This is a game that was supposed to come out last year. Just before release, it was suddenly delayed, and at the same time they announced that the game’s genre would change from an Action RPG to a traditional turn-based RPG. I’m not sure of the reason behind this choice, but after that I thought the game would never come. It did end up coming though.

So was it worth the wait, or should it have just been cancelled?

Read on!

Developer: Hit Maker, Nippon Ichi Software
Publisher: NIS America
Date of Release: October 13, 2009
Platforms: DS

Genre: RPG
Players: 1

Looks and sounds
The graphics are anime-inspired. The characters are relatively well designed, though there’s not that many of them. On the map, you only see chibi versions of them, which look just like the non-chibi version which is good. The rest of the time you’ll see portraits of their faces both in combat and in conversations. The levels look really nice, with some parts looking like nice paintings. They all look good and they represent the worlds you are in very well. The enemy design is okay, but there’s nothing really unique about them. And there’s quite a few color swaps as well. Overall the game looks good, no complaint on that end.

Sound-wise, there’s not much to say. There’s cliche attack sounds, and okay sound effects for magic. The music though is pretty nice. Each world has a distinct music style, which represents each area really well and it sounds really nice most of the time. Nothing more to say here.

Story
You play as Lidell, a Witch in training. She hears about a special book that can give immense magical powers. That book is guarded by a powerful vampire. Lidell goes to the castle housing the book, passes by the vampire who is sleeping and takes the book. That releases an evil witch (the Eld Witch) who almost destroyed the world centuries ago, who was stopped by the current Queen, who used powerful sealing magic. Because of that, multiple parts of the worlds are getting attacked by the now released Eld Witch. So It’s Lidell’s job to go and save all the six princesses to get magical stones to be able to seal the Eld Witch once again.

The story is pretty simplistic. Gather a bunch of items and beat the bad guy at the end. It’s standard fair. There’s a bit of humor here added to that. Lidell is wise-cracking, and the rest of the character pretty much all lack any kind of personality.

It’s enjoyable enough, but nothing memorable.

Gameplay
I have one major problem with the whole gameplay: It’s completely touch-screen controlled. Other than the “Ancient” spells, there’s nothing in the game that warrants making the whole thing fully touch-screen controlled. Everything, from navigating menus to walking around to choosing options in fights, it done using the touch screen. None of it should require it, and the touch screen should be an option. Well.. I think I’m done complaining about that. Now let’s move on to the game itself.

The goal is to go through each world in order and saving the princess in each of them. To do so, you must thoroughly explore each world, look for clues and find 3 items. When you find them all, you bring them to old lady Babayaga and she forges a key that opens a gate to the princess’ castle. All of the worlds are essentially big puzzles. Finding everything isn’t exactly easy. NPCs give various hints, or give you quests, which eventually lead to one of the 3 items required for the key. Sometimes the NPCs are a bit weird though, probably bad translation. One in particular said “Bring this flower to my girlfriend”. You assume he gave you the flower, so you go see the girlfriend, and nothing happens. It turns out you have to FIND the flower on the other side of the map and THEN bring it back to her and THEN go back to the guy for your reward. Other than randomly shuffling around the map, there was no way to know that.

In addition to that whole “detective” element, there’s combat. Which is just as simple as an RPG can get. In battle, which is random, you get up to 3 characters. You have to keep Lidell in the team at all times, and you can add 2 dolls to follow you into battle. Dolls are found in the different areas in the game, and each have different stats and magic abilities(on that note, each time you finish a world, you can go back in to find a crystal, which will open up and reveal a doll replica of that world’s princess… they have good stats usually (though they do get overpowered) but they cannot level up). There are only 4 stats: Attack, Magic, Physical defense and Magic defense. They’re all self-explanatory. For each of your characters you can give 1 order each turn: attack, use a spell, use an item, or escape. Lidell has special spells as well. They require 99 MP instead of the usual 8-12, but they deal massive damage to all enemies on screen. Heck, if you level up often enough, you could go through most of the game using only that and none of the enemies would ever give you any trouble. Those attacks are pretty much a one-hit kill against anything other than bosses, mini-bosses, and Death(which appears in certain treasure chests). The only thing here is that you have to draw a symbol on the touch screen to execute the attack. But it lets you retry as much as you want, it’s very lenient on accuracy and gives you TONS of time to do it, so you’ll never miss. When you’re done giving orders, it’s time for the turn to start. First, your characters attack, and then the enemies attack. Each enemy has a certain weakness, and certain resistances, so trying out different spells will enable you to make each battle a lot easier.

