"Less Talk, More Action"

You're in a magic school. You and your five friends find out one day that your teacher is going on some kind of mission. Three months pass and she still hasn't returned. You and your friends discover some kind of rocket ships hidden in a closet. Oddly enough you steal the rockets (go figure). Next thing you know you're flying through space.

Sounds like the set up for a great game, right? Yes, it does. But sadly this games fails on many levels of play. It's really a chore to even pick it up.

Let's go from best to worst. The best part about this game is probably the battle system. It's fun and innovative, while still being easy to use and understand. At the start of the game you pick if you want to use white or black magic. How this affects you, I'll explain later. Each of your friends is the master of a certain element. There's earth, water, fire, wind, and grass. For each element there is a planet. The earth planet, the water planet, the wind planet, the grass planet, and the fire planet.

In the battle screen you have a little button you can press to show where all the planets are aligned from the sun. Shooting out from the sun there are beacons of different color lights. One for each element. If the elemental planet is bathed in it's color light then the person who controls that element gets a power boost. For example. If the water planet is in the blue light then the person who controls the water gets a power boost for there magic. Right now you might be thinking "What about the main character? You said you could be white or black magic." Well, there is a in-game day and night system in Magical Starsign. If you chose white magic you get a power boost during the day. If you chose black magic then you get a power boost during the night. The smart thing to do is just wait out the night, grab a snack, come back and it'll probably be day again. Or vice versa. But, I'm sad to say, this may very well be the only truly innovative and fun part of the game.

Next up on the list is the graphics. The graphics are your standard 2D DS graphics with some CGI thrown in for pizazz. Nothing really new or exciting here. It really is just your everyday stuff.

Next up on the list is the music. It's pretty bland and tasteless. The battle music is the same for everyone, random encounter or boss and gets really repetitive. The over worlds for the different planets are boring and lifeless once again adding to the mediocrity. There's nothing good about the music, but tons of stuff bad about it.

The controls in this game are also hopelessly frustrating. Everything you do is controlled by the touch screen. Well, I shouldn't say everything; you can use the control pad and the action buttons (A, B, X, Y) for movement on the overworld.But too talk you have to tap the character you want to talk too. I found myself pressing the A button a few times just to have me dash forward.

Also in battles everything was controlled by the stylus. Every little action was caused by tapping on the screen. The battle menu wasn't very stylus friendly either. They were really icons you had to hit with your stylus. I mean, if you're gonna make the whole game controlled by the stylus; atleast make the game stylus friendly. Please... think of the poorly coordinated...

Okay, here is the worst part of the whole game. The part that makes you want to scream in frustration and throw down your DS and never pick it up again. It's... the dialogue. No, I'm not exaggerating. This games dialogue is so bland and lifeless, I found myself looking away from the screen and watching TV or staring out the window while I was tapping away at the screen trying to get through the seemingly endless amounts of lifeless dialogue that kept popping on the screen. And it's useless! They normally tell you what you need to know in the first 2 sentences, but continue to drag it on and on and on and on. And the worst part is that they're always talking! You can hardly walk two steps without getting into another long monologue. This game is like 25% battles and 75% bland lifeless talk. It makes you want to scream. You want to take a sledge hammer to the dialogue department and smash them into a pulp.

On the topic of rent or buy- don't get. If you must have it rent it. You probably go insane within the first 2 hours.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 07/16/07, Updated 07/26/07