A decent game for novice rpg players.
Story 7.0
It all starts when many years ago a bad witch wanted to destroy the world but the good witch sealed her away in a castle (havent i already heard that one before) . Now you will be intrduced to your main character, a really spoiled little witch that is bored so she decides to get the most powerful magic in the world, though you will notice she is a little bit mean but in a good way, like she sees a vampire in his coffin and her first though is that she wants to draw in his face.
So she goes to the castle and releases the bad witch so now she has the duty to seal her up and that takes her to the 6 kingdoms that are derived from various famous stories like Hansel and Gretel, Alice in Wonderland and the like in her quest to put back everything in place. It will not be the most interesting story you will ever encounter but it is pretty decent.
Gameplay 6.0
In A Witch's Tale expect a fairly easy battle system with the classic attack,magic,item and escape commands. You do everything with the stylus and it works perfectly. You have as a companion a doll and you will find others as you move forward in the story as well as new powerful magic.
Now the thing is that all of the above are things that pretty much every avid rpg gamer has already doned so you are one of those you will get bored. So if you want a rpg with innovative gameplay then look somewhere else. Also you will see that this game is pretty easy, but you have to train a bit every now and then because if you go without training you may have a hard time killing monsters, though you have to try different magic on different enemies to see what is the most effective.
There's also a umbrella that helps you destroy stuff in many on the different environments that give you items used to fuse them and get healing items. And yes there are random battles but they are not so frequent.
Graphics 7.0
Graphic wise you will find a very halloween like feel with a decent amount of detail but it doesnt push the ds limits much. There are plenty of better looking rpgs but for the most part you will love the art style, though battle animations and attacks look pretty bad.
Sound 6.5
The music is pretty good, not impressive but it gets the job done and is on par with the style of the game. Theres no VO and battle sound effects are unimpressive.
Replay value 6.0
You will finish the game in like 16 or so hours which is ok but not much reason to play it again. All in all I can only recommend it for maybe beginner players that want something simple to start off because for the hardcore gamers there are plenty of other great rpgs way better and more innovative than this one.