If you kill all the enemies, the battle ends, you get item drops and experience, and if you get enough experience Lidell and her dolls might level up. Each doll levels up independently, and all the dolls gain experience with each battle, though less if they’re not in battle. Leveling gives boosts to all stats, as well as HP, and MP when Lidell levels up. Speaking of this, there’s sort of an “MP pool”, so intead of each doll and Lidell having their own MP bar, there’s a collective MP bar, so don’t forget about that. Oh, and full healing when you level up.

One thing I found weird is the big focus on items. Most of the item drops are actually ingredients for items you can get in a store, and there’s a bunch of different items you can get there. But halfway through the game I realized I never even used an item once. They’re pretty useless, and if you need healing, you can either level up or have a doll use curative magic. And using items is weird too. To use an item in battle, you have to take it from your “trunk” and equip it. Then you can use it… It’s weird and confuses me >_>

Overall
It’s a pretty fun game, but it’s incredibly simplistic. I quite like the detective aspect of it, finding clues and solving mysteries before getting to boss fights. Sometimes it’s a bit tough to figure some things out, but that’s the fun of it. I also find that random battles are EITHER too frequent or not frequent enough. Sometimes you’ll play for five minutes without getting one battle, and other times you won’t be able to do a few steps without getting into a battle. It’s a bit weird.

It’s really easy too. If you get stuck trying to find items in a world, you’ll certainly get into a lot of fights and overlevel yourself. You’ll basically be grinding without realizing it. The normal fights are a breeze when you find the enemies’ weaknesses, and can be made even easier by using Ancient spells which will blast you through battles without trouble. That also ends up making the bosses super easy because you’ll be overleveled AND you have those super powerful spells that will take out half their HP.

I also don’t like that it’s fully touch screen controlled when it doesn’t need to be. Developers need to realize that touch screen control should be optional if the game isn’t actually built around it. If it would have let you control normally for all and only used the stylus for Ancient spells, I would have been fine with that.

Pros/Cons
Pros
- Fun and simple
- Okay story
- Looks good

Cons
- Very easy
- Sometimes too cryptic
- Fully touch screen controlled for no reason

The Save Factor
It has a starting price of 30$. The Save Factor on this one would be… 15$. Not bad, but not a must.

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Hello people, I have been finding a lot of Yoko pictures recently so this week will feature some sexy cosplay of her!

Have a nice week!

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Hello people, it’s already this time of the week where you’ll be able to lay your eyes on some of the sexiest cosplay on the net. This week will be some cosplay from the Code Geass anime.  It’s a shame though that I don’t have a Lelouch cosplay though.

~  High-heels = a girl… Right ? ~

That’s it for today,

Don’t forget to post whatever you’d like to see in the future in the comments!

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Hello people, I’m Valkryst and I’ll be introducing a new feature on The Save Points! relating to cosplay.  I’ve browsed the Web over and over again to find the best cosplay there is and my job here will be to bring you the best of the best only. Of course, most of them will be the sexy cosplay type. Every week, I’ll post 5 cosplay pictures following most of the time a specific theme. This week is all about sexy maids. Feel free to post request on any theme you would like to see in the future.

That’s it for tonight! Look forward to next week too!

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