Developers: Artoon & Mistwalker
Publisher: Majesco
Release Date: October 30, 2008
Genre: Action RPG
As many of you know I am a big RPG fan, ever since the days of the SNES I have just loved the genre. So naturally I love the DS since there are so many RPGs for it. With remakes like Final Fantasy IV and Chrono Trigger and original titles like The World Ends With You the system has many good RPGs and many more on the way. Of course with so many games it is getting hard for games to stand out. So developers have to make more unique games that make use of all the unique features of the DS, one such game is Away Shuffle Dungeon. But does using the unique features of the DS make this a good game? Let us find out.
Away Shuffle Dungeon at its core is a basic Dungeon Crawler RPG like Children of Mana on the DS. The main thing you do is go through the dungeons floor by floor clearing them and moving on to the next one. This concept works just fine here but I found it to be a little bit repetitive after a while. Now this is not all that uncommon for Dungeon Crawlers so it was something I was expecting.
Of course in the dungeons we see the games unique use of the DS. The floors of the dungeons span across both screens of the DS and after a certain amount of time one screen with shuffle to another part of the floor. You of course cannot be on the screen when it shuffles or else you will go back to the start of the floor and loose some health. Now this may sound intimidating at first and trust me it is. But overall it does not make the game much harder and it is not that hard to get used to. I personally liked this feature since it was so different but I can see how some people would not like it.
7 seconds till the next shuffle, plenty of timeIt is not all exploring dungeons though. You also have boss fights and towns to explore. Now this is where you can see another unique part of the game, that being the 2 graphic styles. In the dungeons as pictured above you are in a top down prospective with 2D sprite graphics. In the town and boss fights however you are in an over the shoulder view in full 3D with Cell Shaded characters. Both graphics styles are well done for the DS. The 2D environments are smooth and there are some nice lighting effects and the 3D environments have a good amount of detail to them and the characters are very nicely rendered. This still was a surprise to me since usually a game picks one art style and sticks with it. It is rare to see a video game use 2 very different styles.
Hey who put a 3D boss fight in my 2D dungeon? [/center[
Well graphics aside there are a few other elements that make a good RPG. One of these is story. Now dungeon crawler RPGs usually don’t have the most deep stories and this one is no different. But it still it does have a very nice story. You play as the warrior Sword as he goes into dungeons to get back the villagers that were lost as a result of an event that happens at the beginning of the game. As you can see not very deep but there are still enough plot twist to keep you interested and the villagers all have unique personalities which you see come out through-out the story and there interactions with the other villagers. The story is also further enhanced by CGI cinematics which are very well done and unlike in some other RPGs on the DS actually show up in game and not just when you start the game up.
It looks like… It looks like a cinematicAnother important part of an RPG is the music and audio and Away Shuffle Dungeon does a very good job at this. Like all Mistwalker projects before the soundtrack was done by Nobuo Uematsu one of the most well known game composers in the industry. Now the soundtrack in this game is far from his best work but it still is very good. All the tracks fit the mood of the story at the time and they are very catching which is always a plus. If you like Nobuo Uematsu past work you will like his work on this game that is for sure. Also in the game is a fair amount of voice acting which while not the best is still decent.
Now as a whole I did enjoy this game but there were some parts that did bother me. One thing that bothered me was how some of the weapons handled. Now you start out with a sword and this controls very well overall but later you can upgrade to an Ax, a Spear, or Daggers. This is nice except that none of them really work too well. The Ax is just too slow and has too short a range, the Spear is also too slow and it is hard to hit anything with it, and the Daggers while not bad can make your character hard to control when using them. In the end I just keep getting the next best sword and gave up on using the other weapons. Another thing is to upgrade the shops you have to go back in the dungeons to get the items to. Now this is just annoying since for some of them you have to plan your route through the floor just right or you will have to wait for the dungeon to shuffle back to that screen again.
These minor complaints aside this is a very nice game and a lot of fun. It might not be too deep but it is not intended to be. This is a good example of a game built to be on a handheld, it is a great pick up and play game and will keep you interested. The mechanics of this game are solid overall but are not for everyone. It is at least worth a look though since it is a solid title. Now if I was to score this game I would give it a solid 7/10 since it is well done and fun to play. I really enjoyed playing this game and if any of you decide to pick it up I hope you enjoy it as well.
