Ragnarok is alive on the Nintendo DS; the popular MMO on the PC takes the adventure to the portable realm with a fresh story and refined controls. The world is in a time of peace and prosperity, unaware of a lingering evil that looks to take it by storm. A group working through means of scholarly research plots to resurrect a goddess through sacrifice and embody her soul in a fresh vessel. It is here where the adventure begins and our hero must rise to legend. GungHo brings this translation of Ragnarok to the DS with a three-party formation and real-time battle. Familiar monsters, environments and classes cram themselves into the DS cartridge for hours of offline gaming.
Gameplay expands with flexible character development, allowing status and skill points to gather as a player levels up. Job classes are there for players to spend points on or save for advancements after grinding to their next class. Skills and attacks are customizable across classes such as swordsman, hunter, magician or priest. The flexibility allows players to support their team through any battle that comes at them. Building on the momentum of the job class system, they’ve also thrown in armor and weapons -- upgradeable by blacksmiths -- and effect cards, dropped by enemies. As a portable package, Ragnarok DS strives to give players a taste of the MMO world it borrows from.
Control is a potentially major issue for any game; with the limited screen space on the DS, it means players cannot afford to have 20 windows layered while wandering the world. The control design works to offer a simple attack bar, using the stylus as the primary action tool. With this, everything is within reach -- conversations advance by it; team members take assignments with it, and attacks selections come with it. Those who feel like using the stylus for everything may navigate through each dungeon or forest by dragging it over the screen. Tactics are part of the game; supporting AI makes use of them to better aid players depending on their attack style, whether through healing or rushing, for example. The result is a sense of security.
In terms of action, we come to a struggle; while RPG games often suffer from some repetition, Ragnarok makes this prominent. The stylus control implementation is great for novice players to start learning from, but it lacks depth and will eat away at those with experience. Real-time battles are a welcome shift when performed in a way that supports a more detailed experience, but in Ragnarok, they are repetitious; players will be battling the same varieties of enemies at every corner, hoping to reach that next plateau. Even when reaching the Mirage Tower, the experience was lacking, and we found ourselves wanting something more. Instead of feeling the relief of having another player to take on the world with, there was just more grinding to be had. Without any bumps in the gameplay to shake up the experience, Ragnarok became stagnant, its flaws apparent.
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