Lost Kingdoms

Battles are in Real time, where you summon creatures from within your cards, construct decks of thirty cards customized to your liking, with over 100 cards to find and an extra Two player head to head mode, where you can also pit your deck against a friends, this game has plenty to offer.

The graphics arent greatly impressive but they are sufficient, the locations tend to be varied enough but sometimes they can be a little bland. During fighting you can summon fairly large creatures to fight for you and the effects are all pretty nice, some more satisfying than others. Most of the time your will spend fairly zoomed out so wont notice much of the detail on levels, but if playing zoomed in it can look quite nice but you just cant see where you are going =). The main character has the most bizzare clothing that seems to defy gravity.

 

The sound is fine, the music isnt particularly varied but it suits the game well, and the sound effects are nice, with different sounds for each card, and the usual environmental sounds, such as flowing water and footsteps. Luckily enough none of the music is annoying or repetetive so it wont drive you insane =). Something lacking is speech for the characters, with the advent of larger storage I would have hoped for more dialog as their isnt that much text in the game, as it is all you will hear is an "ahh" and some japanese words.

 

The gameplay is pretty simple on the adventure side of things, just wander around clicking buttons, and opening chests, intermixed with occasional random fight sequences. During a fight sequence you run around summoning creature and casting spells by using cards. Your deck is randomized and you have four cards in your "hand" at once, you can discard cards by choice, cast one or use one to try and capture an enemy. Once the enemies are dealt with you simply continue on your way. Also objects are destroyed during the fight remain broken afterwards often opening new paths to hidden cards.

The main part of the game is customizing your deck for each mission, as you can only use 30 cards per mission you need to choose the best cards for the job. If you fail a mission or abort a mission you can simply try again but any items you have already collected do not reappear in the mission. You character doesnt actually level up in this but your cards gain experience and once they have enough they can be duplicated or transoformed into other cards so you can construct better decks. You can also "capture" enemy monsters and trap them in cards during a fight once you have weakened them.

 

The single player game is reasonably long and will keep you busy for a while, it also seems like it has some replay value in that you might want to collect all the cards. The main problem is that you cant renter a mission you have completed (until you have finished the game when all missions become available again), so its best to make sure you have explored everywhere before completing the mission, otherwise you will miss out hidden cards. As you can transform or buy most of the cards except perhaps some of the rare cards. It does have a 2 player mode, where 2 players can fight using their own decks and character from their copies of the game which has plenty of game options to help with fair game play, such as handicaps and banning certain cards. Judging from the fights against computer opponents in the single player game, the 2 player mode could either be great fun or just extremely annoying