As long as you don't think it's a Zelda game, you'll enjoy it
ok so the story takes place before Tingle actully became Tingle, you are a 35 year old bachelor called "Insert name here" who is bored of life. Suddenly he hears a voice sayinmg go to the western pool, he does so and he is greeted by an old man called Uncle Rupee. Unlcle Rupee tells the guy all about a place called Rupeeland where he will get all the food he wants, never has to do any work and he gets babes at his side 24/7. To get there our bachelor must put Rupee's into the pool, and when enough have bveen put in a tower will grow, and keep growing untill it reachs Rupeeland. But our man must pay a price, he must bind himself to the rupee's themselves so they become his life source, so without rupee's, he will die. our guy agree's and is from now on called Tingle, his green garments are magiccaly placed onto his body and then he is ready to go. The long, ardous road to Rupeeland stretches inffront of Tingle, his adventure, is about to begin.
The story itself is actully quite good, humor is thrown in at appropraite times and is actully funny. If you wanted to know about the origin of Tingle well tgis game dishes out loads of infomation. From how he learned to make maps, to his love of ballons and yes even to his catchphrase! It also shines some light on Tingle as we now know that in the other games he wasn't being greedy, but infact he needed rupee's to survive, without them he would persih, so if you like Tingle you'll love ths story.
Ok before we go any further just to say don't play it expecting a Zelda experaince, because you will be dissapointed. The only real Zelda relation is Tingle, the gameplay is completely diffrent, the way the game is structed is diffrent and the game just has this whole diffrent feel to it. But this isn't to say the game isn't good, just don't go expecting it to be the same as Zelda.
Ok where to begin? Well the object of the game is to put I belive it is 1 million rupee's into the water pool, so that gives you a choice. You actully don't have to go into any Dungons, you just havde to put rupee's into that pond. You'll need to go into them eventully, but you could just leave it to the endf of the game if you so wish, so that gives the game a diffrent feel to it than most games.
So as i mentioned earlier Rupee's are your life source, if your rupee count goes down to 0, you will die. But rupee's is still the currancy and must be yused to do pretty much anything, this is a very intresting gaming aspect and really makes you think. Now how do yuou get Rupee's?
They can be obtained in two ways, either collect them from fallen enemies or sell items you come across or made yourself. This can be quite limited but collecting rupee's from fallen enemies is a slow way of making ruppes, most people collect ingredants and go make potions to sell or go and do some map making and then go and sell the newly made maps. However you will need to ofcourse know how to fight to do this.
The combat in this game can be a life saver for others but a huge dissapointment for some. To fight all you must do is make Tingle touch and enemy, when they are touching you and the enemy get into a fight and a big puff of gray smoke covers you. And that is it, you do not have tyo actully do anything else, you can tap the smoke cloud but i don't think it actully does anything aise from making noise. Yiu cann also roll oaround and possibly get more enemies involved, this means you lose more rupees (Health) but you will get more stuff at the end. This is not really a fun combat system and could be alot better, but for nooby players its great, but for the more experainced ones it is not so good.
Now onto the next part, Bartering! It seems whereever tingle lives everybody loves rupee's. Infact to even go into the shops for the first time you need to pay, some people even require you to pay them before they'll even talk to you. you need money to gain accses into town, to hire bodyguards (Who do fighting for you) and people to fix stuff for you, heck even the dungens won't let you in without the right amount of rupee! This means alot of your time will be spent looking for ingredants which Tingle will then make and sell, you only get a small amount for the stuff you make so it will need to be repeated a considerable amount of times, so it is not a fast process. To make matters slower there is another thing to take into consideration.
Say you want to buy a shovel, he won't set a price he just says how much you gonna give me. Now if you set a price to low he will not let you have it, but thats not all. Say you offer him 400 ruppe's for it, he will say non thanks but then still take the money anyway! So this can be a huge annyoyance as you might have spent hours saving up only for sombody to take it from you. Or on the other side you could offer too much and he'll gladly take it all. You could have bought thjat shovel for 500 rupee's but you payed 1000, that is also a bad thing. This makes the game frustrating as its based on luck and you have no idea how much they want. This is used constantly throughout the game so you'd better get used to it, I'd advise printing of a guide of Cheatplanet or GameFAQS otherwise it's gonna be hard.
Now to help make money in a big way you can do some map making, this is an quick way to make hard earned rupee's so learn it quick. you see whenever you enter a new area some things you come across may not be on your standard map, so with the stylus you draw the thing and then you go to the map lady in town and she'll pay alot of money.
On the subject of Stylus there isn't too much going on, you only need to use it at ceratin boss fights (Which are all cool and unqiue) bartring, mixing ingredants and drawing maps thats about it. They could have added some more parts to this.
Graphiccaly the game is very good, it isn't exactly pushing the DS in terms of technology but the game has a wonderfully unique style that's unlike anything else. it has it's own feel, it feels like Manga at times. The animations are pretty good, and Tingle even does this little dance!
Strangly enough there is hardly any backround music, whenever you enter an area a bit of music plays for 3 secs then its silence. all you can hear are Tingle's Footwork and mabey the waves in the sea or the birds tweeping. It is actully intresting to see that it is quite effective. Sound effects are good too and you never get tired of putting rupee's into the pool.
The game difficulty is confusing at best. I mean it's to simple for the hardcore gamer yet it's to hard for the casual gamer. This is what may turn many people off, so it is as difficult as you make it pretty much.
The legnth of the game also depends, you could have spent hours saving to buy a key ingredant to contuine on but then payed a to low price and having to start again, so it varies. But it should take about 10 hours and thats not doing the side quests which will easily add on an extra 5 at least.
Tha gem at times has a Harvest Moon feel to it, you may find it dull and boring collecting ingredants over and over again, but you cannot put it down. Yes this game is extremely addicting and hours pass on as if they were minites.
There are times when it's brilliant and time's when it's stupidly irritating. However, if you're willing to push on through the game you'll discover one of the DS's most curious and quirky titles to date. As long as you don't think it's a Zelda game, you'll enjoy it.
Thanks for Reading