Trauma Center: Under the Knife 2 (DS)

Trauma Center: Under the Knife 2 is the sequel to 2005's Under the Knife, which introduced the world to the amazing Dr. Derek Stiles and a deadly infection concocted by a crazed terrorist group hell-bent on destroying humanity. Many puzzle fans couldn't put the game down despite its outrageous plot and painful difficulty, and the sequel is just as addictive. Though you'll still spend time fighting fictional diseases spread by bioterrorism, Under the Knife 2 is such an exceptional medical-themed puzzler that you'll forget the game's absurdity as you're sucked in by its consuming gameplay.

The game recasts you as Derek Stiles and opens in Costigar, a fictional African state attempting to recover from decades of brutal civil war. It has been three years since the eradication of GUILT, the man-made infection crafted by terrorists, and though it has been successfully treated worldwide, it seems that those who had previously suffered from the disease have developed new symptoms, prompting Derek to return to the United States to contend with new strains.

Gameplay in Under the Knife 2 proceeds in much the same fashion as in the original, and operations play out in chapter episodes after a cutscene provides the appropriate backdrop. Before each operation, you're given a patient briefing and a surgical objective by your assistant, after which the standard five-minute time limit appears and the patient's life is in your hopefully very steady hands. You work externally to internally, making incisions with the scalpel, removing foreign objects with the forceps, and coating the patient's wounds in the strongest antibacterial gel ever created. You complete an operation by fixing whatever ails the patient and are awarded a rank according to how quickly and effectively you work.

Though it sounds simple enough, operations in Under the Knife 2 quickly intensify because the fast-paced procedures require you to tackle multiple tasks simultaneously; the difficulty comes not in any one procedure's complexity but in the speed with which you need to perform it as you struggle to stabilize a patient's vitals while feverishly sucking out pools of pus and zapping tumors. This hectic push for speed is the game's high point and significantly increases an operation's difficulty--since the slightest slip of the hand damages a patient's vitals. Fortunately Derek has a healing touch ability, which appears to slow time as he moves faster than an infection can progress. You'll also receive clear verbal cues about your next procedure from your assistant, which is a blessing when a patient's condition is spiraling out of control and you're clueless as to what to do next.

If you've spent any time at all with the Trauma Center series, then the game's standard tool offering won't surprise you; in fact, most of the tools are identical to those in the original game and function similarly, with the exception of the defibrillator, which comes in handy when patients go into cardiac arrest. You drain disgusting bodily fluids by drawing the stylus up from the target pool, stitch up gaping wounds by zigzagging the stylus across them, and make clean incisions with the scalpel by following the dotted line. Any sloppy suturing isn't likely to get you chastised, but Under the Knife 2 is more of a fast-paced puzzler than a straight medical simulation, and the mixture of both elements makes the game incredibly fun and addictive. The surprising amount of operation variety is also refreshing considering the plot's heavy focus on the new GUILT; you'll do an organ transplant, extract fragmented bones in the dark, inject color-coded serum into bacteria, and even play laser tag with giant moving tumors.

Atlus took Under the Knife's strongest criticism to heart when designing its sequel, forgoing a single punishing difficulty level for three difficulty modes. You can adjust these for individual chapters, which should make the game accessible to anyone intimidated by the original game's insane difficulty. You'll still end up repeating a fair number of operations, even on normal mode, but the additional settings make it possible for you to do so without pulling your hair out, which is a welcome improvement.

The game's presentation is similar to its predecessor's; the instructions, time limit, and stage score are displayed on the top screen, and the operation field is on the bottom. Patient models are in 3D and feature comparatively more-realistic organs and wounds, while the game's 2D anime style has been toned down a bit so that characters look less comical. With that said, their dialogue is still ridiculously melodramatic at times, complete with "I'm a doctor!" and "Pull yourself together!" lines. The music is very quick and upbeat, with great tunes supplied during key operations that are sure to get your blood pumping. Minimal voice work is also provided to emphasize important plot segments.

