Customer Reviews

A Witch's Tale

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I finally got my pre-order copy of this yesterday, and have so far spent about 6 hours with it.

You play as the witch, Liddell. You open a sealed Tome, letting out the Eld witch who was sealed there 1000 years before. Your job is to save the different lands from the witch with your magic. On your party, you get different magical dolls. You dolls can attack, use magic, etc, but the catch is you only have one pool of magic power. You also have a vampire helper, Loue. He doesn't help you during regular combat, but if you get in trouble you can use an item and he will come in and help.

Everything is done with the stylus. Movement can be a little strange at times, and didn't seem to follow what I was doing with the stylus (not a big deal, as movement doesn't need to be precise in this game). Combat it gets a little more frustrating, as you have to drag your attack to the circle that represents the enemy, but it liked to drop my action before I got there, making me repeat movements 5 or 6 times before I could attack. You start off with all the spells, and as you go through the game you get power-ups for different spells. When you use the powered up version it takes a whole lot more mp, and you have to trace the rune to make the spell go off.

The Pros:
Cute World Setting
Cute Monsters

The Cons:
Simplistic, slow battles
Really Easy
The plot is overly simplistic as well
Music and sound effects that get really annoying really fast.

Overall, I would recommend this game for kids, but as an adult this isn't really holding my attention

I had planned to get this game the day it was released, but there were so many bad reviews/pre-reviews that I decided to wait. The last cute game I "needed" was My World MyWay and that let me down in terms of gameplay.
I got this for X-mas and have not put it down!
The art is beautiful, the characters are all taken from fairy tales and twisted around.
There is an "Alice" who is a mysterious and never-seen queen. There are more Alice In Wonderland characters including a creepy rabbit with mysterious rhymes, a gorgeous Mad Hatter that is scary and fascinating - and also rude and cryptic (if only they had taken his exact image for the new AIW movie...), a march hare who is a boy with ears, and a cheshire cat who appears and disappears...
Liddell is the main character and heroine - she's adorable, selfish, and sarcastic. A character that would usually be a side kick to the sweet "save the world" type, but she is the one that accidently lets an evil witch loose in her quest for power and world domination. Now she has to fix it. Asisting her is vampire Loue who had the job of guarding the trapped witch but obviously fsiled...
The first level is a Candy Land-esque place combined with "The Nutcracker". Claira -her name is Gretel here- is the princess (and twin to sister Hansel who is princess of the next land - an ice land)
Along your way you collect cards - from a deck of cards, spell ingredients, healing items, and doll who can fight alongside you in your party of 3.
The worlds are fairly expansive and there are several things you need to do or collect to move ahead to blocked off areas. many of them are puzzles (push cake in the river to drain it) Very standard RPG, but the leveling up seems to go a lot faster.
My only complaint is that you have to return each time to the beginning o the level you started in to get to your main base where you can access the town that has the "healing inn" option.
Other worlds follow the fairy tail theme -Dorothy (WOZ)is princess of an advanced technology world, there is an aquatic world ruled by a mermaid princess, a desert world ruled by an Arabian princess, and a nature world ruled by a princess from a Japanese fairy tail- Kaguya.
I also recomend this if you liked Rhapsody (ps port), and I place this above other RPGs for the DS, including Atlus games MWMW and Steal Princess.(!!)
This also comes the closest to reminding me of Touch Detective & Touch Detective 2 1/2.

*note* This game was brought to America by NIS from Japan, so keep your eye on Japanese news for a sequel!

I'm kind of two minds about this game. There's some definite pros & cons to it that kind of kept me waffling between giving this a 3 or 4 star review.

GOOD:

The story is surprisingly good & the first ending definitely managed to get under my skin & was pretty cool. I'd be willing to go from my first save data (not the clear data) in order to see the ending again. Of course there's also the true ending, which I've yet to accomplish. The artwork in this game is also pretty cute, which really helped to endear me to the characters. Liddell is a spoiled brat but the artwork & story really helped with all of that. The rune tracing is nice & since the game is pretty forgiving on the tracing, it's something that will be easy for younger (or clumsy) players to do rather easily.

BAD:

The actual fighting is pretty tedious at times & I felt like the touch screen was pretty unnecessary at times, to be honest. It came across at times like it was something that would have been a non-touch screen game with just a few minor tweaks. It also came across like the game creators came up with the story & art first but the fighting & gameplay was a second thought that got thrown together at next to the last moment. The other downfall is the game save points. There aren't that many in each level (about 2-3) & they're spaced out far enough that when you start getting tired & want to put the game down, you'll have to do a lot of backtracking in order to get to those save points. (This also backfires because when you start up again, you have to go over the same areas again.)


