In sum, Enchanted makes great use of pretty much all the DS features and ended being a lot better than I expected.
The game offers a mix of 3D and 2D environments, and different styles of gameplay. As Giselle, you do some adventuring, item collecting, some platform jumping and even a little acrobatics. Giselle can also make pretty dresses for herself out of the items she collects. Items can be pretty much everywhere you can interact with the touch screen, for example, by sweeping a pile of leaves, cleaning a spider web. Giselle can also ask her little animal friends for help and have them collect some things she can't reach. Her special power is singing. By stepping up onto special platforms, you begin a tracing mini-game that if successful, plays a special song that has a special temporary effect (such as keeping evil mushrooms at bay or opening a new passage).
As Pip you play through 2D platform levels, jumping over obstacles and crawling on the walls and ceiling, using the D-pad and buttons. There are also items to be collected by tapping them on the touch screen. They're short adventures, and are mostly used to tie in the story together.
As Edward, you have plenty of swordfighting, occasional horseback riding and quite a few hilarious heroic outbursts of speech! Horseback riding is done in a 2D side-scrolling fashion, where you tap the horse to jump, tap Edward to duck below branches, and draw circles to gallop faster. Swordfighting is where it gets complicated for the little ones. To enter a fight, you must first tap whatever you want to attack. You then enter a mini-game where you must do a series of taps on the circles, sliding the arrows in the right direction, or catch moving stars on the screen. As you do the right movements on the touch screen, Edward will slash at the enemy on the top screen. Edward also can get help from animals at times.
There are plenty of save points, so progression won't be too big of an issue for younger gamers.
Graphically, Enchanted isn't too shabby. The characters animate well, though there are some glitches when Edward kills a monster and the NPCs don't vary in appearance much. The two worlds have very distinct looks and the scenery is obviously very different, although Giselle still manages to find some flowers, acorns and other things while roaming the streets of New York City. The characters' portraits also change from cartoon characters to real photos, and the cutscenes in the real world are presented by stills from the movie. No actual video or voice acting, which is a shame.
The sound is fairly good, though in some areas there seem to be no background noises at all.
Wireless features also come into play by letting you exchange dresses you have created with other users.
In sum, Enchanted makes great use of pretty much all the DS features and ended being a lot better than I expected. The controls are a bit awkward on the horseback riding, and sometimes seem to allow no margin of error during swordfighting. But the game flows nicely, the gameplay is varied, the story is well written, humor is a constant, and the presentation is quite nice.
I can safely classify Enchanted into that rare category that is "movie games done right".
Review text part of Grrlgamer.com. Full text and screenshots at http://www.grrlgamer.com/review.php?g=enchanted