Under the Knife 2's only flaw is that it feels a bit light on content, offering only 38 operations that take a few minutes each to play through. You won't necessarily complete them all first time, of course, but even allowing for failed attempts and lengthy cutscenes it shouldn't take you more 15 hours or so to beat the game. Finishing the game does grant you access to "confidential" operations, but these are set on extreme difficulty, leaving those who shied away from the hard setting woefully unprepared for the challenges ahead. Even with these bonus operations the game still feels padded, containing entire episodes without operations that amount to little more than lengthy dialogue filler. There's some replay value at least, since the ranking system encourages you to repeat past surgeries to increase your score. All in all, Trauma Center: Under the Knife 2 successfully blends a creative medical theme with bizarre but fun puzzle gameplay to create an addictive treat.

Final Fantasy IV (DS)

More than 15 years ago, SquareSoft shocked the world with its masterpiece Final Fantasy II (which was actually the fourth game in the series but only the second released in North America). For the first time, console role-players weren't given a few generic heroes and charged with stopping the evil wizard and saving the world; instead, they were introduced to a wide assortment of realistic characters who struggled with complex adult issues such as love, hate, honor, duty, betrayal, and redemption. Now, this epic saga has been entirely remade in 3D on the Nintendo DS, and whether Cecil, Kain, and Rosa are new faces or old friends, this is one adventure that you shouldn't miss.

Cecil is a man with a dilemma. Though bound by his duty as the lord captain of the Red Wings of Baron to serve his king and country, his conscience is heavy with the sins that he is committing in their name. The formerly loving and caring king who took Cecil in as a child and taught him the ways of the dark sword has become a sinister and greedy tyrant who covets the sacred crystals of the world for reasons unknown. Upon returning from a mission to Baron's friendly neighbor Mysidia, in which Cecil and his men were forced to steal one of the crystals like common thugs, he finally dares to question his king's motives. For his insubordination, Cecil is stripped of his rank and sent on an errand north to the village of Mist, where his destiny is revealed to him and his journey of atonement begins.

Throughout his quest, Cecil is joined by a number of intriguing characters: Kain, his best friend and a dragoon of considerable skill; Rosa, his lady love, who became a white mage to support him on the frontlines; Rydia, a summoner capable of calling the legendary Eidolons (referred to as summon monsters in other games) to her aid; Tellah, a revenge-driven sage who's forgotten more than most have learned; and many more. Together, they represent some of the most diverse and thoroughly fleshed-out characters in the long history of the Final Fantasy series. Standing on the other end of the spectrum across a sea of monsters is the sinister Golbez, a larger-than-life mastermind of evil clad in full body armor as black as night. His lieutenants, the four elemental archfiends, are equally memorable, particularly the urbane Rubicante, who insists on healing your wounds before doing battle with you so that you can fight him with all your might.

Golbez and his goons may have most of the cards, but that doesn't mean that Cecil and his pals don't have an ace or two up their sleeves. Each of the characters that make up your party have a set class that they grow more powerful in as they gain levels. Each class has its own unique abilities, such as the dark knight's darkness, which casts a self-buff that doubles damage for a few turns at the price of the wielder's own HP, or the sage's recall, which randomly casts an otherwise unavailable high-level spell. Though class-specific abilities aren't anything new, in this DS remake you now have the power to customize your characters by giving them additional abilities called augments. Augments can be found throughout the world, given to you by leaving party members, or even stolen from certain enemies, and they can do everything from passively increasing stats such as HP and MP to granting class-specific abilities like darkness or recall to normally nonqualifying characters. If you look hard enough, you may even be able to learn the abilities of the elemental archfiends, such as Cagnazzo's tsunami attack.

If you're willing to put the time into experimenting with augments, you will uncover a slew of powerful combinations that just may give you the edge you need--and you'll need all the help you can get because the difficulty in this iteration of Final Fantasy IV has been increased tremendously. A majority of the bosses require very specific strategies to defeat, and the uninformed will likely perish several times in these encounters before they grasp how to claim victory. Even if you're a seasoned veteran who knows all of the tricks, don't expect things to be simple; some bosses have changed just enough to throw you off of your game, and all of them are a lot tougher than you remember. By the end of the game, even the normal monsters found in random battles are tough enough to wipe the floor with a superpowered party of heroes if they're unprepared.

