Egg Monster Heroes Hands-On

TOKYO--At Nintendo's press event yesterday, Square Enix showed off a new playable version of Egg Monster Hero (Egg Monster Heroes in the US) for the Nintendo DS, which was first unveiled at E3 earlier this year. While the game's setting and characters are drawn from the Hanjuku Hero strategy series that has only been released in Japan, the game plays more like a traditional console RPG.

In Egg Monster Heroes, you'll take the role of the series' main character, the young but dense Lord of the Almamoon Kingdom. While the Lord has the power to summon powerful monsters out of a magical egg, he is usually found slacking off, since the world is at peace and there's nothing to do. Because the young Lord's stupidity is continuing to accelerate, Sebastian, his minister and educator, takes him to an island to train him back into shape. But unbeknownst to the Lord and his tutor, trouble is heading their way.

The demo allowed us to control the young Lord around a colorful field map, and it let us go into battles when we ran into enemy soldiers that were lurking around. When you're on the field in Egg Monster Heroes, the game only uses the top screen, and you move around with the directional pad and buttons like in traditional games. The bottom screen features an audience that reacts when the main character does things like open a treasure chest.

In battle, you'll be using the stylus instead of the DS's buttons. The top screen will display your characters in combat, while the bottom screen will show a map of the battle stage. You'll be controlling your army on the bottom screen's map by using the stylus to drag your army around, banging them into the enemies and positioning them in strategically advantageous ways.

By tapping on a treasure chest icon located at the top of the battle-area map, you can summon "egg monsters" that will fight in your place. The egg monster battle is, again, a very different system. So instead of giving orders, you tap on different body parts of your monster, and then you tap on a body part of the enemy's monster to effectively damage him or her where it'll hurt the most.

Egg Monster Heroes' release date is currently unknown, but Nintendo has confirmed that the title is slated for a US release.