I’ll admit that I’m a faithfully enamored Nintendo fan, but this only applies to their beyond famous titles. Mario, Zelda, Metroid, there are others, but save to say, I spend a lot of money on Nintendo games, and I’m generally satisfied. In fact you could say I’ve come to trust them. But do I trust them for something that doesn’t have the hallmark characters I’ve become fond of? The answer is a definitive NO.

When I first looked at the pictures for Glory of Heracles I really wasn’t sure what to expect. All I knew was it was an RPG based around Greek mythology. (A cool premise) But Nintendo hasn’t really done that many RPG’s, and when they have, they aren’t traditional in any way. The only thing it really had going for it was the fact that some of the Final Fantasy creators were working on it. Which was just enough to make me want to try it.

Story: The game starts with an amnesiac boy who finds out he’s immortal. Traveling the world he runs into other immortals that have sketchy pasts. As you progress you learn more of each of the characters back stories, until all is finally revealed. The characters pasts were by far the best part of the story, and it certainly made this game stick out. It wasn’t trying to tell an old Greek story, but its own story, filled with enjoyable characters, and story turns that range from touching to comedic. I found myself laughing out loud several times.

Without revealing too much story, one of the best concepts in the game is that there are four Heracles’, and you spend most the game wondering who’s the real one. To add to this, each of the Heracles’ have very different personalities. My favorite of which punches a princess in the face because she won’t shut up.

Overall the story isn’t very strong, but the characters, and the dramatic revelations make it seem great.

8/10

Gameplay: This is definitely the strong suit of this game. It has a fairly traditional battle command system, you can use normal controls, or if you prefer they all work with the stylus. You can also control every other aspect of the game with the stylus, though I opted not to.

The battle commands and battle system are equivalent to any Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, or Breath of Fire, but in a lot of ways Glory of Heracles did it better. Starting with the fact it had a unique front-row/back-row system. Next, It offered a mini-game power-up system for your special moves. So every time you cast a spell it would ask if you wanted to play a short mini-game with the stylus in order to increase the damage of the spell. It sounds as if it might get boring after a while, but you can always skip it, and additionally there’s probably more than twenty different mini-games. Some as easy as tapping the screen repeatedly, and some as complex as a short game of Simon.

Another thing this game got right, was the balance of the game. The way they dished out experience and money seemed perfect. There wasn’t a time when I needed to sit and level, but there wasn’t a time I felt over leveled either. The dungeons were fast paced, and well done, but the game did lack mystery. I wish they threw in a few puzzles throughout the game. It seemed as if in place of puzzles, they made the method of killing dungeon bosses very strategy based. (An acceptable substitute, but they could have done both!)

Another thing I liked was the fact that it is played straight through. You can’t loose your way, if there’s an obscure house you have to go to before moving to the next area, you will know it! I think this style worked great for a portable game. You still have 30 hours+ of game play, but you feel as if you are moving forward with every five minutes you put in.

10/10

Graphics & Appearance: This looked fine for a DS game, it had a nice Breath of Fire 3 quality to it, and the characters were well animated. There wasn’t any spectacular movies or anything, but some animations that did look cool. Although some of the graphics were cheesy at times, my overall feeling is that it looked great.

The one complaint I have, is that there weren’t that many monsters, and they reused the same ones a lot. They looked good for the most part, but I wish there were many more of them. (Not all of them had cool names, but the Hemo-goblin, made me laugh.)

9/10

Overall: This was a solid RPG that is funny, and fun to play through. The story lacks excellence, but the characters back stories make up the difference. The battle system was one of the best I’ve seen. I think everyone should try this purely for the fact that you can’t get lost during the game, and it tells a simple enough story that you can literally play it in your spare time and have a full RPG experience.

OVERALL SCORE: 9/10

You can buy your copy from Amazon here!

Note: this is the fifth game in the series, but the first one that they released in the U.S. (This is completely independent of all the other games in the series.) I hope they release a U.S. sequel. I’m excited to get more details, personally.