Besides the radical addition of the ability to customize your party, several other minor gameplay tweaks have been made. The characters in your party now share their thoughts with you on the menu screen, offering personal anecdotes and potentially helpful advice about the current situation. An entirely new quest line featuring Namingway--a moogle-like wanderer who in the original version was satisfied with renaming your characters when asked to--has been added, in which Namingway renames himself as he tries out a number of different professions with humorous results. Finally, Rydia receives a unique new Eidolon named Whyt that can be completely customized by conversing with Fat Chocobo, who fans will likely remember as a bank for extra-item storage (that service is no longer necessary because the item cap has been removed). Through Fat Chocobo, you can customize Whyt's appearance, assign him an assortment of attacks, level up his various stats by participating in touch-screen-heavy minigames, and even battle your friend's incarnations of Whyt in one-on-one matches via local DS wireless.

However, outside of Whyt's minigames, there isn't much going on with the touch screen. When not in battle, the bottom screen is occupied by an area map that automatically fills as you explore dungeons, and it's possible to navigate your party around the world by manipulating the stylus. At most other times, the touch screen is nonfunctional. Thankfully, the button controls are very effective, and so it's generally best to not even try to mess around with your stylus.

Final Fantasy IV is easily among the best-looking 3D games on the Nintendo DS. The heavily stylized characters are impressively expressive, from the manner in which Cecil broods as he reflects on his guilt to the way that Rydia hops up and down and waves her hands to get your attention at a shop when you find something that she can equip. Now that dungeons are rendered in three dimensions, there is a vast sense of size and depth (particularly in the final dungeon) that wasn't previously there, and it makes your journey seem that much more awe-inspiring and epic. As part of the new graphical update, key moments of the game are shown off in cinematic-style cutscenes, many of which are accompanied by full voice acting for the characters. Unfortunately, as excited as series fans may be to finally hear Cecil speak, the voice acting is actually the game's weakest point. Some voices seem completely out of character or introduce unnecessary melodrama.

Although it has been rereleased several times throughout the years, this full remake of one of the most celebrated stories in video game history is in many ways more poignant and impressive than it was all those years ago, despite minor irks with the voice acting. With a cast of memorable characters and villains, a more accurate and authentic translation, a new skill-customization system, and a few important new story elements that help to better explain key plot points, this is the definitive version of Final Fantasy IV that everyone should experience.

Arkanoid DS (DS)

In the beginning there was Pong. Then there was Breakout, and 10 years later there was Arkanoid. Taito's bat-and-ball block breaker first appeared in arcades more than 20 years ago, and in the years since it has graced numerous home computers and consoles. Arkanoid DS, which comes to North America and Europe minus the paddle controller that it was bundled with in Japan last year, introduces a handful of new features to the Arkanoid mix but thankfully doesn't do anything that's detrimental to the classic gameplay. Multiplayer options, new power-ups, unlockable audio and visual options, and the objective-based Quest mode make Arkanoid DS easy to recommend. The lack of a paddle (you can import one) is disappointing and the D-pad option is best avoided, but the stylus works just fine.

Arkanoid's traditional Clear mode should be the first one you check out, given that visiting levels there unlocks them for use in the new Quest mode. Taking the controls of the Vaus (that's the name of your bat at the bottom of the screen--it's actually a spaceship), Clear mode tasks you with destroying every block in a level using a ball (some kind of sci-fi energy projectile, no doubt) that rebounds off of everything it touches without ever losing momentum. You keep the ball alive by using your bat to prevent it from falling into the bottom of the screen, and the longer it takes you to hit all of the blocks, the faster the ball gets. Previous incarnations of Arkanoid worked like pinball in that losing a ball was the same as losing a life, and anytime that happened you just launched the next one until you ran out. Arkanoid DS does things a little differently: You get only one ball, ever, and if you lose it then it's game over. A number of energy barriers that span the bottom of the screen make it impossible for your ball to drop early on, but if you use one you lose one, so starting every level with three barriers means that you get three lives. You might think that having that many lives for every level makes Arkanoid DS too easy, but considering that the game doesn't stop or slow down when you hit a barrier, the real difference between this and previous games is just that this one keeps you playing at a more brisk pace.

Clear mode consists of 28 worlds arranged in an inverted pyramid shape. Each world is made up of five levels, and your goal is to get from the bottom of the pyramid to the top by taking any route you please. Every world that you beat along the way unlocks two new worlds, and by the time you get to the last row, you can end the game with any of seven different worlds. Given that they consist entirely of square bricks, level designs in Arkanoid DS are rarely much to look at, but occasionally the bricks are arranged to create pictures of everyday objects or recognizable characters from classic Taito games. Additional variety and challenge come in the form of blocks that take two hits to destroy, blocks that move, and blocks that simply get in the way because they can't be destroyed at all. Some of the level designs are truly fiendish toward the end of Clear mode, and many are designed in such a way that even power-ups don't help much. For example, equipping your Vaus with lasers is no help at all if the blocks that you need to shoot are hiding behind an indestructible wall. Other power-ups in Arkanoid DS include a longer Vaus, multiball, additional barriers, a powerball that can plow through multiple blocks, and more.

