(andPOP) - Based on the cartoon of the same name, Di-Gata defenders brings players into the world of Rados. Charged with the feat of stopping the evil Lord Nazmul and his Order of Infinis, you must use your Di-Gata stones and guardians to protect the four pure stones. Now, I'm not too familiar with the Di-Gata franchise, and as an outsider to the world of Rados, I found myself completely confused as to what I was doing, how I was doing it and why it was happening. No where in the game do they explain what a Di-Gata is, why these stones shoot out electricity, heal you or release a big monster, or why this Nazmul has such a grudge against the world. I tried to watch the cartoon to get caught up on this universe, but in the end I became even more confused than I was entering into this universe.
The game itself, developed by Mystic software is an RPG in the sense, that the game is story driven in a full land and you gain levels and can customize your character. But how deep each of these facets are really hurts the title as a whole. You begin the game by customizing your character's look with a few options, and throwing him, complete with name into a fully 3-D world. The game itself is 100% 3-D unfortunately everything is very polygonal and not detailed in the slightest. I found it very hard to compare bad guys to good guys and found myself walking up to someone to ask them a question only to be thrown into a battle. To push this little problem of unintentional battles one step further, the camera angle is always a 3/4th top down angle which, while it can be manipulated, still doesn’t allow you to see what is directly in front of you. The game sounds fine, with no voices or spectacular splitting effects, it gets the job done in the same way an older Game boy game would have. The musical score is decent enough as well, but nothing memorable or worth talking about further.
In Di-Gata the stylus is your friend, while some aspects of the game can be controlled with buttons, the entire thing can be played with just the stylus, while there is minimal actual required use of the stylus overall (throwing a guardian dice), you basically point where you want your player to move by holding the stick there, and tap the options you wish to activate. In fact, the only time you ever really have to push a button in this entire game is to access the menu. While the controls, graphics and sound are all DS quality, the gameplay is lacking. While this is an RPG and at least not too short a title, you just get bored way too quickly while playing it. The missions are repetitive, go to this town, pick up the item, come back to base, go to next town, pick up another item, go back to the first town, give the item then go back to base. At times the game is kind enough to bring you back automatically, but more often than not, the game's a jerk and makes you hoof it. Adding to the annoyance of this type of game play, most of the time they give you just the name of the town and no direction as to where the town is located, sure you've been there before, but all the towns look and feel the same, and with no over-world map, it gets tedious walking and fighting for an hour only to find out you went the wrong way.
The game works in a simple walk around manner. See a monster, walk into monster, turn based fight, with energy and hit points, spells that have a percentage of failing (which decreases as you gain levels), a summon command (which never affects you negatively), a healing option and a super dice option (which from experience doesn’t really feel all that super). The problem I have is that after every battle, you gain all your health and energy back, and your summon never really takes anything away from you. There is no real sense of stock, no potions and herbs to save, you can just go all out every battle and be perfectly fine the moment later. Along the lines of lacking potions, the game doesn’t have a currency system either, its basically trading 10 pairs of boots for one pair of pants and so forth, how often would a defender of the Di-Gata be carrying 25 shirts and looking to unload them for a hat? Pretty often. The whole economy system seems way off and awkward as the traders will only trade one set of items for what they have in their stores. This title provides players with eight different guardians you gain throughout the game to choose from, with each doing something different, they feel like summons but you don’t really care if and when you get them as they all pretty much cover the same basis of protecting you, and doing damage.
You may be asking yourself, is this a long lasting portable RPG? Well, the game isn't as short as I wished it would be, and there are over 10 side quests to keep you occupied a little longer. These side quests give you a special reward like an ability you may never notice; if you do end up getting this game, don’t even bother unless you’re a perfectionist when gaming. There really isn’t a reason to replay this title, which feels like it ended way too abruptly when it did. I didn’t expect the end when it came, after all.
All in all, it could just be me, I tried watching an episode of this show to get some background information on the title and I just walked away more confused then when I started. Even after playing through the game, I'm still not really sure what the plot is or what the bad guy's goal was in the end. The game did come with a behind-the-scenes DVD though for extra entertainment, bonus points there!
Enter The Contest
Graphics: 2.0 / 5.0
Gameplay 1.5 / 5.0
Sound 2.5 / 5.0
Replay value 0.5 / 5.0
