safety net in the sense that if you get spotted, you’re done like your childhood pet after he suddenly walks off into the woods.
On Vita, it fits almost too well. Short, tightly designed stages make it ideal for handheld play, and the clean visual style makes it super easy to follow on the smaller screen. It doesn’t rely on hardware gimmicks either, just sharp design and fast restarts, though it might’ve been nice to use the touchscreen back of the Vita to knock on walls like in MGS?
Critically, it landed well, but it never quite broke through. That’s a shame, because this is basically the Metal Gear the Vita never officially got, minus hours of cutscenes about the benefits of iPods and instant noodles. If you ever lost hours in VR Missions, this might hit for you on Vita as well.
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