The same 140 levels from Clear mode appear in Quest mode, but there's no map to navigate, and you can attempt to complete them in any order you like. Rather than tasking you with clearing every block in a level, Quest mode hits you with level-specific objectives that must be completed either within a time limit or without hitting the ball more than a specific number of times. For example, you might have to clear all yellow blocks from a level within 45 seconds, or destroy 10 blocks while only hitting the ball three times. Objectives like these force you to play quite differently, and they're a great way to hone your skills before you check out the multiplayer options.

Arkanoid DS supports both local wireless and online play for up to four people (using friend codes or random matchmaking) in two different modes, and one copy of the game is all that you need to play with up to three friends locally. Bust All mode is a race to see who can clear a level first, whereas Bust Color mode is a race to see who can destroy all of the blocks of a specified color. The levels that you play on are randomly selected from all that the game has to offer, and you can keep an eye on your opponents while playing via small thumbnail images that appear alongside your own play area. Multiplayer games play out in the same way that single-player games do, except that any negative power-ups (power-downs, if you prefer) that you collect are passed on to your opponents. Shrinking other players' bats and slowing their balls are perhaps the most obvious ways to upset them, but multiplayer-specific pickups, such as one that randomly drops a handful of additional blocks on opponents' screens, are also worth pursuing.

Regardless of whether you're playing solo or multiplayer, you're rewarded for almost everything that you do in Arkanoid DS with points that serve as currency in the game's shop. Items for sale include new background music, new sound effects, new block and Vaus graphics, and new artwork for the backdrop. None of the unlockables impact the gameplay, and the additional audio options aren't nearly as agreeable as the default setting, which combines electro music with sound effects straight out of the '80s. But, if you've always dreamed of playing Arkanoid on a leopard-skin backdrop, with a Vaus made of wood along with blocks that look like Space Invaders, now you can.

There's more than enough fun to be had with Arkanoid DS to justify its budget price tag, and the multiplayer content and online leaderboards that compare your performances in the single-player Clear mode ensure that there's no shortage of replay value if you're the competitive type. Arkanoid was a great game in 1986 and it's still a great game in 2008. Arkanoid DS is even better. If you have any interest whatsoever in destroying blocks with a bat and ball, you won't be disappointed.

The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass (Nintendo DS)

It's kind of shocking when you think about it, but despite the Nintendo DS's nearly three-year lifespan, The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass is the first Zelda game to hit the system. The good news is that it was worth the wait. Phantom Hourglass is essentially a sequel to the GameCube Zelda adventure The Wind Waker. It retains the art style, surrounding world, and plot of that game, but it revamps the mechanics for DS use. The result is a game that is unmistakably Zelda, with its perilous dungeons, tricky puzzles, and engaging boss battles; at the same time, Phantom Hourglass is a unique and innovative entry in the series due largely to its exclusively touch-screen-based control scheme. Everything you do in the game involves taps and swipes of the stylus, from traditional fights and puzzles, to new and specialized functions that really change the way you think about playing a Zelda game.

Phantom Hourglass picks up almost directly where Wind Waker left off. Link is sailing the high seas with his pirate pals, including Tetra, who has forsaken her Zelda namesake and returned to her roguish ways. At the moment, the crew is on the hunt for a fabled ghost ship, one that purportedly contains a great treasure but also has a nasty habit of making people disappear. Of course, the ship magically appears, and Tetra bounds off to search it. Unfortunately, a shrill scream signals that something's gone wrong, and the ghost ship departs into a thicket of fog. Link leaps after it but ends up in the drink, and he eventually washes up on the shore of a populated island. This is how the game explains away the absence of Link's abilities and items, despite the fact that the game takes place just after Wind Waker chronologically.

