Interesting premise and some good ideas, but bland combat and linear gameplay made this one a little too dull.
You are a young man that lives on a planet where space travel is forbidden. Through a fortunate (and bizarre) turn of events, you end up as captain of your own fleet, trying to take down an evil leader, and discover the meaning of a mystical artifact left to you by your father.
The game's RPG elements come in the form of your fleet -- you will build up a fleet by buying plans for new ships, having them built, then building them up over time to make them more powerful. You earn money by solving quests, and you can hire crew members to perform tasks within your fleet to improve how you'll fare in battle.
Visiting planets is really nothing to note -- you don't explore planets, you merely visit their shops, get your ship repaired, buy new ships, hire crew members, and start/end quests. This sounds like a lot, but there's no movement on planets -- you just navigate fixed menus to choose to hire, buy, repair, etc. There is no walking around or exploring.
Space travel is linear -- you choose a destination planet, then fly in a straight line, possibly encountering a random battle.
Space battles, the focus of the game are also rather limited. You move your fleet to and fro in real time within a completely linear battlefield (that's right -- all battlefields are a straight line. This isn't even a map based strategy game), charge attacks, then move into range and fire. Attacks are rock/paper/scissors in style -- each one can beat or evade another and is weak to another. It's definitely some luck, some trial and error, particularly against boss ships. Different ships certainly have better offensive and defensive skills, but overall, combat is just very bland and semi-random feeling.
Overall, I found this game to just be very limited and everything feels simple and linear. Kind of a let down given the number of great JRPGs on the DS, but with no good space sci-fi games...
The good:
* Some spoken dialog, decent music
* Unique concepts that, if fleshed out a bit more, could be great
* Building up and equipping your fleet is fun
The not-so-good:
* 3d ship models are horribly limited -- you'll see the same 3 or 4 ship models over and over, even though the ship descriptions infer lots of variety
* No exploration to speak of -- movement through the universe is basically linear
* Very limited character interaction -- there's not much substantial dialog, and very few characters to really get interested in
* Combat is very limited and gets boring very quickly, and at times just feels random