The Nintendo DS is a great system, one of my favorites. One of the only drawbacks that it has in that there aren't a large number of role-playing games available. It's one of my favorite genres, which is why I was so excited to get a copy of Konami's recent release Tao's Adventure: Curse of the Demon Seal. This RPG has an interesting magic system, a wide variety of monsters, a new way of integrating the touch screen into gameplay, and straight forward quest. Unfortunately it fails to be an enjoyable game because of the extremely unwieldy controls, the very repetitive nature of the game, and simplistic story line. What could have been a great game turns out to be a flop.

Players take on the role of Tao, a boy from Bente. One day, after his very first magic lesson, a group of monsters attack his village and turn just about everyone to stone including Tao's family. A few of the town's elders manage to survive and relate to Tao that if he can find a certain type of monster egg, the petrified villagers can be brought back to life.

Now Tao's a young kid who's only had one magic lesson, moments before the monsters attacked, so the surviving town folk naturally select him to find the egg. I mean, wouldn't you send a 12 year old? They give him a pat on the back, tell him not to take any wooden nickels, and send him off to the town of Mondominio.

In Mondominio there is a giant tower where monsters have been imprisoned. Adventurers travel up the tower looking for rare and valuable monster eggs, and this has made the town prosper. The seal on the tower was recently partially destroyed by a lightning strike however, and now the tower is a much more dangerous place. Most of the egg collectors have left Mondominio now, and it's into this terrifying place that Tao must venture.

Gameplay:

Okay, so I've played fighting games with more of a story. That doesn't mean that the game will be bad, just maybe not as intricate and detailed as I was hoping. What about the gameplay? That's where a game really lives or dies. To put it as plainly as possible, the gameplay stinks.

Where to begin? There's so much wrong with this game it's hard to know what to mention first. Best start with the beginning of the game. When the game is first loaded and a name for the character has been entered, the first thing players are greeted with is a looooong story sequence to get through. It literally last for 30 minutes, in which time the only thing the players get to do is learn how to cast magic spells. You can't save the game at any point during this absurdly long intro, so make sure you have some time on your hands when you start to play the game.

As far as saving the game goes, this can only be accomplished at the inn in Mondominio, which is a huge pain. You can't save it whenever you want, but have to leave the tower (where most of the game takes place) walk across town and get to your room before you can record your progress. Mighty inconvenient. If that wasn't bad enough, there is only room for one save file. Two people can't play the game, each saving in a different spot, something that was irritating when my sons wanted to play the game. They had to wait until I was finished, and then only one of them could adventure at a time.

One saved game and a long intro sequence aren't fatal flaws though. Things really get bad when you start moving around and trying to explore this world. For some unknown reason, Konami decided to ignore the DS' buttons and have all of the functions preformed on the touch screen. This is very unwieldy and slows the game down a lot. Yes, you can use the d-pad to walk, but that's about all.

I can appreciate trying to incorporate the touch screen into game play, many games have done a great job of that, but this system works poorly because the touch screen has to refresh after every entry, and though it only takes a second, it slows the pace of the game down a lot. If you want to talk with someone, you have to walk up to them, wait for the screen to refresh with new options, press 'talk', read what they say on the top screen, wait for the touch screen to refresh, touch the screen when you're done reading, wait for the screen to refresh, select 'leave', read their reply (why can't that just end the conversation?), wait for the screen to refresh, touch the screen yet again to signify that you're done reading, wait for the screen to refresh, and go on your way. By the end of the game I was dreading having to talk with anyone. Things went a lot quicker in most GBA RPG's where a quick button press would scroll through dialog and get you quickly through an encounter.

Movement isn't any better. Tao walks very slowly through the game. I mean irritatingly slow. You can make him run by double tapping on a direction button, but then it's hard to control where he goes. Turning is a bit difficult when running since you have to use the touch screen. If the d-pad would work while he was running, the game would move much more quickly. This is a big deal too because a good amount of the game is spent walking around the town of Mondominio. The various merchants that you have to visit frequently in order to complete the game seem to be purposely positioned in different corners of the town in order to pad the game out. Getting to them takes way too much time.

