Lost Magic Review (DS)

Lost Magic for the Nintendo DS is one of the most original and innovative game concepts to hit videogames in a long while, too bad the execution of the concept falls well short of being a truly quality gaming experience.

Story
You play as Isaac, a fledgling wizard who is thrown into the forefront of the fight against an evil sorcerer. The story begins quite typically and as it continues, it becomes more clichéd. The cookie-cutter characters don't help support the weak story, which doesn't develop well enough to keep anyone interested.

Gameplay

As I mentioned earlier, LM is a very original concept. In reality, it's a combination of many game genres including: Real-time Strategy, RPG, and even Pokemon style monster-raising. Sounds great doesn't it? While all these elements blended into one game is certainly appealing in theory, the game's mechanics tear down a lot of what makes the game fun.

As Isaac, you cast spells by drawing symbols or "runes" on the DS touch screen. Casting spells is easy and is the most fun part of the game. The more accurate you draw the rune, the more powerful the spell will be. The feeling of blasting a foe with a perfect fireball is very cool and satisfying. The game is very forgiving in the way it recognizes the spell runes, so casting spells is very responsive and feels natural.

Isaac will learn more spells as he goes along and also gains the ability to cast two runes at once to combine their magic. Combining runes gives the player tons of new spells, which offers a wide variety of play styles and approaches to each battle. The system of combining runes is almost useless as the spells that are created are not powerful enough to compensate for the magic power required to cast them. I also found it very hard to remember what all the combinations of runes did. Combined with the heat of battle and the significant casting times make these spells not worth your time.

The biggest element of the game is commanding your monsters that you have captured in previous battles, making each mission a RTS style campaign. This is where the game's flaws really stand out. In the heat of battle, it is very hard to select units, both groups and individuals. This problem wouldn't be so bad if you didn't have to select your units every time you want them to do something. Units don't stay selected, after you issue a command, you are forced to select your unit(s) again in order to make even the slightest adjustment, which you will have to do a lot to play effectively. When you tell units to go somewhere, the units will try to travel in a straight path to the target. The smallest of rocks will stop your units in their tracks.

This path-finding or lack there of, combined with the selecting problem, makes for a cumbersome experience. If all this wasn't enough, each mission is timed which makes the difficulty almost too hard to bear. On most missions, you only have three minutes to accomplish the objective, which is usually to eliminate all the 25 enemies on the map with your six monsters. A lot of your success is dependant on the player constantly casting spells. You really just use your monsters to block the enemies so you can cast spells without being pummeled by the opposition. In the end, the game experience is a frustrating ride that ultimately boils down to trial and error in order to conquer each mission.

Graphics

This game is an eyesore. Sure, the graphics definitely are not the most important factor, but you can't ignore the pure repulsiveness of the games looks. They look like bad GBA graphics, the maps and monsters look simply horrible. If it weren't for the beautiful backgrounds and cool character designs designed by Yoshiharu Sato of Studio Ghibli fame, I would have given the graphics an even lower score.

Music and Sound

Variety is hard to come by in the music and sound department. While the music is above average, you end up hearing the same scores a lot, and only the opening theme really got me humming while I was not playing the game. The sound is very basic, and is also lacking in variety, most notably when any monster attacks, the game has a simple "wap" sound that gets old quick.

Replay Value

The game offers a versus mode and online wi-fi connectivity where rival wizards can do battle with their own characters or generated ones. The multiplayer is really cool, because you're facing another wizard which faces the same obstacles as you in the difficulty of commanding their respective monsters. If you don't have wi-fi, then you have to find someone who knows what they are doing in order to have any fun playing with them, which may be a tall order since they may not want to suffer through the single-player to familiarize themselves with the gameplay. The single player also offers two different paths and the obvious draw of catching all the monsters. Again, most of us will pass before reaching the end of the game anyway.

Closing Comments
If you are looking for something new and think you and your friends will be battling with each other, then give it a try and see if you can look past the game's flaws. Everyone else, just pass on it.