With the Nintendo DS there are times where all touch controls are perfectly appropriate, case in point The World Ends With You. And then there are times where it is better to have mainly D-pad controls, like the Castlevania games. And every now and again you get a title that seems to get them all backwards. Such is the case of Summon Night Twin Age from Atlus. You’ve got an RPG that uses touch controls exclusively, which is a departure for the series. Previous titles used a side scrolling, almost fighting game styled battle system, where as Twin Age instead uses a more casual, MMO style of combat. This major departure alone took a great deal of getting used to. And once I did I found it for the most part works out well, but in the end makes the game a lot more sluggish to play, as you’re waiting for things to happen.

Summon Night’s main characters Reiha and Aldo are about to experience a coming of age ceremony, that is cut short (isn’t it always?) by the sudden change in the Spirits that reside in every living thing and is causing all sorts of natural disturbances. The children decide to take up arms to find the cause of the change in the Spirits. It’s all fairly straightforward; you get your story information as you progress in a very linear fashion through chapters. It is a typical J-RPG fare, which is not to say it is a bad thing, it’s just common, and really doesn’t add anything to the DS library that you may already have.

Summon Night Twin Age is a fairly good looking game with large colorful sprites, which makes up for the somewhat bland environment art. Character sprites are fairly detailed and have the typical anime style to them, which is very obvious during story points where their large character sprites take up screen real-estate so they can emote for the story. It’s not like there is anything new here though, it’s just like I said before, common.



Audio is a midi-lovers dream, which is odd considering what the DS is capable of for producing sound. It certainly feels old-school, but it also feels dated, especially considering the some of the musical triumphs of previous titles, like again, The World Ends With You. There is a minimal amount of voice acting that occurs over the course of dialog and gameplay, which for the most part is a blessing and a curse, some scenes get really text heavy, and then there are times where the acting just isn’t really up to par.

At the outset of your adventure you are given the choice on whose story you’d rather follow, either Aldo or Reiha’s. Aside from the point of view of the story this does not change much of the overall adventure, as you are allowed to change characters on the fly during gameplay. This allows for some varied gameplay when it comes to battle.

The battle system plays out like an MMORPG, once you’ve got a target in your sight you tap the enemy on the DS screen, and your character will go after them, slowly dishing out attacks. You can speed this process up by performing the various special attacks which require skill points to perform and slowly regenerate over time, or through the use of items.

The two main characters have distinctly different attack styles. Where Aldo is more of a hands-on character with melee weapons, Reiha is the magician that has a great variety of spells that make good use of the DS control scheme. Aldo’s control scheme is a lot more simplistic, but both characters will have you doing things like tapping out points on the screen or drawing lines to provide a trajectory for the attacks. This keeps you on your toes, but between the time it takes to tap the skill you want to use on the skill bar and then draw it out, it can result in times where you’re tak...