Brilliant ideas marred by poor execution (ADD Sufferers Beware!)

User Rating: 6.5 | Lock's Quest DS
About a year ago, I got hooked on a free flash game called Desktop Tower Defense. The game was ridiculously simple in concept - you built up a structure of turrets, and used them to fend off waves of enemies. Since then, games like PixelJunk Monsters on the PS3 and the DS' Ninjatown have allowed the genre to break into the mainstream. The newest addition to the tower defense craze is 5th Cell's Lock's Quest.

When you compare Lock's Quest with Desktop Tower Defense, it's quite apparent how much the genre has evolved in the past year or so. While Lock's Quest many of the same ideas as other games in the genre, it offers up more than enough twists to keep it feeling fresh. This is tower defense redux, and while all the ideas may not work out perfectly in practice, it's still a decent collection to any DS owner's library.

Lock's Quest tells the story of Lock, an orphan who lives with his grandfather and sister in a quiet seaside village. Lock is an 'archineer' in training - someone who can use the power of 'source' to build structures. In the game's introduction, Lock comes across an injured archineer named Isaiah, who's been injured by members of the Clockwork Army. The Clockworks are the henchmen of the Lord Agony, who supposedly died in a battle years before. Lock suddenly finds himself in the middle of the struggle when his sister gets captured by the Clockwork forces. The story is told in long, un-skippable cutscenes with the amount of text I'd expect from most Atlus games. But despite the quantity of dialogue, the characters all feel cut from the most basic mold and the story never really seems worth paying attention to.

While battles in Lock's Quest vary in objectives, they usually always come down to protecting a source well from enemy forces. There may be side objectives such as protecting ally troops or wiping out certain enemies, but generally, your effort will go into the source well. Lock's Quest battles take place in two phases: Build and Battle. In the Build phase, you have a set amount of time to build up your fortress in hopes of protecting the source well. During the battle phase, you manually move Lock around the field, fixing damaged structures or engaging enemies directly. After a set period of time, the Clockworks will break down and another brief Build Phase will begin.

Thankfully, your creativity is the limit when it comes to constructing protective structures. You gradually unlock new walls, turrets, and traps, which can be placed almost anywhere to build your dream fortress. Providing there's the source required structures can be built to match any strategy. One strategy I use involves building rows and rows of walls, which can waste precious seconds of the Clockwork's attack phase. Experimenting with the building tools is very fun, and in later missions a bit frantic. When I found myself low on source, I had to figure out which lines of defense had to be fixed and which I'd have to try and live without, all within the two minute time limit. It's an absolute blast.

Defending these structures from advancing enemies is not quite as fun. You move Lock with the stylus a la Phantom Hourglass, and by fix walls or engage enemies by tapping them. The trouble is, there's always a lot on screen, and it can be difficult to select the one thing you want. It's infuriating, as battles can often be decided in a split second. I kept finding my defenses breached because the game misread a command I gave. Lock's Quest also uses an isometric camera that fights you every step of the way. Characters too often go behind a structure and become just about invisible. With no way to control the action from an overhead view Lock's Quest's combat often feels cluttered and sloppy.
The other flaw with the campaign is the repetition - every one of its hundred days feels virtually the same. After the first couple of days the novelty wears off, and you'll just be repeating the same motions until you've finished the game. Build your fortress, fend off enemies, make repairs, repeat indefinitely - that's basically the single-player Lock's Quest in a nutshell. The only breaks you get from this routine are optional Siege Mode missions, but they're a complete waste of time. Basically a Defend Your Castle rip-off, they didn't provide nearly enough depth to keep me entertained for more than thirty seconds or so.

Thankfully Lock's Quest also includes a multiplayer mode, and it's actually a lot of fun. When you're going head-to-head you're forced to be offensive as well as defensive, which gives the formula a welcome twist. In the multiplayer, you go one-on-one with a friend, and you each have limited time and resources to build your defenses as well as an army to storm your opponent's side of the field. The great thing about this mode is there's really no limit as to what can be done. Being able to build a perfect fortress as well as creating my own waves of Clockworks and determining their route was a ton of fun. Providing you can find a friend with equal skills, Lock's Quest multiplayer matches can go on indefinitely. It's a great way to spend an afternoon if you've got a friend with his own copy.

Visually, Lock's Quest is quite similar to 5th Cell's last game, Drawn to Life. Every character and item is a 2D sprite, with very well-done animations. While it may be initially a bit unimpressive, Lock's Quest can have upwards of 200 sprites on the map at the same time. Over all the time I've spent with the game, I never encountered slowdown even once. The epic battles are accompanied by a majestic score, which is among the best on the DS.

Much like Drawn to Life, Lock's Quest is a game that looks great on paper. In practice, however, many of these ideas prove to have huge problems. If the game sells well enough, perhaps we'll see a sequel addressing the game's numerous problems. Lock's Quest's awesome gameplay ideas are balanced out by poor execution, and the final product is a mere shadow of the game's full potential.