Game REVIEWS

unWIRED Rating:

A Witch’s Tales Review

Developer: NIS America
Platform: Nintendo DS
Category: RPG
Available Now

NISA released A Witch’s Tale this October, for good reason, this Halloween themed game brings the players through many wondrous fairy tales that we all grew up with.

The game follows a little girl named Liddell, a witch who craves power and recognition. The story takes the player through the six kingdoms that guard the land, after Liddell accidentally released a great evil on the world. She took on the responsibility of trying to once again lock away the evil from the world. With the help of Loue the Vampire, she then sets out on a journey across the six kingdoms to save the princess and obtain their Sigils, which is needed to seal away the Eld Witch, the great evil of the land.

The playing style for this title is very unique. To battle enemies, the player must drag the desired action onto the enemy selection slot on the top right of the bottom of the screen. A player can also activate ancient magic to deal high amounts of damage by dragging the magic action onto the red circle on the bottom right of the bottom screen, then trace the red magical symbol that appears. Every aspect of this game is controlled through the stylus. Though the game is unique, it gets really repetitive really quickly. In each kingdom, there are three dungeons to be solved which will each award a key item. Once all three key items are collected, they must be traded in for a key to the castle of the kingdom, where the player will fight the boss and rescue the princess. This process then repeats for each new kingdom that the player goes to.

Overall, the game is not a bad game to play, but it just does not have the appeal for someone to play it again and again. After the game is cleared, the player has the option to start a new game from the cleared game data, which will allow them to carry over everything they have obtained so far. Also, by clearing the game, the player will unlock a new game mode selected from the main menu where they can play black jack with the princesses and other characters they have met so far. The art style and music is very fitting of the theme, but because of the repetitive level design, this game just doesn’t attract players to play for long period of time.

** Written by Benson Chen