Overall this game ended up surprisingly better than what I'd expected it to be. Initially I was pretty bored with the gameplay but the later story made up for it. Ultimately I just feel that if the game creators had tightened things up a little bit, the game would have been that much more appealing to a wider audience. This is a pretty easy game & there's nothing wrong with that, but easy doesn't have to mean tedious & occasionally boring, which is what this game suffers from.

I really wish I could give this game that extra star for the first ending (which again, was incredibly dark & cool), but I just can't justify it. It's just frustrating that a game that could have been so much more seemed to have a staff who decided to settle for the brass ring rather than the gold one.

UPDATE:

I've completed both replays & I just have to say that it was actually a fairly boring experience the second go round. There's little to no challenge since you get to play through with your newly leveled up powers, which is probably a good thing since there's really nothing new to the game other than a new ending & a new scene in the third world.

The ending was pretty nice but it was marred by the fact that it wasn't worth the energy I put into grinding my way through the replay. Words can't stress how monotonous of a task it was & I honestly don't think that many players will really want to put the effort into seeing the ending. I liked the first ending, but I know that it'll depress many players & some won't be willing to play again to get the true ending.

The bottom line is that this is a game that could have been great but somehow got lost in a lackluster execution. With as good of a storyline as this had, there's no excuse for this & I really wish that a better company had picked it up & made it. It just deserved better than what it got.

After reading some reviews on Amazon and deciding to buy this game I was expecting it to be almost painfully easy, wow was I wrong. I cannot begin to tell you how many times I got lost or couldn't find where I was supposed to be going. There isn't much in-game directions on what you are supposed to be doing, it is more of a wander around until you find something. After beating the first few worlds you start to realize a pattern to how the whole game works, explore the far left, explore the far right and go all the way to the top. Even knowing this I still had to go online and ask for help a few times!
I beat the game once and am working towards beating it again to see the alternate ending, just know that this game is not as easy as you may have been lead to believe.

The story follows Liddel, a witch-in-training who's bored with what she's learning in school and wants to learn an all-powerful spell so that she can become the most powerful witch in the world. To that end, she goes looking for the spell at an old abandoned castle and ends up releasing the Eld Witch and waking up Louis, the vampire. And so for the rest of the game, Liddel and Louis are on a quest to reseal the Eld Witch by obtaining the seals from the 7 princesses ruling the 7 worlds.

Now, an interesting thing about this game is that the true and "happy" ending can only be obtained by completing the game twice. I also found that the story is revealed more fully when you play through the second time, with additional little tidbits that add immensely to the tale. And because of the way the fights are in this game, the second play through is actually quite fast and not as tedious as you would think. I highly recommend playing through that second time for the real ending, it truly makes a huge difference in how the story plays out. I really hope they make a sequel for this game, I'd love to see more about Liddel and her world.

I wasn't sure what to make of this game. Honestly. While the game itself is nothing to write home about(I'll get to that momentarily), there's something about the game that 'casts a spell' on you, pardon the pun. Everything from character designs to the animation and the music is, literally, captivating.

That being said, let me get down to the real meat of this review. What kills this game from reaching 'star' status is the fact that the gameplay itself feels unfocused. Like Legend of Zelda:Phantom Hourglass, the entire game is stylus-controlled. While Phantom Hourglass' controls were more precise, A Witch's Tale falls terribly short. Try tapping on things in the environment, Liddell only makes contact when the game decides to let you to. I could deal with that if it didn't happen quite as much.

My first review!~^-^

A Witch's Tale is a lot of fun!!

I have competed the game once and working on my 2nd time through the game.
The first time through there were a few spots that took a little while to get through but what game doesn't have a few spots that takes a little while to get past.

Some of the the little scenes were the characters interact is so funny.

Anyway this game is a great buy in my opinion.
It definitely has replay value!

I hope everyone finds this some what helpful.

While the levels have a similar set up in terms of goals, each level is unique in it's design and monsters to battle. Well, for the most part, some of the enemies were resued with different colors but it doesn't take away from the experience. What I loved about this game is that it's a retelling of Alice in Wonderland where the controlled character must go around saving all the princesses of the kingdom in order to help save Queen Alice. Another cool aspect of this game is that the allies for battle are actually dolls with special powers. The whole game is rather whimsical and cute with quite a bit of humor mixed in to boot. The art is very nicely done and the music is just lovely. All in all, I'd highly recommend this game to anyone who enjoys fairy tales and RPGs.

this game is one of the best games i played for ds along with okamiden.Nice story line and leaves you hanging at the end.I hope there is a sequel.

I love this game. I am not very good at role playing games but I try. I am able to play this game without a guide and that in it self is a hugh accomplishment for me. For people who are really good at role playing games this game is not for you.