Hey everyone,

I'm thinking about buying a PSP mainly because I know where I can get a good deal on one, and the games are pretty cheap. However, this is the first time I have ever thought about picking up the PSP, so I really don't know a lot about the system. So my question is which games should I pick up for the handheld and which ones should I avoid at all costs? Feel free to list as many games as you want, and tell me why they are great or why they suck. Thanks for the help.

Castlevania Chronicles gets my vote for best PSP game.

Is that a compilation with Rondo of Blood and Symphony of the Night. If it is, that will be high on my list. I loved the Castlevania games on the DS, and I haven't played Symphony yet.

Administrators, if this topic needs to be moved, please do so. Thx.

Metal Gear Solid Portable Ops (Not Portable Ops plus) is defiantly worth getting.

Also, I'd recommend just spending the extra on a Vita, it's backwards compatible with all digital PSP games plus you can get great new games.

Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker, both God of Wars, both Final Fantasy Disidias, actually all the final fantasy games are cool (the final fantasy tactics remake has major slowdown but if you install CFW there is a patch you can install that fixes it - plus you can patch FFT itself to be tougher with new areas, monsters, classes, characters, quests and items), Persona 3, Tactics Ogre, J'eanne D'arc, the aforementioned Castlevania game, both mega man remakes, kingdom hearts birth by sleep, the loco roco and patapon games, gitaroo man, the grand theft auto games, pangaya golf, phantasy star portable, valkryia chronicles 2, I mean good shit there is no shortage of good games for that system.

I'm surprised that it took as much crap from people as it did. It has a pretty damn good lineup and I still use mine daily.

Gotta be honest, I think Castlevania Chronicles on PSP is kinda crap. It's not because Symphony of the Night or anything ... it's because you have to play the very poorly made remake of Rondo of Blood before unlocking anything and it's ... painful. It's not very well done. It keeps all the incredibly frustrating aspects, but doesn't actually fix anything ... it just makes it 3D.

If you're a big CV fan, then I doubt you'd have any issues with all that ... if you're not and all you really want is Symphony of the Night ... you have to pay more than money to get at it.

Lunar Harmony Star is a very good remake.
Patapon, is of course, ludicrously addictive ... but kinda grindy.

I think maybe the best executed games ... even if they're not the best games on the system ... are the God of War games.

In terms of bad games ... well there's plenty of those too

Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles
Mega Man Maverick Hunter X and Mega Man Powered Up
Both the GTA games
MGS games (especially Peace Walker)
Motorstorm Arctic Ridge
God Of War games

Fighting games:
SF Alpha 3 Max
Power Stone Collection
SoulCalibur: Broken Destiny
BlazBlue
Guilty Gear

RPGs:
Anything by Square (Crisis Core, Birth by Sleep, FF Tactics, Disidia, FF IV the complete collection)
All the Persona games
Ys Seven and Oath in Felghana
Disgaea and Disgaea 2
Tales of Eternia
Tactics Ogre
Phantasy Star
Brave Story
Valkyria Chronicles II
Jeanne d'Arc
Star Ocean
Knights in the Nightmare
Lunar

Plus a slew of old PSone titles via PSN. Add to that even more stuff via emulation (everything from NES to Neo Geo and more)

That's a good start. I didn't realize that the PSP had a pretty strong library. How do I get the emulation for the PSP?

Just look up custom firmware and how to install it. The CFW and homebrew scene is kind of dying but there is a recent CFW called ProCFW (I think) that is on version 6.60 and it allows you access to the PSN store (older CFW's don't). I haven't used Pro yet but I have read it's pretty solid. Other CFW's you can try are m33-6 (older one but I've used it for a couple of years now and it runs pretty much everything I've thrown at it) or Gen-A through Gen-D or Prometheus.

You'll probably have to pick yourself up a pandora battery in order to downgrade the currently installed official firmware in order to then upgrade to CFW but I think I have read ProCFW 6.60 allows you to install over the top of the OFW so you may want to look at going that route if you don't want to fuck with downgrading.

If you want to downgrade, there are sites you can buy a premodded pandora battery and memory card with some CFW on it. Or you can make your own if you want.

All the information is out there and pretty easy to find. It's pretty self explanatory, you just need to dig a little to find it. I'm pretty much half retarded and I did it in twenty minutes.

screw modding the psp if all you want via emulation is nes, genesis, and gameboy they are all available on the official firmware now since the psp signing thing came about. its super old now but check out all the signed homebrew that works without even using custom firmware...
http://wololo.net/talk/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1879

I'm going to throw Final Fantasy Tactics - War of the Lions on this list with two big disclaimers.

1. The stock game suffers some pretty serious slowdown during spell/summon/item/special attack animation sequences. Basically anything other than a regular attack there is a major problem. Some say it almost breaks the game, makes it unplayable, etc. I never found it *that* bad but it is noticeable if you compare it to the original game.

There is a patch out there that totally solves the problem so if you play this game, install that patch.

There is another patch that changes the aspect ratio to be more true to the original. The PSP version stretches it to fit the screen so there is some graininess to it. The patch puts the game in 4:3 so you have letter boxes on the side and it's smaller but it's a lot more crisp and clear. I personally didn't give a shit and liked the bigger screen better so I didn't use this patch.

2. There is a patch that really alters the game play. It's something like Final Fantasy Tactics 1.3 insane difficulty. Enemies are smarter, tougher but there are more character classes, alternate sequences, battle arenas, and weapons/spells/items. It really ramps up the fun factor of the game and adds a twist that makes it stand out from the original.

I recommend the 1.3 patch if you played FFT on PS1. If you never have, play FFT straight up on PSP.

Dissidia. Just when I thought there was a fighting game as bad as Shaq-Fu. Oh yeah, I'm going there, in terms of controls and working fighting game mechanics Shaq-Fu is a much better game than Dissidia.

Castlevania Chronicles is best and one of my most favorite..
I recommend to PSP games fans to watch & play..

I didn't realize I missed this thread, thanks for bumping bot!

Anyway I know this is pretty late but I had a PSP until about a year ago when I traded it in. Here's the list of games I had, and for the most part they were all good.

Castlevania Drac X Chronicles
Silent Hill 0rigins
God of War: Chains of Olympus
God of War: Ghost of Sparta
Resistance Retribution
Metal Gear Solid Portable Ops
Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker
Assassin's Creed Bloodlines
GTA Liberty City Stories
GTA Vice City Stories
GTA Chinatown Wars
Splinter Cell Essentials - ONLY if you're a big SC fan.

The only PSP game I didn't get that I would have was The 3rd Birthday, the sequel to Parasite Eve 2. Though I heard it was pretty bad. I also held out for the announced RE PSP game that was eventually cancelled, or as I think happened, became RE Revelations on the 3DS.