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I bought this game since I am a huge fan of Azure Dreams, some might figure that out by my name, and this was supposed to be a sequel/port/remake. The concept of the two games are the same, but as this is lightyears away from the quality of the old PSX classic, I won't compare them in any aspect.
Introduction
You play as Tao, a child of the Bente tribe who lives on a remote island. The tribe is well-known since they are capable of casting magic spells, but are also disliked by this fact. One day their village is attacked by monsters and before they can defend themselves nearly everyone is turned to stone. Unable to break the monsters curse using magic, Tao is sent to the mainland to find out where the monsters came from and more importantly get his hands on one of the monsters eggs. Gaining control of an egg means that they can reverse the curse, but time is short.
Tao soon finds the town Mondominio in which a great monstertower stands. This tower is filled with all kinds of monsters and not so long ago the seal which kept them inside was broken. As Tao is a Bente, the townspeople won't help so he's got no other choice than to enter it alone. His luck soon turns as he finds Petcho, a small monster who can speak human language. They become friends and Petcho lends Tao a hand in his quest to reach the top floor.
Gameplay
The concept of the game is simple, it's a dungeon crawler taking place in a tower full of monsters. There are lots of items, from magic orbs to healing herbs, from swords and other equipment to gold and silver nuggets. If you're lucky you'll find monster eggs who, when hatched, will give you another partner. Two monsters are always better than one.
The controls are simple, everything is controlled by the touchscreen(you can use the d-pad to move, but it's easier without it). The left half of the touchscreen is used for the menu and the right part of it is for moving, featuring a circle with all 8 directions. A light tap turns you the way you point, a harder tap makes you move and a double tap makes you run. Tapping the different options in the menu lets you search the place, strike an enemy, open the inventory or open the spell circle to use magic.
Casting magic is a really cool thing, when choosing it a spell circle appears and you draw a magic symbol on the touchscreen. Only problem is that it seems to have a hard time recognizing triangles, other than that it's great.
Camera control? Well, the game won't let you control the camera, if you're looking to see what's on the other side of the wall you've got to go there. This is a feature that should've been included, but isn't. You can manipulate the camera a little, when choosing to use an item or drawing a spell the camera pans to give you an above look, letting you see a little more than before.
Then what about controlling your partners? Another thing left out by Konami. There's no way to control Petcho manually, but as for the camera you can manipulate him a little. This takes time to learn and doesn't always work, which is FRUSTRATING! The AI of the monsters are so bad that Petcho, at lv. 50, will choose to use sleep magic on a lv. 1 monster, instead of just looking at it, which would've been enough to kill it. Instead he uses sleep magic, most times not just once, but 3 or 4 times in a row!!!
Graphics and sound
Well, for being a DS game it's graphics are really good. The backgrounds are detailed and look nice overall and the magic spells can look really cool, which is good since they haven't put much time into the graphics of the monsters. Sure, the monsters on the first floors are supposed to be weak, but please use something other than a rat, a slime and a hen! It gets a little better, Killo looks cool, but fighting fishmen and frogs when you're a few floors from the top floor is just silly. The bosses doesn't look good either...
As for the sound you're better off connecting your headphones to your iPod. The backgroundmusic soon gets repetitive and the sound effects are annoying, the only track I actually enjoy is the one that plays when you're in the town.
Replay value
Close to none. Sure, if you want to try to beat the game in as few visits to the tower as possible then that's one, other than that the game ends when you beat the last boss. There are a few things to do, like level up and gather all different kinds of monsters, max out your stats and the levels of your equipment, but not much else. No side-quests, all of the events that could be called side-quests are put into the main quest so you can't skip them(it's basically the same, you have to save people and you just happen to either run into them or the cure on your way up).
Overall
Tao's Adventure is a game that could've been so much better than it is. Several features that I would've wanted in it aren't and most times the lack of them are frustrating. I don't know how many times I just wanted to either snap my DS in two or throw it away, just because the AI of all monsters suck. As I wrote in the beginning of the review, I won't compare it to Azure Dreams, I'll just say that if you liked that game you'll be very disappointed. For everyone else, play it if you're a fan of dungeon crawlers, otherwise just skip it.
Final Score:4/10
