The PSP felt made for games you mostly read. You could curl up with it at night, and a page of text looked good on that wide screen. Japanese studios put a lot of visual novels on it, and many of them were ports of games that first came out on PC or a home console.
Some made it to English shelves on the PSP. Others stayed in Japan, and fans translated them so everyone else could play. The result is a list full of murder trials and haunted classrooms, with a couple of romances mixed in for anyone who would rather fall in love than get stabbed. Here are the 8 best PSP visual novels.
8. Clannad (2008)
Clannad comes from Key, the studio that made Kanon and Air. Both of those began as adult games and were toned down for a younger market later. Clannad was made for all ages from day one. The story branches into different scenarios based on how you treat the people around you. At release it was the best-selling PC game in Japan. The PSP port is by PROTOTYPE and shows the game in 16:9.
PSP owners who want anime games on the system keep putting it on their lists. The PSP version never got an official English release. The only English version came out in 2015, for Windows, from Sekai Project. If the name rings a bell, that is probably the anime: Kyoto Animation made two series out of it, and both came out in North America in 2009.
7. Hakuoki: Demon of the Fleeting Blossom (2012)
Hakuoki began on the PS2, and the PSP port was one of the first otome games released in North America. Otome games are romances where you play the heroine and choose which man to fall for. This one is set in Kyoto in the Edo period, around the 1860s. Chizuru Yukimura goes there to search for her father, gets attacked by mad men, and is saved by the Shinsengumi, who mistake her for a boy and take her into custody. Her father turns out to be the doctor behind the Water of Life, an elixir that turns whoever drinks it into a berserker called a Fury.
The story stops at each choice and waits for you. Players name it next to Sweet Fuse whenever someone asks for romance on the PSP. Choose with care. One player quit at a bad ending because "it hit me hard". Studio Deen turned it into an anime in 2010, and two films followed in 2013 and 2014.
6. Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair (2012)
Hajime Hinata is a new student at Hope's Peak Academy, and on his first day the class goes on a field trip to Jabberwock island. Their teacher is a talking rabbit called Usami, who wants the students to have fun and become friends. Then Monokuma appears and begins a new Killing Game. Writer Kazutaka Kodaka wanted a mystery spread over a group of islands and took the idea from the TV show Lost. Anyone who wants to leave the island has to commit a murder and get away with it.
The trials are bigger this time. Rebuttal Showdowns put you in a duel with one student, and Logic Dive is a snowboarding minigame down a tube of logic. It came out on the PSP in Japan in July 2012. NIS America released it worldwide in September 2014, on other systems. PSP owners play it with a fan translation patch. A retelling with a new story route, Danganronpa 2×2, is due on January 14, 2027.
5. Sweet Fuse: At Your Side (2012)
You play Saki Inafune, a high-school girl whose uncle is Keiji Inafune, the legendary video game designer. He is in the game too. Saki spends seven days playing through a string of death games, surrounded by men like a police inspector and a young fortune teller known as the "Oracle of Shinjuku". Most of the time you read and pick what Saki says, and the right answer can earn an affection point with one of them.
When Saki gets angry, the screen shakes and turns red, and you decide whether she holds it in or lets it out. In the Explosive Insight parts you pick up to three highlighted words from her thoughts to solve a problem. Pick wrong and you usually get a bad ending. Aksys Games released it in English in August 2013. Players point visual novel fans to it, often in the same breath as Danganronpa.
4. Corpse Party: Book of Shadows (2011)
Book of Shadows is the sequel, but most of it takes place at the same time as the first game. It picks up from one of that game's wrong endings, where Sachiko sends the Kisaragi Academy students back in time. The story comes in nonlinear chapters that give new backgrounds to the characters the first game barely touched. Ayumi hears an eerie voice and finds a magical tome called the Book of Shadows. The epilogue, Blood Drive, sets up the next game, which came out on the PlayStation Vita.
Critics mostly thought it was weaker than the original. One reviewer criticized the pacing and the length and called it a niche game for a small audience. Players still tell anyone who finished Corpse Party to get this one too, because you get another story to explore. Nobody goes back to a haunted school expecting a nicer day.
3. Steins;Gate (2009)
Steins;Gate is a visual novel by 5pb. and Nitroplus, the second game in the Science Adventure series after Chaos;Head. The team described it as a "hypothetical science ADV". It is a story about time travel, set in Akihabara in 2010. The plot branches depending on how you deal with the people around you. It first came out on the Xbox 360 in Japan in October 2009 and reached the PSP in June 2011.
The PSP version stayed in Japanese. The first official English release was on PC, from JAST USA in March 2014, and fans made an English patch for the PSP version. Players call it one of the best visual novels you can play, and a good first one if you have never tried the genre. It grew into a whole series. White Fox made an anime of it in 2011, and Steins;Gate 0 followed in 2015.
2. Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc (2010)
Danganronpa first came out on the PSP in Japan in November 2010. A class of students is locked in their academy, and the only way out is to murder another student and avoid being identified as the culprit. When a body turns up, you collect evidence and testimony, then argue it out in a class trial. Your evidence becomes Truth Bullets, and you shoot down the lies of your classmates like you are playing a shooter. Between murders, the Daily Life parts work like a dating sim. At the end of each trial you get ranked, with Monokuma Medals for a high rank.
It was a commercial success, and critics praised the cast and the story. Some of them found the class trials too easy. NIS America released it in English in 2014, but not on the PSP. Fans translated the PSP version, and the players who tried it call it one of the most fun games they have had on the system.
1. Corpse Party (2010)
Corpse Party started in 1996 as an RPG Maker game on the PC-9801. Its Windows remake, Blood Covered, added more characters, larger maps, updated graphics and a cast of amateur voice actors. The PSP version, Repeated Fear, came out in Japan on August 12, 2010. Xseed Games and Marvelous Europe released it in English as Corpse Party. A group of friends perform an occult ritual without knowing what it does, and it traps them in an otherworldly elementary school. The vengeful spirits of young children threaten their lives and their sanity.
More players name it than any other visual novel on the PSP. It is the first game they suggest when someone asks for something creepy on the system. Your only hope of getting out is to uncover how the people trapped before you were murdered, and the details are grim. The PSP also got a spin-off, Sweet Sachiko's Hysteric Birthday Bash, in Japan on August 2, 2012. Play it with headphones on.
Which one to play
There you have it, the whole list of the best PSP visual novels. Each one is worth the reading time.
If you have never played a visual novel, start with Danganronpa. If you want to be scared, play Corpse Party first and Book of Shadows after it. For a long story about time travel, pick Steins;Gate. If you like romance, Sweet Fuse is the funny one and Hakuoki is the serious one. And for a hidden pick, try Clannad.
