Last summer Nippon Ichi Software announced two upcoming DS RPGs – Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure, and A Witch’s Tale – both slated to release that fall. While Rhapsody was released as planned, fall came and went with no sign of A Witch’s Tale. Now, a year later, the game is finally on store shelves in time for Halloween.

It makes sense that NIS announced these two games at the same time, as they’ve got a lot in common. Both RPGs seem to be created with young girls new to the genre in mind, with teen female lead characters, simplified game design, and an overall easier difficulty. Both even feature living dolls as the main character’s fighting party. But where Rhapsody used a traditional fantasy world as the setting for a musical love story, Witch’s Tale takes us to a Halloween-themed world where jack o’ lanterns, cemeteries, and vampires are commonplace.

Like many of Nippon Ichi’s titles (especially the Disgaea series), Witch’s Tale stars a loud-mouth bratty teen – in this case, the titular witch, Liddell. She’s bored with her magical schoolwork, and would much rather delve into forbidden dark witchcraft – because, as she puts it, “it’s totally hot right now.” So she sets out for the nearest foreboding castle, finds an ancient magical tome, and activates it, despite the warnings of the young vampire guarding the book. Wouldn’t you know it, the book’s magic releases the evil Eld Witch, who nearly destroyed the world a thousand years ago. With the help of the vampire, Loue, and her collection of magical dolls, it’s up to Liddell to save the seven kingdoms the Eld Witch has destroyed.

 
Though her quest starts in her own Halloween-themed world,
Liddell will travel to seven different kingdoms, like the candy-coated Rem Sacchras.

The game has drawn comparisons to Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas, and those are valid (especially when Liddell travels to the wintry Christmas world of Rem Boreas), but more than anything else the game takes inspiration from the literary classic Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland. You’ll run into characters like the Cheshire Cat, playing card guards, and Queen Alice, and Liddell even takes her name from the real-life girl who inspired the book. Overall the story is cute, with some snappy dialogue and a few chuckle-worthy jokes, but clichés abound, and anyone who’s played games or watched anime for any time at all will figure out where the story’s going long before the characters do.

The game follows the basic RPG formula – each kingdom is primarily made up of several maze-style dungeons, and at the end of each you’ll receive a key item necessary to progress in the story. Occasionally you’ll run into friendly characters you can talk to, but for the most part it’s just one dungeon after another. Dungeons are filled with destructible items like rocks or eggs, which can be broken by tapping them with the stylus. Sometimes these contain usable items, but more often they’re simply in your way. Since these usually require multiple taps each to break, and they respawn every time you re-enter an area, breaking your way through gets old very quick.

As you make your way through each dungeon you’ll be thrown into random enemy encounters. Like the rest of the game, battle sequences use touch-screen control exclusively, so fighting consists of touching the action you want to take (attack, magic, item, etc) and dragging it over the enemy or ally you want to use it on. It’s in the game’s battle sequences that it becomes obvious that the game was designed with RPG beginners in mind because fights are incredibly easy. Enemies do small amounts of damage to your characters and healing items are very common, so chances are good you’ll never see the ‘Game Over’ screen.

 
Combat is similar to the classic Dragon Quest style, with enemies lined up
on the upper screen and your team on the bottom one.

As easy as the game’s fights are, though, they still manage to be pretty frustrating. Enemies have loads of HP, so even when using your most powerful attacks it’ll take multiple rounds of combat to drop them. Each round of fighting goes very slowly, as every attack takes several seconds to animate and resolve, so even simple random encounters can take several minutes to complete. The game also isn’t very user-friendly when it comes to exploiting enemies’ elemental weaknesses – you’ll have to do so if you want to finish fights reasonably quick, but there’s no way to tell in-game what their weaknesses are aside from trying everything and seeing what works. The random encounter rate is also strangely sporadic; sometimes you’ll enter combat mere seconds after finishing the previous fight, and other times you’ll go minutes without seeing a bad guy.

If A Witch’s Tale has one thing going for it, it’s the presentation. The cute, gothic anime art may not be the most original, but it’s done with a good amount of charm and style. The 2D visuals are well-drawn, though there’s not much in the way of animation, especially during combat. The music is creepy and lighthearted, though at times it sounds like you’ve wandered into a Scooby Doo cartoon.

 
The graphics strike a balance between cute and spooky.

Witch’s Tale has style, and will likely draw a small fan base for that style, but at its core it’s simply not a very good RPG. Combat is too much of a grind to be any fun and exploring dungeons feels like a chore. While a worthwhile story could have made up for some gameplay deficiencies, it’s too derivative and predictable to hold your attention long. If you’re an absolute RPG neophyte and you really dig the art, you might enjoy following this witch’s tale. Otherwise, the DS has too many good RPGs for anyone to spend time on a lackluster one like this.

Gameplay: 5.5
This is as bare-bones as RPGs get. Explore a dungeon, fight some random battles, find an item that allows you to advance the story, rinse, repeat. Some games can take that basic formula and elevate it through smart design; Witch’s Tale combines irritating exploration with slow, boring fights to create a game few will want to slog through.

Graphics: 7.5
The visual style is one thing the game has going for it. Cute yet macabre characters, enemies, and locales to explore keep things interesting to look at even when the gameplay frustrates. Too bad there’s so little in the way of animation.

Sound: 7.7
The music fits the visuals and the tone of the game world, with upbeat horror-style tunes. Anyone who played the SNES classic Zombies Ate My Neighbors will be reminded of that game when they listen to A Witch’s Tale.

Difficulty: Easy
Your characters have huge HP reserves, enemies do little damage, and healing items are in ready supply. Beating the game is less a matter of skill and more about endurance. If you’ve got the gumption to keep going through the slow fights, chances are good you’ll beat the game without ever dying.

Concept: 7.5
Making an RPG with genre beginners in mind is a good idea, and the art and style are a good match to a game aimed at kids interested in all things cute yet spooky.

Overall: 6.3
This is a classic case of style over substance. If you know a young DS owner who shops at Hot Topic, they’d probably get a kick out of the story and art – but don’t expect the subpar gameplay to turn them into an RPG fan.