Feel The Magic XY/XX Review

When the Nintendo DS was first anounced lots of people were already starting to get excited about it because it offered new gameplay poosibilities that hadn’t been done on other systems before. Of course nearly all of the big name developers were extremely excited about it too because they could experiment new things with the hardware, and one guy who really liked the touch screen was Yuji Naka. For those of you who don’t know him, he’s the guy who created Sonic and made the wonderful Phantasy Star Online.

For those who have followed the DS from the beginning, you might remember the codename for this game: Project Rub. Most of us were wondering what it would be about, but we all knew it would use the touch screen a lot. When we first saw the magazine scans we were all wondering what the hell was Sonic Team doing but it sure looked original and the artstyle was pretty good. Turns out it was a dating sim… with a twist!

Yes, this game is indeed a dating sim, and it probably ain’t the last we’ll see on the system, and I’m sure you probably all know why! Touching is indeed good, and even though we’re all excited about it right now, it’ll probably become old in a few months unless developers find great ideas to use it to it’s full potential. But for now, this game is a really addictive one and Sonic Team has brought a few interesting ideas that will make you laugh, some of which you never thought could be done!

The story for this game is quite simple: as you are walking in the streets you cross a very fine woman and immediately fall in love with her. You want to talk to her but you are too shy, so a group of people called the “Rub Rabbits” show up and help you impress her. The first thing they do is they give you a bowl with a goldfish. Then, out of nowhere, someone runs into you and the goldfish falls in that guy’s mouth, and you have to make him spit it out. By doing so, you impress the girl and then go on to do more and more mini-games like that to impress her even more and, of course, have her fall in love with you.

But it doesn’t stop there as there is a little story behind it which is sometimes difficult to follow since it doesn’t seem to make sense all the time, but it’s really funny! Sonic Team has so many strange ideas you sometimes wonder where it all comes from. There’s also another guy who’s in love with the girl and at some point he tries to do anything he can to stop you from getting her.

The story is far from being the most important point of the game though as the whole game seems to be more of an experiment by Sonic Team for it’s next games. The could have removed the whole story and design and called the game “A collection of DS minigames” and it would have been the exact same thing, except it would have had a very bad presentation. Yuji Naka and his team probably just tried anything they had in mind just to see what the system was capable of, but it works and it makes for one of the best launch games for the system as it’s the one that makes the most use of all the DS is capable of, except for the sound and graphics capabilities.

You have 2 main modes of play in this game: Story and Memories. Story mode is the main meat of the game where you’ll have to get the girl to love you in 18 scenes, each featuring either 1 or sometimes 2 or 3 minigames. When her heart completely fills up to a hundred percent you jump to the next scene. If you fail a a minigame then it empties itself and you have to start again. Memories is the exact same thing but without the story behind it. All of the minigames you unlocked are there and you can play them as much as you want, each having 10 levels of difficulty.

The minigames are quite original. In one you’ll be rubbing the screen up to make a man spit out goldfishes, in another you’ll be blowing at the screen to make a boat move and save the girl from drowning. You also use the stylus to control your character in various minigames or to control a car, uncover burried objects, clean your girlfriend, fight ennemies, and even undress the girl! There’s even a minigame where you have to dance which should make fans of Space Channel 5 smirk a little. Some of the games are a little bit repetitive but most of them are original and will keep you occupied a bit, even though the story mode is quite short.

The graphics of this game are quite good for a first-generation title. Sure, this game doesn’t make the most use of the hardware like Mario or Spider-Man for example, but it has so much style and it is so colorful that you’ll immediately fall in love with it. It uses both 2D and 3D environments and everything runs at a smooth 60 frames per second, never slowing down. There is a little pixelation here and there but it’s not that much of a problem on the small screen, and since the DS doesn’t have the same texture filtering capabilities as the N64 it’s forgivable, but you can clearly see that it is more powerful than the N64 everywhre else, or at least it seems like it. Can’t wait to see what the DS version of Sonic will look like.

Sound isn’t all that great though as they use the same sound samples all over the game and they can get on your nerves quite fast. Same thing applies to the music. It’s cute at first, but after a few hours of play you’ll want to turn off the sound of your DS. Otherwise sound seemed to be really clear to me even though it doesn’t have anything special like insane stereo effects or stuff like that.

Overall though, it’s one of my favorite games for the DS right now. It’s a really great experience and it’s extremely original. It has a few unlockables like new clothes for the girl as well as harder difficulty settings and a sound test. You can also unlock clothes by inserting a Sonic Team developed GBA game in the DS as well. The game isn’t really long, but from time to time you’ll want to pop it in your DS to play it for a few minutes or, if you’re like me, you’ll play all of the minigames for hours to no end just to be able to complete them all at the highest difficulty level. Definitely worth it!