Magical Starsign

I decided to replay Magical Starsign from 2006/07. Released as one of the earliest RPG's for the Nintendo DS as well as a sequel to a GBA-game that was highly acclaimed (sadly it was only released in Japan) by the company Brownie Brown who has handled a couple of SquareEnix remakes as well as Mother 3 (apparently they changed their names to 1-Up studios and are working for Nintendo). So I was a bit hyped for this game to say the least, but I remember it being disappointing for some reason. So I started by looking at my old save file... 23 hours? Rather short for an rpg? Well, lets start from the beginning.

Story is like this, you (boy or girl with dark or light magic) is attending this wizard school with your five best friends who happens to be split in one of the five schools of magic (water, fire, earth, wind and... wood?). One day your teacher Miss Madeleine is sent out to bring in one of her students, Master Kale. Three months pass by and you have had enough and finds 6 conveniently hidden rocket ships and you blast of into space to search the five different planets in this solar system. There you have to deal with space pirates and a corrupt space police while uncovering the mysterious of an robot race and a dying sun. I gotta say, as childish the set up sounds, it has it's dark and horrible moments. The robot... race is openly pointed out as a ticking bomb who are connected like skynet and as soon as their energy supply runs low will attack and turn all other living things into gummy batteries ala the Matrix (which we are shown happened to their original creators). Friends sacrifice themselves left and right and their is no real happy ending as the student fail to save their teacher. It's real dark.

What's the problem then? I would guess the fault lies in the gameplay. Being one of the earliest games for the DS you use the stylus to move, attack, confirm and so on which probably bugged me a bit with today you at least gets the option to chose how you will play the game. Then we have the battle mechanics. Since all kids are wizards we have a magic system similar to Golden Sun with a very fast recharging magic meter. Sadly you are limited to 6 standard magic spells (different for each character) and a seventh you can choose from. Also the magic is effected by where the planets are on the star chart, getting a power boost when the right star sign aligns with the right planet (dark/light are effected by if it's night or day). The enemies are also effected. Couple this with a turn-based battle with a front- and back row (where the back can't melee, but instead gets area attacks and support) which causes the battles to drag... and then they are random. This is probably why I got bored with it, the battles drag by virtue of the battle system  and you can't drone of due to all commands needing stylus input instead of mashing the A button.

Is it worth playing? I think so. The graphic's are amazing (although they reuse sprites from other Brownie Brown games like Sword of Mana) and decent music and with an odd story makes it rather unique. Sadly it might be to short for it's own good (or rather side characters that aren't given any motivation for their actions and therefore lessens their impact on the story).