Upon awakening on the island, you're greeted by an amnesiac fairy who takes you to a kindly old man who explains a thing or two regarding the ghost ship. Though he warns you away from getting into such business, minutes later you've got a sword in your hand and you're learning the basics of combat. Not that there's a ton to learn, mind you. To make a Zelda game on the DS work, the control mechanics have been simplified to rely only on taps and movements via the stylus on the touch screen. Moving Link requires you to simply drag the stylus in the direction you want to go. You tap an enemy to lunge at it with a slash, do a quick swiping movement to execute a broader slash, and draw circles around Link to perform the spin attack. You also have the ability to roll by drawing small circles at the opposite end of the screen. All of this sounds pretty simple and works about as well as you'd hope, apart from a few moments when you may roll in the wrong direction (and off a cliff), or accidentally slash something when you're just trying to turn around. However, most of these small gaffes are relatively harmless, and by and large, the responsiveness of the controls is spot-on.

The game probably wouldn't be very interesting if all you did was run around and tap on bad guys to kill them. Fortunately, there's a great deal more to it than that. Apart from your basic sword combat, you'll also find yourself messing around with some other DS-centric mechanics, like blowing or shouting into the microphone for various reasons. Additionally, you will pick up many of Link's trademark items throughout the game--such as bombs, bombchus (which are little mobile bombs that scurry around), the bow and arrow, the boomerang, and the hookshot--and you'll often have to use them to set up various enemies for the kill. These items behave just as you remember them, though with a number of DS-specific mechanical twists that give them whole new life. For instance, with the boomerang, you can now draw with the stylus the path you want it to take. The same goes for bombchus, who will follow your exact drawn path to any target. The hookshot can be used like normal to help Link leap across open crevices, as a tightrope to walk between two ledges, and as a slingshot to launch Link across wide gaps or repel enemy fire.

These items all tie directly into the game's dungeon and puzzle design. Though not as markedly complex as some of Link's previous adventures, Phantom Hourglass contains several challenging and fun dungeons to traipse through, all of which contain a number of tricky puzzles that require some creative item usage. Experienced Zelda fans may find Phantom Hourglass' dungeons to be less of an endeavor than other games in the series, simply because these dungeons don't rely as heavily on elaborate bouts of backtracking and generally aren't enormous in size. That doesn't mean the dungeons aren't fun to solve, mind you. They might not be quite as epic as other Zelda games, but there are plenty of engaging and periodically perplexing puzzles to solve along the way, as well as some truly exciting boss battles that often make stellar use of both screens on the DS.

Dungeons would probably be even tougher to deal with if it weren't for the fact that you can now write notes and draw pathways on your dungeon maps. It sounds like a small addition at first, but as you play, you'll discover it's actually one of the most revolutionary features in a Zelda game since, well, ever. Simply being able to sketch pathways over invisible platforms and keep a detailed track of which doors you've hit, which switches need to be hit in what order, and the like, is a huge boon and eliminates a lot of aimless wandering from the equation.

Interestingly enough, you get your dungeon and island maps from the very moment you step foot in or on them, though you do have to track down sea charts to open up new areas of the world. Given that this is a Wind Waker sequel, you will be doing a fair amount of sailing from island to island, but unlike Wind Waker, it's not quite as involved a process. You simply draw a route on your map, and the ship sails there automatically. Over time you'll gain a cannon to fight off sea creatures and pirates (and the occasional sea monster boss) as well as a grappling arm to salvage treasure. Picking up treasure is actually a minigame in itself, in that you have to guide the arm down to the depths and back again without hitting mines that are scattered about.

Sailing was the big thing that some folks felt dragged down Wind Waker significantly. It's much easier and less time-consuming here, so that issue is pretty much nonexistent. However, that doesn't mean the game is totally devoid of pacing problems. The main culprit is the Temple of the Ocean King, the very first dungeon you enter, and one that you will have to come back to several times throughout the game. It's not a bad dungeon by itself, and in fact is probably the most overtly challenging of them all due to the fact that the phantoms that walk its halls are invincible and the temple itself will literally suck the life out of you. To make it through, you need to stand in a safe spot or have the Phantom Hourglass handy (an item that protects you for as long as there is sand at the top of the glass).

The problem is that each time you come back, you have to bust through the same levels you beat the previous time around to get to the next section of the temple. Items you acquire later in the game, such as bombs and the hookshot, make getting around a bit easier on subsequent visits, and at the halfway mark of the game, you do get a save point that lets you bypass the first half of the temple and skip down to the second half. Regardless, you'll still be replaying those later levels as the game goes on. It's just one of those tedious things that feel like artificial lengthening of the game more than anything else.