You can tell some thought went into the magic system, but like most of the rest of the game, it doesn't quite work as well as it should. In order to cast a spell, you have to tap on the 'use magic' line and a new image comes up on the touch screen. Each spell has a different shape that Tao draws in the air with his wand, and the player has to draw this shape on the touch screen. This is pretty cool at first, and makes casting magic feel a bit more realistic. After all you're drawing the same figure that Tao is in order to cast the spell. This wears thin quickly though. After a few times it seems like an unnecessary gimmick that just slows the action down. Another problem is that there are around 40 spells in the game. It becomes hard to remember them all, and though you can look them up in your spell book at any time, this just slows things down further.

In addition to the controls and magic systems leaving something to be desired, the game quickly becomes monotonous. With such a simple story, there's not a lot to do besides fight your way up the 20 levels of the tower. There are some side quests, but these are very short and pretty simple.

In the tower you walk through each level, a series of paths floating in space, fighting monsters and picking up the gold and silver that litter the place. The battle are pretty easy, many monsters are killed with one blow, and the sword attacks are just as powerful as the magic ones. You only have a finite amount of magic points though, so it's much easier to just use your sword and ignore the cumbersome magic system. (One other problem is that you can either wield a sword or a wand, not both. It is possible to switch in the middle of battle, but it takes a turn and your opponent gets a free attack.) Since the monsters are so easy to kill, there isn't and strategy involved in these fights. Every five levels there is a boss monster, but these offer only a bit more of a problem.

Every once in a while you come across an egg in the tower. These you can sell or hatch and use as familiars to help in your battles. Hatching monsters is as time consuming as everything else in this game though. Once you get an egg you have to carry it out of the tower to the egg dealer who will tell you what monster will hatch out of it. Then you have to take it all the way back to the tower in order to hatch it. Why you can't hatch it when you find it, or outside of the tower once the egg has been identified isn't explained. Since the monsters you encounter are so easy to kill, and the babies that you hatch are relatively weak, I found this to be a waste of time.

Player who hatch eggs can go to the coliseum and train their hatchlings and trade them with friends who have the game in true Pokemon fashion. The training battles are mindbogglingly dull, relying on a rock-paper-scissors type of interface to determine who wins a match. I found this to be much more trouble than it was worth.

So walking up the tower, level upon level, killing creatures without much trouble and finding valuables just laying around gets rather dull. Unfortunately there isn't much more than that to the game. There are a few neat surprises on the way, one level, when you look at the completed map at after you've finished it, spells out "Konami Software Shanghai", but these aren't enough to pique a players interest for long. Overall there's just not enough story or strategy in this game to make up for the awkward interface and monotonous play.

Graphics:

The graphics to this game were good. The character designs were pleasing and the image was crisp and clear. There was a good amount of detail to the picture and the whole layout was easy on the eyes.

Audio:

The audio was actually pretty good. Though there are no character voice overs, they did put a lot of effort into the sound effects, even creating different sounds for Tao's footsteps as he walks on different surfaces. Some of the magic spell sounds were pretty impressive too, especially the higher level spells. One thing that did throw me off at the beginning was the fact that they used white noise as part of the doors opening and closing in the tower. This made it sound like the audio was distorting, but after playing the game I'm sure that was purposefully added.

Conclusion:

Though I really like RPGs, I found this game unrewarding. The user interface is very unwieldy and slow, the story is very minimal, the magic system is awkward and flawed, and the actual battles are ludicrously easy. The game itself was monotonous after a while too, with every level seeming similar to the previous one. Though I didn't hate playing this game, afterwards I thought it was very forgettable. Novice RPG's may want to consider this one for a rental, since it isn't as sprawling or intimidating as some other RPG's, but there isn't much else in this game that's worthy of recommendation.