A game with potential but comes up short of expectations.
Against all odds, where the soldiers of all the kingdoms failed, can a single young lass return light and peace to the kingdom? That’s where the player comes in. it’s not all battle evil for the fate of the world, there are sub-quests and side plots, albeit not many but they are there. As for the main side plot, collecting Red Fairies and bringing them to a young scholar lad named Alexander who specializes in fairy research (I think there’s some underlying joke here…) and if you bring him enough you get bonuses like new cards. The only other side plot worth mentioning is talking to Guard, the old lady who teaches you about your powers. She will occasionally assign you the side quests if you talk to her enough.
The gameplay is tedious and a bit frustrating but works well enough to hold interest. Your progression through the game depends on you picking destinations from the world map, you can only beat each location once until after you beat the game so f you get a poor rank, miss some bonus items or just want to go there again you have to wait. The battle system is simple yet annoying. You pick and alter your deck of monster cards with a maximum of 30 cards in the deck. (You can have up to 5 decks but it’s more then likely you won’t make more then 1 or 2.) You bring the cards into battle, you are randomly given four at a time, each with a corresponding controller button used to summon them. There are different types of cards too. Free-Roaming: monsters that do their own thing and stick around a while. Attacking(weapon): an attack that goes strait out of you. Trap: a monster that waits for an opponent then BOOM! And finally, Summon: a large and/or powerful monster that does heavy damage or a special feat like restore health or used up cards.
Unfortunately, as cool as that sounds the actual battles are often very frustrating, you (the princess) don’t actually have any way to attack so you have to run away from enemies. The camera angles and in-battle cut-scenes hurt even that. In order to summon monsters you first need to collect summon stones (little pink or blue gems that pop out of monsters and objects when attacked). Each monster requires a different amount of these stones and if you don’t have enough the remainder is taken from your life. While in-battle you can destroy almost any object (using monsters) and sometimes there are surprises inside but usually you just get summon stones or nothing.
The last few things about the gameplay are that you can only save on the world map, you can only use most cards once, the attack cards can be used 2-4 times. After that they are gone until you get back to the world map, run into a blue fairy or use a card restoring monster. Another thing is if you need to get out of a level for any reason like you run out of cards, have very low health left or missed something you can’t get back to you can abort and leave the level with everything you collected so far. And lastly, cards you find or capture in the field can be added to your deck mid level if you find a healing stone. The healing stone heals you fully and allows you to add the cards you picked up or captured on the field to your deck.
Now as for the graphics… well, the human characters look semi decent but you rarely get close enough to tell. The monsters look pretty cool, if you love monster based games that’s a plus. The environments are stunning and sometimes a little creepy… Each area has a unique feel and atmosphere and is what kept me interested. Some of those areas include abandoned villages, graveyards, war torn fields, snowy mountains, churches and castles. Object interactions are ok but there have been better.
The sound is something I’d rather not talk about but since I must…the music was awful, it never kept a tone or beat and had frequent random blurbs or annoying harmonic that just didn’t fit. The voice-overs are almost entirely non-existent, there are a few one word taunts recorded(one for each character). The monsters have a few different sounds but not many. The attacks almost all have the same sound as well. Luckily the movement foot step sounds keep the pace or I may not have kept playing. The ambient sound is pretty decent but sometimes un-noticeable.
The replay value consists of doing the things you missed the first time through. Some of these things include getting ranks up for areas you scored low on, Finding all 100 Red Fairies, activating more side quests that you missed and completing your card list.
This game is short and low in replay value. There is a sequel that almost requires you play this first.
I’d recommend this game only to hardcore RPG fans and the occasional female gamer who wants some girl power oriented gameing. I would also recommend Lost Kingdoms if you want to play Lost Kingdoms II which is the sequel and a somewhat better game.
At the very least, this game is a good rent; I guarantee you can beat it in less then seven days.