Refreshing retelling of a classic game not many people know of. Not so sure about all the name changes though...
As far as story and gameplay goes, it's pretty basic and straightforward by today's standards. The game is split in two parts: Book 1 and Book 2.
The battle system for Book 1 traditionally consisted of just running into the enemy until he is dead. The higher your level, and the goofier the attack angle, the better the chances of said enemy's quick demise. But with the DS version you actually have to pres the button when attacking. Feels a little cheap that way, but not a big deal.
Book 2 brings you the ability to use magic spells, so instead of pressing button 1 to ram into enemies, you can now press button 2 to throw fireballs, teleport to places of significance you've already been, or even transform into a cute, fuzzy little monster that gets to go around talking to all the other less cute and fuzzy monsters wandering the lands.
On the down side, the 3-D rendition comes off as having a 'slapped on' quality to me. Not so much to make me not enjoy the game, but there none the less. My other qualm is the liberties they had taken with changing the names of some of the characters. Throughout all my life, there has never been a Rhea in this game. Rhea is a witch that lives with her mutant cat and rotting snake on a hill outside Mejis in Mid-World haunting the lives of future Gunslingers. There is only Lair, the Poet. They should of left the names of timeless characters alone. Voice acting, like in the original TG-16 version, for the cut scenes would of also been nice, but it is a DS game.
All that being said, I did enjoy getting to play a classic game form my youth in a more current format, but am hoping that they do a better (and more faithful to the original) version of the game for the PSP when that comes out sometime next year.
The score got a bit of a boost due to nostalgia reasons on my part.
If you played the game, it's worth revisiting one more time. If you haven't, it's still a fun, straightforward action-RPG that fortunately hasn't lost much of it's charm.