Tao’s Adventure: Curse of the Demon Seal Preview

Nintendo these days seems to be a company starved for quality RPG titles on their systems. The GameCube was not heavily supported with the genre, and the DS doesn’t have much either. We have gotten some great RPGs like Tales of Symphonia, Fire Emblem and Paper Mario. However, all those games are iterations of extremely popular worldwide gaming franchises. Thankfully something brand new is about to be birthed, and it feeds into the hunger that is the Nintendo system RPG. On a strange note, the game is being brought to us by Konami. These guys are the makers of Dance Dance Revolution and Metal Gear, so RPGs aren’t exactly their forte. But is that stopping them from the risk? Absolutely not.

Tao’s Adventure: Curse of the Demon Seal is a fantasy role-playing adventure straight from Konami for our beloved handheld. The story of the game is fairly common considering most infamous titles included in the category. A big occupation in this game is monster hunting. The town of Mandominio is full of them, and that is how they do business. Each day, these hunters find monster eggs and use the town as their center to trade them for profit. The very center of this town holds a giant tower that is used to seal away monsters, eliminating any possible dangers.

Unfortunately, one day this tower is struck by lightning in a storm. This lightning strike breaks the seal in the tower and releases all that is inside. These monsters then begin to prey not only on the innocent and unsuspecting Mandominions, but the entire world that lies outside.

While this is happening, a young boy named Tao who lives on the island of Bente is woken by his little brother. His little brother Lot wishes to go crayfish fishing, and tries to convince Tao into tagging along. But since this young fellow obviously wants his sleep, Tao refuses. This causes Lot to go off on this little adventure on his own, with Tao eventually being convinced to get himself up. He decides he will go search for little Lot. However, there is a problem, he has to go to school first. This class is where his father trains him as an air speller, which is the first step in becoming a true master spell caster.

He goes to class and receives the training from his father. With his help, he quickly becomes acclimated with some new skills. Unfortunately, this training is cut short as the session is interrupted by an attack from the monsters that escaped from Mandominio. Tao’s father naturally rushes out to defend his home island from this attack. Then to protect his son who likes to be overzealous, he casts a protective magic spell around Tao to confine him indoors. Tao eventually does free himself of the barrier, but only to dismay upon his next discovery. His eyes open wide as he learns everyone in his village has been turned into stone statues. Well, not everyone actually, there were some survivors. Some managed to encase themselves in a magical protective barrier before being turned as well. Unfortunately these people happen to be old and decrepit, but coincidentally they know exactly what needs to be done to break this curse. These people have no skills with attacking magic, so Tao takes it upon himself to save his village and this world from the monster curse.