A long time ago, I owned myself a Turbo Duo game system. I don't know where it went to, probably somewhere in storage, but for the longest time I remember playing some great games on it, like Lords of Thunder and Air Zonk. But there's always a place in my heart for Y's, a brand that was put together by the good people at Falcom. The original, Y's Book I & II, was a spellbinding adventure with awesome music (I LOVE the theme song), and Wanderers From Y's wasn't too shabby either, despite its change to a side-scrolling format. Ahh, the old days...

Of course, times have changed, and now we have more modern entries in the Y's brand, although it's still good to see that it's going strong after all these years. Last year, Konami published Y's: The Ark of Napishtim for the PlayStation 2, drawing fans back in with loads of hack n' slash action and spell-usage over the period of a decent-sized quest. Now, the company's released a version for the PSP, and it's mostly the same, although there is some question in regards to the game's overall performance the extras that were supposedly added for longevity.

In the game, you take control of the familiar red-headed hero, Adol Christin, as he embarks across a series of hidden islands (well, obviously not well hidden if he's on them, right?) across Canaan. His quest will involve several new parties and enemies coming into play, which will require the use of magical swords to be found along the way, embodied with elemental powers that give them great strength. A secret's lurking about in Canaan, and Adol is determined to find out the truth about them. The story moves along like you'd expect it to from a Y's game, so enjoy yourself if they're your speed.

The gameplay works with a series of hack n' slash moves, along with the occasional thinking of tactics that come into play with your environmental weapons. This is a nice touch and keeps up with the general pace of the series, although there are a couple of significant flaws that bog down the process. First, there's some parts that require a bit of bothersome backtracking, meaning that the area you just plowed through with monsters will have to be gone back through again.

And then there's the loading time. The loading's pretty constant in this version, moving from area to area, and can be quite tiring for those who simply want to get on with their quest. I counted maybe several long-winded seconds between loads before I found myself just basically finding something else to do between load times, so I could continue on with my 10-plus hour journey.

The journey's a good one, don't get me wrong. The graphics are well represented for the PSP format, utilizing the PSP features for a great 3-D layout and beautiful animation. The sound isn't too shabby either, with the music perfectly carried over from the console version and decent sound effects at hand. (The voice acting's taken a rain check, but it's not the end of the world, as the full text is still provided.)

Konami and Falcom apparently wanted to add some new longevity to the title, so they've added a couple of features, one rather interesting to fans of the series and one, well, not so much. The Y's Media Player allows you to play music and videos that can be unlocked during your quest, and it's a nice touch for those dedicated to the long-running series of games, although there's not nearly enough selections to make this a long-term feature. Also, the mini-games, little face-offs against bosses and other opponents, fail to really reach anything past a couple of hours. They're fun, don't get me wrong, but once you've beaten them, they're hard to turn back to.

I think Y's: The Ark of Napishtim deserved to be a little more epic than what it got here. The game has some great presentation, a solid quest, and the kind of gameplay that's rather easy to get into instead of complicating things with ridiculous spells and powering-up. But with some fixes on the load times and some more amazing extras, it could've been escalated easily to a must-have status. As is, it still delivers, but isn't quite the smooth sailing you'd expect from an Ark.