Nevertheless, apart from that one fault, Phantom Hourglass' main quest is a deeply engaging adventure that gives you plenty to do throughout. You can probably finish the quest in about 14-15 hours if you don't hunt around for all the various uncharted islands and sunken treasure chests scattered about the world, but you should, because there's some neat stuff to find.

Once you're done with the game, there is actually a multiplayer mode you can check out. If you ever played Pac-Man vs. on the GameCube (or, more recently, on the DS in Namco Museum DS), this mode might seem slightly familiar to you. One player controls Link, and the opponent has control over several phantoms that can be guided by drawing paths for them with the stylus. Link has to try to collect as many triforce shards as he can and bring them to his base, though he slows down considerably while carrying shards. If a phantom reaches him, his turn is up, but if he reaches a safe zone, the phantoms lose sight of him. This goes back and forth with players taking turns on each side for multiple rounds, and the player with the most shards at the end wins. It's not a spectacular mode by any means, but it's amusing enough as a distraction, and it can be played online against players worldwide. In the few games we tried against mostly Japanese players, performance seemed quite solid, with no noticeable lag.

The graphics, on the other hand, are extremely noticeable. It might be hard to believe that Nintendo would be able to shrink down a game as gorgeous-looking as The Wind Waker, but that's just what it has done here for the DS. Of course, some sacrifices have been made. Character models aren't quite as sharp or colorful, and the world itself isn't nearly as large. But you still inhabit a sizeable world, and everything in it looks spectacular. From the goofy animations and facial expressions of the characters, to the beautiful scenery as you sail around the ocean, this is top-tier work as far as graphics and artistic design on the DS are concerned. One thing to note is that when you're wandering through islands and dungeons, everything is handled with a sort of top-down perspective, not unlike some of the older Zelda games. All the characters and environments are 3D, but the fixed camera angle does a great job of framing the action.

There isn't any voice acting in Phantom Hourglass, but you do get plenty of funny and enjoyable text dialogue to read through. There are lots of memorable characters in the game, and the lack of voice samples isn't much of a hindrance because the expressions on their faces and the great dialogue get the point across. The soundtrack isn't exactly the most memorable of all Zelda scores, but there are plenty of familiar-sounding tunes to accompany each sequence that fans are sure to appreciate.

Ultimately, The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass is a superb effort and pretty much what you would want from a first entry in the series on the DS. It's got a few pacing problems, and those who demand traditional control schemes will probably be turned off by this game's control methodology. But really, even if you're convinced you hate the notion of touch-screen controls, you owe it to yourself to give this game a try. Phantom Hourglass implements its control mechanics so seamlessly into the standard Zelda game design that it's hard to imagine anyone not appreciating it on some level. There are few games on the DS that take advantage of the touch-screen technology as well as Phantom Hourglass does. It's a must-play for any DS owner.

Heroes of Mana (Nintendo DS)

Heroes of Mana is not the first Nintendo DS game to employ PC-style real-time strategy mechanics, but it's the first one to do it so thoroughly. There's a solid basis for a game in here, wrapped up with a terrific and sensible interface that RTS newcomers will pick up quickly. Veterans will also appreciate its simplicity and versatility. However, it can be a frequent disaster, drowning its lofty aspirations in a deluge of appalling unit pathfinding. The bizarre and unbalanced multiplayer setup will also turn off anyone looking to experience it with a friend. You may find some fun here and there, but the game tries its best to hide it from you.

Of course, this is a Mana game, so even though the gameplay is nothing like previous games in the series, fans will still enjoy the references and familiar creatures. Rabites and the elemental spirits alike have a role to play, so if you were worried about the new gameplay direction, you can at least hold onto them. The story isn't particularly engaging, but it's pleasant enough. It sends your rebel adventurers down a bleak path, only to gradually restore hope to them when all seems lost. While the narrative is fine, the frequency with which it intrudes upon gameplay is annoying. You'll have to tap your way through dialogue multiple times in each mission, which is a reminder of the series' role-playing roots, but it's a frequent frustration and a blow to the game's already inconsistent pace.

