The GameCube is long overdue for a role-playing game of some sort. Because of this, Lost Kingdoms deserves more attention than it might have garnered otherwise. The first RPG for Nintendo's newest system, Lost Kingdoms is an original game that features fast-paced real-time tactical battles and not much in the way of traditional role-playing elements. It's also quite short and doesn't look or sound particularly good. You can tell that most of the effort went into the combat system.

Lost Kingdoms is the first RPG released for the GameCube.

Throughout the game, you play as Katia, the young princess of a nation that is thrown into chaos when an evil black fog drifts in. Katia has the power to control runestones, which grant her the ability to summon various creatures to fight for her. When her castle becomes enveloped in the fog, Katia sets off to seek the other runestones throughout the land, and with them she hopes to save her nation and hopefully find her missing father, the king, in the process. The plot doesn't weigh very heavily in Lost Kingdoms--you'll occasionally be reminded of what's going on either through simple real-time cutscenes or from dialogue with some of the game's characters. The story is really just an excuse to send Katia to a variety of locations throughout the land, taking on dozens of different monsters with her unique fighting style. The monsters she will fight, for the most part, are just like the ones she can summon to her own aid.

The action-packed, real-time combat system in Lost Kingdoms has elements of collectible card games, such as Magic: The Gathering and even a hint of Pokémon. Katia literally uses cards to fight. There are 100 different cards in the game, each depicting a fantasy creature of some sort, mostly Dungeons & Dragons-style standards such as orcs, lizardmen, mind flayers, red dragons, banshees, manticores, sirens, and more. In battle, Katia is randomly dealt four of these cards at a time, and she can carry up to 30 into one of the game's levels. Cards can be one of three basic types: weapon cards, summon cards, and independent cards. Weapon cards momentarily summon the depicted creature to execute a single strike. The creature will suddenly attack and then vanish as quickly as it appeared, though most weapon cards can be used a couple of times before they're spent. Summon cards are more-elaborate one-shot deals through which Katia is momentarily replaced by the summoned creature, which executes one powerful attack and then goes away. Finally, independent cards summon a creature that fights alongside Katia till it is defeated or till the duration of the spell runs out.

Actually, it's more of a tactical action game than a true RPG.

Cards can have one of four elemental properties, making them particularly effective (or ineffective) against creatures with opposing properties. And cards require a certain number of magic stones to be used, of which you have a very limited supply--if you don't have enough, then casting cards will cause damage to Katia. Additional magic stones can be gained only from hitting opponents, and since you have only a limited number of cards available, the combat in Lost Kingdoms basically boils down to making every single shot count. This makes for some pretty interesting and tension-filled fights, and since there are dozens of different cards you can find and use, there's a good amount of variety here as well.

The whole game is viewed from an isometric vantage point. You can easily zoom in and out and rotate the view 90 degrees at a time. You probably won't have time to do this during battle, though, because fights in Lost Kingdoms are surprisingly fast-paced. You'll constantly be running around the battlefield, trying to avoid taking damage from your enemies all while grabbing any magic stones you can get your hands on. You'll learn how each card works only through experimentation and practice. Though the game provides plenty of descriptive information on each one, it really comes down to testing out all your cards and deciding which ones you like best. You'll find that getting some of the cards' attacks to hit properly really isn't easy, what with their vastly different ranges and recovery times. Nevertheless, the card system is quite well-balanced and entertaining to use, though independent creatures generally aren't quite as effective as the weapon and summon creatures are. But toward the end of the game, you'll still have figured out plenty of viable options for an effective deck.