Wizards and wands
Role playing meets strategy in the shape of the stylus-driven Lost Magic
The news that Ubisoft is releasing another Japanese role-playing game on DS is only likely to get the most hardcore fans of the genre excited. In Asia, RPGs are a staple of popular entertainment, whether it be games, animation, merchandise or graphics novels. There are literally hundreds of them, each with their own peculiarities and in-depth histories.
But there are reasons to hope that Lost Magic will get your DS pulses racing, as it’s all about the skilful use of your stylus.
Playing as a young wizard who's out to save the world (as per RPG-usual then!), you’ll have to learn to draw certain shapes on the touchscreen to trigger spells. It’s a device we’ve seen before, notably in Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow, as well as in PC games like Black & White (via your mouse), but with Lost Magic it will be a much more important part of the game, with the ability to link three spells together in order to come up with around 350 different combinations.
Combined with this power, you’ll also have to use your stylus to control and direct your group of monsters in battles. Ubisoft hasn’t completely explained how this will work, but it seems that you’ll be able to select units and then direct them by pointing with your stylus where they should go.
Again, it’s not first time this so-called ‘point-and-click’ interface has been used for the DS. Advance Wars: Dual Strike used something similar but that was a slower paced game. And even in that case, it actually proved easier to use the DS’ buttons than the stylus. So seeing how well the interface works will certainly be the first thing we try out when we get our hands on the game when it’s released sometime in March.
