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I don't own a PSP. There's a combination of factors that usually build into whether or not a handheld would be useful for me and one of those is "will I get enough game time on it?" There are games that have looked interesting to me but after seeing the sheer amount of gameplay available in the action RPG Valhallan Knights 2 it definitely skewed me stronger towards considering a PSP.

Valhallan Knights 2 is the first one copublished with Marvelous Entertainment. With a deep story written by Final Fantasy 12 scenario designer Miwa Shoda, it features a number of quests that range from 10-15 minutes of game play to around 2hours, for a total amount of gameplay time of between 70/80 and 135 hours depending on how much you do on the side.

Quests are the important part of the game, unlike the previous one. They advance the story, unlock new characters for your party, and lead you into new zones. The game has sixteen different areas and three towns.

Characters and your team are what propels this game past just being an adventure and monster hunter type game. You make up your own character, what jobs he has - up to a combination of 3 out of 11 classes, what race (there are six additional past human, including dwarves, elves, halflings, canines, akatoki, and machines), and how what he or she looks like. You can also do the same for members of your party.

As characters go up in level they get more nuanced. You can set the behaviors of your teammates using "behavior points" that the character gets as they level up. Basically, behavior points act as priorities for your teammates. A magician character might have his highest priority to use offensive magic, second to be defensive magic, and third to be to use items.

There are no random encounters in the game. Instead, as you manuver through the world, your character acts as sort of a placeholder for the entire team. You can see enemies on your radar map, and better yet, you can see their sight lines - so if you want to avoid them, you can duck and walk around them. You can also see where treasure chests are, though you don't always want to get all of them, as some of them are booby-trapped.

Battles are all in real time. Your teammates act as per their behavior points while you run around and do whatever "your thing" is (depending on class). If you fight new enemies, you might learn more about them.

With a huge game world and length for a handheld, sound by Shojiro Nakaoka of Final Fantasy 7 Advent Children, and very interesting mechanics for computer controlled teammates, Valhallan Knights 2 seems like a must buy for the PSP, and a very strong argument for buying a PSP if you don't have one already.