As in most RTS games, you need to collect resources (in this instance, gaia stones and treant fruit) and create structures to churn out battle units. Your base is a mobile airship, so it can move about the battlefield, but it must be fastened to an anchor point on the map to produce units and collect resources. Rather than buildings placed on the map proper, structures are contained within your base itself. Once you have enough stone, you simply enter your ship and choose the structure you want to build. Once the upgrade is complete, all you have to do is select the structure and choose which units you want to create, and then they pop right out.

These traditional mechanics are held together nicely by an intuitive interface that makes it easy to create units and move about the map. Gameplay takes place on the touch screen, so giving an order is as simple as touching a unit and choosing a destination. You can also issue group orders, either by tapping an icon at the bottom of the screen that chooses all similar units or by drawing a circle around the units you want to command. Getting around the map is likewise a breeze. You can use the D pad for free-form scrolling, but Heroes' best feature is its screen flipping. Tapping an icon swaps the top screen's minimap with the touch screen's gameplay map. You can then choose a destination on the minimap and swap the main map back onto the touch screen to give orders. This system makes it simple to order units around and to move quickly to skirmishes in progress.

But if issuing commands is quick and easy, getting your units to go where you ask is almost impossible. Heroes of Mana features the worst, most broken system of unit pathfinding ever devised. The map is actually a grid that comprises invisible squares, so units don't move freely toward their destination; they take an insane route based on what squares are available at the time the command is issued. The resulting stupidity may induce tears. If you build enough units at once, they will all crowd around your base until you give them an order, which keeps your gatherer units from returning resources. If a nearby square is already occupied when you issue a command, the unit will brainlessly take a route that sends it to the far reaches of the map, directly into enemy territory. To make it even worse, many of the maps have ramps, walkways, and other features that ground units must traverse to reach their objective. On those maps, you'll watch in agony as groups of units scatter, get stuck, or simply go nowhere because the game is incapable of finding a way to get them there.

Other development miscalculations also take their toll. In each battle, you choose a number of hero units to lead the way. Yet even with the various loot and spells you can equip them with, they're incredibly vulnerable. More often than not, you'll simply keep them out of the action, lest you lose the one that ends your mission. Pace is also a major factor, because units move…so…slowly. Yet other design elements are obviously designed to keep things moving. Resource nodes have very little for you to gather, forcing you to spread out quickly, and missions can be completed within 20 minutes or so. Therefore, the tempo feels really off; it's as if developer Brownie Brown decided to extend the game's length by slowing the units down.

Nevertheless, as shoddy as these elements are, Heroes of Mana has some nice things going for it. The balance between ranged, ground, air, and heavy units is simple but solid, so you should always be able to counter any given attack with the right unit. Elemental spirits, which let you unleash imposing assaults on your unsuspecting foes, are nice supplements, as are the accompanying cutscenes. The production values are terrific too. Maps and units are colorful, while the touch screen is often overflowing with the explosions of battle, as well as the clockwork movement of gatherers. The sound effects are fine, if a bit tinny, but the soundtrack is lovely and the perfect complement to the fantasy visuals.

In addition to the campaign, you can take on a friend locally, provided that he or she has a copy of the game. This is your chance to play as the Peddan army, Heroes' second faction. As you can guess, playing against a buddy is more fun than playing against the artificial intelligence, but it's too bad that the basic multiplayer design is completely moronic. Both players are required to unlock heroes, units, structures, and maps in the campaign before they can be accessed in multiplayer. This ties your multiplayer tech tree to your progress in the single-player game, which means that unless both you and your opponent have completed the campaign, the match will be totally lopsided. Not only does it limit your map and unit choices, but it annihilates the most important element inherent to RTS multiplayer: balance.

You may occasionally find yourself enjoying Heroes of Mana in spite of its shortcomings. At the very least, it confirms that RTS works on the DS. Sadly, vital aspects of its strategy gameplay are deeply flawed, which leaves you wondering what could have been if these major issues had been corrected. It's a step in the right direction, but it's a tiny, tiny step.

Glory Days 2 (Nintendo DS)

Glory Days 2, the sequel to a Game Boy Advance game that was released here in the US as Super Army War, whips together a light blend of 2D side-scrolling shooter action, tactical combat, and modern real-time strategy convention into something that feels simultaneously unique and familiar. For the most part, the action and the strategy are never terribly taxing, but the constant juggle between deploying units, capturing bunkers, rescuing civilians, and raining death from above onto enemy forces keeps the game constantly engaging.

