Old school RPGs are making a comeback in the gaming world and most of those have been on the PlayStation Vita as of recent. Though they don’t always stay there much like how PC games find their way to the PlayStation consoles. Such is the way with the newly released RPG Mind Zero for Vita making its way to PC. I’m no stranger to ports but let’s just say that not all ports make the voyage intact with Mind Zero as a more recent example despite having a rather interesting storyline.
The story follows Kei whose life is drastically altered as he finds himself attacked by a crazed man and teleported to a weird weapons shop ran by a woman called the Undertaker. Nothing like being told if you don’t pick a weapon you can never leave the shop or if pick the wrong and you die. Great talk lady. There are more to these weapons than Kei first realizes as by choosing the right weapon also binds the user into a contract with a being known as MINDs.
MINDs are violent and aggressive beings that live in a place called the Inner Realm that is just outside of most human’s sight in the Outer Realm. Every MIND inhabiting the Inner Realm has their counterpart in the real world that they bond with when they choose the weapon that pretty much fits who they are as a person. There is two sides to every story though so anyone who can’t see MINDs, including sections of the government, chalk it up to seemingly normal people getting mixed up with a very dangerous drug conveniently enough called MIND.
Gameplay is broken down into three areas, conversation, town and dungeon which you cycle through very similar to titles like Persona and Demon Gaze. Conversation segments drive the narrative also acting as areas for investigation when on a case. The nice thing about Mind Zero is that dialog is completely spoken in either your choice of English or Japanese with English subtitles. The words don’t match up to what is spoken all the time but for the most part the vocal performances are pretty good.
The town segment is where you pick up cases from the Ogata Detective Agency as well as pick up items before you head into battle in the Dungeon segments. Dungeons are the real meat of the game takes place as Kei and friends try to solve the mysteries of what is going on with the rash of attacks in the Outer Realm while their government and others try to track them down. Players will traverse grid-based dungeons in first person view (not unlike Demon Gaze) making their way to a critical area that progresses the story. Along the way you will encounter events or randomly will get sucked into battle where you engage in turn-based combat.
The interesting different from other similar titles like Mind Zero is that each fighter in your party has a second fighter with them in the form of your MINDs. Combat itself is your standard turn based fair though when you activate your MIND, you don’t take physical damage as your MP takes the hit instead. This adds a bit of a challenge to the game though as your MP also drains when your MIND has been activated. If your MP is drained to zero while your MIND is active, you take a potentially fatal hit where that party member is knocked out for a full turn and your MIND can be used again for two complete turns.
The most challenging thing about Mind Zero though is actually trying to play the game itself. I know that seems like an odd statement as the game is actually playable, but this port suffers from critical issues. For starters I had to press about every button on my keyboard to figure out what the Start Button was (M by the way) just so I could go into the settings to figure out the rest of the controls. You can get through the menus only so far with the mouse as well without knowing the keyboard inputs as well.
The truly frustrating part though is that the developers did absolutely nothing to change the fact that Mind Zero was designed to be played with a controller including UI prompts at every turn telling you to hit “Select” or any of the “ABXY” gamepad controls. Oh, and the best part is that I tried four different controllers as partial controller support is listed and not one of them worked. So, if you want to play this game you’re stuck with the keyboard and sometimes the mouse to play as the User input features are broken.
Graphically Mind Zero looks pretty decent so long as you don’t but the game into full screen mode as the images get pixelated. Since the game was designed to play on the Vita’s smaller OLED screen its best to run it on its default windowed form. It will also save you from having to crash the game to exit it in full screen as there is no option in the game to do so which is another issue with the Vita centric controls that where not considered during the port. I actually do like the light and dark visual elements of the game and the still character art is really clean for the most part.
The battle character models are a little rough but do serve their purpose well with decent attack animations so there are some redeeming qualities to be found in Mind Zero. On the downside I ran into issues where my HUD would load but nothing else multiple times. I could hear my character trying to move around but the actual visuals were missing. This usually only happened when I would load up my game to continue playing so it could be just isolated to that.
Mind Zero is the second PC port of a Vita game that I’ve played recently, and I do actually enjoy when console/handheld titles make it to the PC. The story of Mind Zero and the characters are interesting, but the poor execution of the port killed a lot of the overall enjoyment that I could of have with the game. I’d have a hard time recommending Mind Zero for PC knowing that a superior version exists on the Vita, but if they manage to fix the controls as well as a few other issues then Mind Zero might actually do well.
