LOSTMAGIC Review
At first glance LOSTMAGIC would appear to be an RPG adventure. However, it’s really a real-time strategy game as you don’t do anything between the battles other than read the lines of conversation between characters that serve as the game’s story. Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, those of you searching for a new RPG for their DS can move on while the rest of you intrigued by LOSTMAGIC’s rather unique style of play can read on…
LOSTMAGIC follows the adventures of a young wizard named Isaac with a powerful heritage. Orphaned at an early age, Isaac is taken in by a kindly old lady with a penchant for powerful magic. She serves as Isaac’s tutor until events in the world force him to meet his destiny and confront an evil that threatens the very existence of his world.
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| Draw a rune, cast a spell. |
The battles all play out on the touchscreen. To move your character you click on him and then click on the desired destination. Your attacks are entirely magic-based and the game takes full advantage of the touchscreen when you cast spells. Pressing the left trigger will cause a magic circle to be overlain on the touchscreen. You then use the stylus to trace out “runes”. These runes are various shapes and patterns that each cast a specific spell. As you’re being attacked by the various monsters that are invading your world you’ll need to select the right spell for the situation as some do more damage to certain types of monsters than others, some will affect more than one target, and others are defensive in nature. The speed with which you draw a rune and your accuracy in doing so will affect the power of the spell, which can make the difference between quickly taking out a monster or letting it get close enough to you to start doing damage. Your spells are powered by mana and casting a small number of spells is enough to quickly drain your mana meter leaving you as a pretty useless mage. Luckily the mana bar recharges itself fairly quickly, but you’ll find yourself losing your share of battles because you ran out of mana at a critical moment.
Luckily for you, you won’t have to do all of your fighting on your own. One of your spells allows you to capture monsters to add to your entourage. Once captured you can order you monsters to attack enemy monsters by using the stylus to select both your monsters and the enemies that they should attack next.
LOSTMAGIC’s unique battle system makes for some fun gameplay, but it is a source of frustration as well. First of all, the constant mana shortage is a big problem in a game where everything depends on your magical abilities. The critical magic downtimes happen far too often and are the cause of far too many lost battles. The control of your monsters has its own set of issues. First of all, it a heated battle it can be difficult to tap the right monster. Secondly, you lose that selection after you give an order so if you want to move a monster and then have it attack, you must reselect it after it reaches its destination before you can give it an attack order. And that’s assuming that it actually reaches its destination. Pathfinding is non-existent in the game and monsters will try to make a direct run for their destination regardless of any obstructions in the way. If they hit one they’ll become stuck and then you’ll need to select them again and guide them around the obstruction manually. This is a real problem as the maps are all small enough that you’ll find yourself pretty much in constant battles without the time to spare to babysit your monsters to where they need to be.
