Originally released on the Gameboy Advance platform, Yggdra Union came back with a fresh coat of paint and plenty of new additions for the PSP late last year.  For many people this was their first glimpse at the popular card-based tactical RPG, and for others it was a fresh view of an old favorite.

          For me, it was my first experience with Yggdra Union and I had a few things to learn.  First of which was the battle and movement system.  Just like many other tactical RPG's, your movements are limited to the open squares not blocked by an opponent or obstruction.  You are allowed to draw a card from your pile that was chosen prior to the engagement and move one or more characters the number of spaces written on the card.

          Once you move alongside an opponent, you may either engage in battle or move opponents closer to you to help form 'unions'.  The union possibilities are determined by the sex of the character.  A female character can form a union with anyone in an adjacent square in the form of a '+' up to two spaces either direction, while a male character's union is an 'X' shape.

          By selecting the battle function, the screen will highlight the squares that are available for joining into the union.  This is a definite help when choosing your unions.  The character who is starting the battle, becomes the 'Head'....or in my thought process the leader of the squad.  There are statistics on each card that are affected by the head, what the head's weapon is, landscape, and time of day.

          You have to also choose your character wisely as there are 3 main weapons classes with strengths over another.  Utilizing a basic 'paper, rock, scissor' forumula; sword is strong against axe, axe is strong against spear, and spear is strong against sword.  The two other classes are ranged weapons and magic, and they can pounce all over the other classes if they're not overly weak.  Unfortunately I found my ranged weapons and magic class were too overly weak to be of any great use.

          It seems a little confusing at first, but in all reality the stats tend to blur towards the middle of the game.  One thing that really bothered me, was that the classes, cards, and characters are ALL overly imbalanced.  Instead of using specific cards for a specific region, or different characters to weaken the enemy you begin to rely heavily on a few chosen cards and one or two characters to get you through the game.  Since you are limited to a set number of cards and characters, depending on the map, you tend to find your favorites and stick with them.  Your favorites will level up high, and the weak ones will fall to the back of the pack most likely never to be played.

          One card in particular called Gravity Chaos is almost too powerful.  It was the one card in the whole game that I absolutely could not live without!  If they had removed it from my pile I would have been stuck, or given up.

          The artwork is great, and the game play is really spot on.  There's a few spots of frustration, however you can retry the level and they automatically turn the difficulty down a tiny notch.  How much is never said, but after losing the third time or so you can notice the difference.

          I really enjoyed the music in this game, and was lucky enough to get the music soundtrack bonus for pre-ordering the game.  I am a real RPG music geek at times, so it's been a real treat.  The CD has a tremendous number of songs on it, so it is a significant bonus indeed.  What I didn't particularly enjoy was the dialog.  It was almost annoyingly see through at certain points of the game.

          Overall the experience was great.  I packed in 40 hours of game play very quickly.  After you beat the game a few special perks unlock such as hard difficulty, and insane speed mode (where were you earlier!).  I found about 80% of the cards during my first play through so there are plenty to try and collect for the completists out there.

          If you enjoy tactical RPG's mixed with card based movements, this is an excellent game and without a doubt beats most of it's competition in the same genre. Just don't expect an overly deep story or dialog and sit back and enjoy the great visuals packed with beautiful music.