Nostalgia review

Gameplay in Nostalgia is split into three distinct phases: you’re either in a town gathering equipment for your party, upgrades for your airship or clues from NPC’s so you can progress in the story, fighting in an airship on your way to your next location, or fighting on the ground inside of a cave, dungeon, ruin, jungle, and so on. Walking around town is pretty standard stuff–there’s usually a person or persons you have to go see, and once you do the game unlocks the next event or cutscene so you know it’s time to go.

You will spend a lot of time in your airship, as it’s your primary method of transportation. Why walk to the pyramids from Cairo when you can fly there, after all? Airship travel is split into three sections: low, medium and high altitudes. Low altitudes only let you get to a small subset of the world map, due to mountains and clouds that are in your way. Medium altitude lets you fly over all but the highest peaks, but you won’t be able to cross the ocean due to clouds and storms. High altitude lets you fly over everything though, and grants you access to the entire world map. Each level unlocks with upgrades to your airship that come via the storyline, and also brings with it much more difficult airship battles. The cautious among you can travel in low altitude as long as the mountains won’t get in your way, but those of you desperate for money, XP and skill points will want to hit up the high altitude air battles for a real challenge with worthwhile benefits.

Battles in the air require ever-changing strategy as well. Enemies come at you from the front and sides, and can change position during the battle. You have four weapons at your disposal, with one of your characters (and their Magic Points) controlling one a piece. Eddie grabs the blade attached to the front of your ship, Pad the guns, Melody the cannons, and Fiona the magic orbs. Each of these weapons attacks a specific side of the ship better than the others, though as you progress those sides may change, or you may equip a weapon that can attack all sides with equal success. To start though, blades work best going forward, guns to the side, cannons are a bit of a mix, and orbs attack well to the front.

Characters also learn airship-specific spells and skills that mirror some of their traditional battle ones–for instance, Fiona will learn spells to repair the airship, while Melodie will be able to attack enemies with a blast of magic fire from her cannons.

You will spend a lot of time in your airship fighting as well, so it’s good to learn the ins and outs. If you try to find the 50 Treasure Trove locations, you will spend even more time flying around. These 50 areas are scattered throughout the world, and are found by passing over them in your airship. Some of them can only be seen from certain altitudes, and clues as to their whereabouts are found in towns and cities throughout the world. The reward for your hard work is an experience multiplier, which will make your party unstoppable for the endgame if used long enough.

Battles on the ground are more traditional, though there are a few wrinkles that keep them from becoming repetitive. You can see the turn order on the left, so you can eliminate enemies in a specific order to avoid taking as much damage as possible. This is important, because you are graded on each battle–the upper grades (A and S) will net you bonus experience, skill points and money, so it’s a must to pay attention and earn the most rewards possible for each skirmish.

Skills are learned through leveling up, but you need to upgrade them to keep them effective throughout the game. This gives you a lot of freedom though–you can turn one or two characters into total powerhouses by continually boosting and leveling up their skills, spells and abilities, or you can balance your whole party out. The best part may be that you can avoid ever spending time with something you won’t use–if you’re the kind of person that won’t use a defensive buffing spell on your party, then don’t upgrade it. Spend it on another offensive one instead so you can just defeat your enemies faster. You also use these skill points to upgrade the airship skills discussed earlier, so they are at a premium, but at least more fighting will net you more points.

Besides skill points, you also find shards around the game world. These shards can be used to upgrade a character’s stats, such as their speed, stamina, attack power, etc. You can use these on any character you want, so if you want your mage to have better physical attacks, then use the attack power shards on her–if, on the other hand, you want to continue with your powerhouse creation trip, then throw all of those into Eddie, who already has more power than you know what to do with. It’s another nice option that makes what is in many ways an ode to classic RPGs more modern.

There are loads of other side missions, outside of the ones for branching out your character’s stories, and these will give you plenty of opportunities to pick up those skill points. You join the Adventurer’s Association, which is basically the Hunter’s Guild from Phantasy Star IV but with far more missions, and you go complete tasks that cover the areas and dungeons you have already encountered and cleared. Your adventurer’s rank goes up the more of these you clear, which unlocks more difficult tasks with better rewards. The one complaint I have is that completing this missions boosts your party’s stats significantly, to the point where boss battles are just a few rounds long, like those of regular enemies. It takes some of the tension out of those encounters, but at least you will be better prepared for the more difficult, optional foes by raising your adventurer’s rank.

Blast Factor: As you can see, there’s a lot of Nostalgia to go around, making it one of the deeper RPGs in the DS library–in many ways, it’s as long and has as much to do as many of this generation’s console RPGs. Having a lot to do isn’t everything though, and Nostalgia’s inability to separate itself too much from the games it is inspired by keeps it from being in a class of its own. That said, there’s a lot to love here, and it doesn’t feel repetitive; it’s assuredly worth the price of admission, and in a year where the RPG was not the genre of choice on the DS, it’s sure to make many gamers plenty happy.

Nostalgia is available exclusively on the Nintendo DS, and retails for $34.99. A copy of this game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes.