A Witch’s Tale (the game review that no one asked for)

i have a hobby (if you can call it that) of playing the most mediocre rpgs that were made for children and a witch’s tale is one that i picked up ages ago.

everything is controlled by the stylus (which is kinda frustrating because i’m left-handed, but what can you do about it?) and the story isn’t anything wild or life-changing.

you have your main character named Liddell, a girl who's studying at the witch academy. she opens an ancient book that was used to seal away an evil witch thousands of years ago. why you ask? to steal the power for herself because she wanted to become the most powerful witch (even though many people told her not to, but who cares about people’s warnings?). Now the eld witch is out creating chaos so she (and Loue, the vampire, that was supposed to be guarding the book but was sleeping in his coffin) has to basically undo what the evil witch has done and defeat her

 there's 7 kingdoms, each based on a different fairytale (its giving kingdom hearts because why are hansel and gretel, the mad hatter and dorothy in the same universe???). like the nightmare before christmas, there's different doors leading to the different kingdoms and a place which Loue calls shadow town (basically a town with an inn where you can buy/craft items and heal). once you defeat the boss and gain the princess' blessing from a kingdom, another opens up until you have to face the Elm witch herself. along the way, Liddell gains some of her memories (for some reason??)

i like the world design, it’s cute but just weirdly empty. it’s like the enemies were supposed to walk around and you have a chance to dodge them like you do in earthbound. and they decided to change it last minute to the typical rpg enemy encounters where it’s randomly triggered when you walk around. the random triggering would be fine if you could at least walk a few steps without jumping into another battle. 

the enemies each have a specific weakness and sometimes you have to painstakingly scroll through and use each magic spell to know what it’s weak to which slows down the battles. on the bright side, once you know its weakness, they're super easy to defeat because you just spam whatever they're weak to lol. the battle system is that of your typical turn-based rpg but it mostly focuses on magic. your party is comprised of Liddell and (the cute, yet creepy) dolls that you find along the way. each doll has a specific function like healing, fire attacks, ice attacks, physical attacks, etc.

what the gameplay lacks, the art and music make up for it. i genuinely enjoy the art style and it's one of the major reasons i even played the game until the end. it (i mean, just look at the pictures in this blog). it has the same kind of aesthetic as the nightmare before christmas, which i really love.

the music is fun, gothic and spoopy. it's what you expect from a game about witches and different fairytale characters yet you never really get tired of it. (most of them remind me of this song from the witch's heart ost)

this game has so much wasted potential. the music and the art are amazing. the plot is alright for a kid's game i mean, i wasn't expecting some kind of reality-bending, omg this is my roman empire story especially when seeing the cover case, however, it could use a little tweaking.

the controls and battle system needs to be overhauled in my opinion. instead of using the stylus to move they could've used the d pad and the abxy buttons to interact with items, objects and characters because trying to do everything with ur left hand (which blocks everything) is insane.

it's so crazy to think the developers of disgaea series developed this game (i mean it's not, i just like being dramatic). i rate this a 6/10. it's not the best mediocre game i’ve played but the art and music make up for it.

there's a new game plus that apparently shakes up the plot a little but i haven't gotten around to actually playing it (i have to order a new ds battery). i might update this long once (more like if because the battles and controls make me want to eat drywall) i play it over again