A great rpg from Konami
Gameplay 8.0
The story begins with a beautiful anime voice acted cutscene that shows you a final battle with an apparently fearsome foe. Right after that you appear in a little village with a quest of killing some monsters east of your town. I could tell you more but its really complicated and i don't want to spoil anything but i can tell you that there is an interesting story in this game that will make you play just to see what happens next.
As this is an rpg you can expect things like gaining exp to level up and plenty of random battles that can be a pain sometimes (that comes from an avid rpg gamer) but at least theres a decent amount of space between battles and not an encounter every 2 steps. Battles are fast paced which is good but nothing really new about it. Now what i mean about that is that is the same attack and heal system that has been used in many other rpgs. Still you get some stars attacks,which you gain as you progress in the story, auto attack option and front and back row formations. Everything is satisfying but don't expect something really new about gameplay. You can also buy equipment in all towns but not at a cheap price, especially since you don't gain money from monsters, but you gain items that you can sell. You can also buy some stuff in one town and sell it at a higher price in another.
As you progress through the story you can come up having up to 108 characters. Yup thats a hell of a lot of people crammed in one game. Some will join you as you go along and others with side quests.
Graphics 9.0
In the graphics department this one is a pretty looking ds game. Sprites look good, environments are hand made and some nice voice acted cutscenes every now and then that really add up to the experience.
Sound 8.5
Even though music in this game is not great you still get plenty of VO of great quality used very often. Theres more VO in this game than in the last 10 ds games i have played.
I only had 2 minor annoyances that i think can be corrected in the future. For starters when you buy equipment you cant see which one is better than the other in an easy way. You have to see how much your equipment increases your stats and then go see how much it increases the one you want to buy. And also a map could be useful because in bigger dungeons you walk for a while just to find yourself with a dead end. If there was at least a chest to let me feel good about the walk i could live with it but walking like crazy to find nothing sucks.
Replay Value 9.0
In the replay value department theres plenty for a while. You get a 30+ hour adventure with many side quests and a massive 108 characters to find. Also there a online component in which you can trade characters, get quests, nice equips and more. Its very packed for a rpg thats for sure.