Chronicles combines hidden item, point-n-click, and puzzle games well, but is a little too easy and bland for my taste.

User Rating: 6 | Chronicles of Mystery: Curse of the Ancient Temple DS
The DS has seen many good puzzle games (Professor Layton), hidden-object games, and some decent point-n-click adventures. However, all three types require a good story, nice presentation, and some creative twists to make them stand out. Chronicles of Mystery - Ancient Temple attempts to combine these games into one. While it does the mash-up quite seamlessly, the game still falls a little flat.

I won't spoil the story here, but suffice to say we've seen this plotline before, a few times. As with most games of the puzzle and hidden-object styles, the story is there just to give you a little context and keep you plugging along -- it's not germane to the gameplay. You'll travel from locale to locale, solving a combination of puzzles, hidden object searches, and a bit of traditional adventuring.

The game has nice, hand-drawn visuals, and decent sound (music, basically -- there's no spoken dialog). There's no animation to speak of.

The big problem with this game lies in the difficulty -- All of the puzzles and hidden object searches are not just easy, but there's really nothing to them. You may pick up a crowbar, and *gasp!* use it to remove boards! You may have to read a secret message... by doing exactly what the game tells you -- drag the stylus over the screen until the message appears. The "hidden objects" are not hidden -- they're in plain view of the rooms. The challenge for those lies in identifying some of the odd naming for objects, and their often odd appearance. The game just doesn't do any one of the game styles well.

When you have so many very well done puzzle and adventure games on the DS, a mashup of mediocre games doesn't make a greater whole here, unfortunately. Unless you're hard up for a puzzle game, I'd give this one a miss.