Final Fantasy Tactics on the iPod?
The game is more or less Final Fantasy Tactics Lite. Battles are usually among around four to ten players on screen, and when it's the player's turn the characters are commanded using the scroll wheel in various ways. The limited control scheme hurts at first, and never really lets up; I found myself wandering into lost menus when I was just trying to find the attack button. This didn't become an issue after a while, but it was a problem that hindered the potential fun. The new fourth-generation iPod Nano (which makes you tip the screen over to play the game widescreen) doesn't change orientation on the scroll wheel as you turn the unit on its side, either, so it's even harder to figure out how to get somewhere.
The computers aren't astoundingly brilliant, but they're competent enough to pose a challenge (in my seven-hour play time, I died once). I played the game on my iPod Nano, third Generation, and the screen was crisp enough to read all text, though I wished it would zoom in a bit at times so I could identify certain characters. But everything is bright and clear, especially the nice looking character heads that appear during conversations.
The casual manner of the game is juxtaposed by the dark story and deep song-based collecting system. The story revolves around a Matrix-meets-1984 land where robots have ruled the land for an age, and a young man rises to power in search for his brother. To be honest, the plot is completely predictable and follows the standard manga sci-fi paradigms of the genre, but it's still worth saying that the story's there.
The song aspect is cool, as well. Similar to Monster Rancher, the player puts songs into the game, and the game analyzes it to pop out a soldier card. Some songs make better soldiers (and Square-Enix soundtracks make better songs, apparently - all of their songs create very high-leveled cards), so it's fun to try and find a song the game likes. The soldiers have a limited life on the field, and the heavy customizing and leveling aspects make managing the soldiers a fun diversion.
Song Summoner is a fun game, and really, it shows that the coolest games can come out of the neatest places. It's not a long game by any means, and it's no Final Fantasy, but Square-Enix has still been able to set the bar when it comes to this new frontier. This is a good use of 130 MB, believe me. At five dollars, this is one game that can't be missed by iPod owners interested in something different.