During an interview with gaming site Siliconera, company Mastiff LLC expressed mix emotions when it comes to their upcoming RPG title, Gurumin: A Monstrous Adventure. While the game is enjoying some relative success in Japan since it's release back in summer, Mastiff knows well that U.S. PSP players are rather different.

"It looks like the PSP’s is more marketed to people who want to pick up SOCOM and tweaked versions of Grand Theft Auto. Sony itself has been reluctant to publish any RPGs for the system," laments the company.

Despite their reservations, a tremendous amount of effort was still put in the localization of the game. "Gurumin on the PSP not only features tons of extra content that wasn’t available on the PC, like new costumes and a boss rush mode, but the controls have been polished for the PSP version," shares Mastiff.

Aside from that, the biggest problem encountered by the San Francisco-based developer is the local humor and puns entwined with the plot of the game. It is a given fact that certain aspects of our realities are not shared universally. "All a good localizer needs to do is provide enough context clues so the audience knows what is and isn’t expected if it’s not obvious or culturally shared and then pretty much everyone can enjoy the same thing," explains Mastiff.

Furthermore, while being a story-driven RPG, Mastiff invites everyone to feel free to deviate from the plot and "choose where they want to go." Apparently, the game has a lot of secret dungeons that are home to various evil Phantoms and fun mini-games.

Mastiff reveals that "There are a ton of extras, like three additional difficulty levels, a boss rush mode, and 19 collectible costumes, including some holiday-themed ones! There are also two completely different endings and a few ‘hidden’ stages."

Finally, the company spoke of adding some "spunk" into the weapon drill carried by the cute main character Parin. "From the beginning, the player can perform many different combo attacks, launch enemies into the air, and even perform a charge attack to destroy enemy armor and equipment. As you level up your drill by fighting and destroying the environment, your drill becomes stronger and you gain access to powerful special moves."

Wow! With all those improvements and a power house voice cast, we wonder why Mastiff is still having some doubts. We guess we will all just have to see once Gurumin is released here on February 13, 2007.