Special attacks can be stacked in a quick-swap menu, and delivering the extra pummelling utilises simple stylus doodle commands. Dragging the stylus around the screen directs your party's wanderings, and tapping the closest monster sends them charging at it with blades and spells at the ready. Ragnarok DS' real-time combat system is designed for maximum convenience but at times feels lazy. You'll find ample sword-fodder in the many unusual beasts that populate the land, and the straightforward stylus-only controls make dishing out the command to "kill" easy enough. Fortunately, there are plenty of opportunities to feed your character's experience coffer. These first-tier classes give you access to special gear and abilities, and they can eventually be upgraded to more powerful variants like the Hunter, Assassin, Priest, Knight, and Blacksmith classes. Early on you'll pick from a few core classes like Archer, Swordsman, and Merchant. Slaughtering random monsters and snatching up the loot they drop would get old much faster than it does if it weren't for the game's expansive job system - one of the few reasons to press onward battle-after-battle. The main quest often sends you meandering blindly through creature-filled wilds and deep into vast dungeons that are dense to navigate until you stumble across the maps for each self-contained area. Instead of losing myself in the thrill of adventure, the game's story and character interactions just left me feeling plain lost. However, the juvenile antics and whiny interactions between characters early-on contrast sharply with the game's overarching plot about the impending end of the world at the hands of a dark sect bent on resurrecting a long-lost deity. You team up with a mysterious amnesiac girl and a rotating cast of cohorts to fight monsters, hunt for treasure, attempt to muster up some local fame, and eventually save the world. Ragnarok DS completely ditches the online focus in favour of a plodding solo campaign about a bratty kid who loses his parents and sets out to become a grand adventurer. After slogging through many hours of hacking up scores of creatures with my small band of warriors, I found out the hard way this dry, generic anime RPG has a few decent carry-over elements and a whole lot of tedious grind. Ragnarok DS may look and play very much like its online counterpart, but the sacrifices made to bring the game to a portable format wind up hamstringing the adventure. Taking the axe to a popular MMORPG and paring it down to fit on a handheld platform is risky business, particularly when the massively multiplayer online portion of the equation is what made the experience so enticing in the first place.
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March 2023
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