The loose narrative, which sees you fighting as a procession of pilots fighting different wars during different eras, is driven by written correspondence between your soldier and his loved ones back home. There's a natural quality to the writing in the letters, which see the characters go through a range of emotions as they progress from mission to mission. They share feelings of dread, longing for home, a steeled determination to do what's right, and anecdotes about their day-to-day lives and their comrades. There are occasions of overly politicized heavy-handedness over the cost of war and the relative value of the opinions of those who aren't on the frontlines, but for the most part it's a disarmingly effective device.

Though you'll fight across sandy beaches, snowy mountains, the sun-bleached desert, lush plains, and city streets, the battlefield in Glory Days 2 is invariably a long, flat, horizontal stretch of road. At either end, you'll find your base, as well as your enemy's base. In between you'll find bunkers, gunner positions, and civilians caught in the middle of your military quagmire. Depending on the mission, you have direct control over either a plane or a helicopter, and which one you're given has a significant impact on the feel of the mission. Both have air-to-air artillery and air-to-ground payloads. The planes benefit from speed and a certain maneuverability, while the choppers can change direction more easily, can be landed in the middle of the battlefield to rescue civilians, and can be used to pick up soldiers at your base and deploy them in the field. Their relative flexibility end up making the chopper missions inherently more fun.

Rescuing civilians--be it by chopper or ambulance--and deploying troops on the battlefield are important, because civilians that you're able to pluck from the field and shepherd to safety translate directly into cash, and troops can take up position inside empty bunkers, which provide a regular revenue stream. All of this cash is then used to deploy troops, tanks, antiaircraft jeeps, and ambulances, and your ground forces are key to victory. While you're flying overhead, bombing enemy-held bunkers and the never-ending procession of enemy vehicles, your ground forces are marching along, engaging whatever enemy forces happen to be coming from the opposite direction. You're essentially fighting a huge, militarized game of tug-of-war, and victory is invariably had by pushing enemy forces all the way back to their base on the other side of the field, and destroying it.

Though you'll be focusing on the air unit that you have direct control over on the top screen, you've got several good tools to keep you abreast of the situation elsewhere on the battlefield. A distilled map of the battlefield makes it easy to figure out, at a glance, your forces' progress on the battlefield, your current position, and which bunkers are controlled by which army, while the lower screen tracks whatever units are on your frontlines. It's easy to deploy units on the fly, and once they're on the ground, you don't really need to worry about them again. They'll just truck along, doing what they're programmed to do. The game will also deploy troops and vehicles for you automatically, should you get too caught up in the action, though if you neglect any one part of the game for too long, you will invariably find yourself overwhelmed. When you know the strengths and weaknesses of your units, you'll find specific deployment patters that help increase their survival rates. Even then, a huge percentage of your units invariably end up as cannon fodder, and it's not uncommon to deploy several hundred units over the course of a mission.

As you progress through the game, you'll gain access to special attacks like air strikes, as well as more advanced military hardware. At the same time, your enemy's units will get stronger, faster, and smarter, and while it can be a challenge, it never really becomes unmanageable. The biggest shortcoming in Glory Days 2 is the relative brevity of the campaign, which can be torn through in a few hours. There are other ways to play, including a skirmish mode where you can define an incredible number of variables, and a local multiplayer mode that supports up to eight players at once, but it's hard not to wish the campaign would keep going for at least a little while longer.

There are shades of Advance Wars to the presentation in Glory Days 2, specifically in the way it depicts anime-style soldiers fighting in a violent but oddly bloodless war, but the overall tone here is much more somber and serious. The soundtrack consists of just a few huge, sweepingly righteous orchestral compositions that bring an unflinching grandeur to your constant march toward victory. The look of the units errs toward realistic, though the generally zoomed-out camera perspective keeps you from seeing too much detail. Where the visuals really shine are in the environments, which are packed with detail and a number of scrolling background layers that provide a level of depth that almost rivals actual 3D graphics. Touches like the way you can see wind whipping past you as you speed across the battlefield, nice-looking weather effects, and the odd scan-line flicker of night vision when you're fighting in the dark bring a sense of heightened realism to the visuals.

As commonplace as the components are, Glory Days 2 adroitly assembles them into something pretty rare. It's lamentable that the campaign is as short as it is, but it's not enough to keep the rest of the game's unique charms from shining through.