Handheld
(DS) Tao's Adventure: Curse of Demon Seal
By Ron Ayers
May 8, 2006, 5 :58 am

One of my all-time favorite games when I was growing up was Rogue II on the Atari ST. This was a fancied up version of the original Rogue, which spawned the “dungeon crawl” genre of games, that basically had you running around random mazes, beating things up, finding items, casting spells and leveling up. If you’ve played Diablo, you’ve actually played a derivative of this style of game. Tao’s Adventure for the Nintendo DS is one of the first RPGs to hit the system, but in actuality it’s really a dungeon crawl, thinly veiled as a story-based RPG, with a little Pokemon thrown in for good measure.

Tao’s Adventure starts on your home island, which is over-run by monsters, turning everyone into stone except for a handful of people, which ever so conveniently includes you. The good news is that, just that same day, you started learning about how to become a master “Air Speller,” which means you’re obviously the one who should undertake the task of saving your town. You can accomplish this by heading out to the Monster Tower, located on an island where everyone hates your guts. In that tower is a monster egg that can save your people.

You’ll spend pretty much the entire time you’re playing the game busting through each floor of the tower and leveling up. If you’re a sucker for leveling up, then this game will be for you. If you’ve seen that episode of ST:TNG where the Enterprise crew got addicted to a really poor 3D game, you know what I’m talking about..

Along the way, you’ll find swag to take back to town and sell. In addition, you’ll find monster eggs that you’ll be able to appraise and hatch. Once hatched, these monsters can be part of your wrecking crew in the tower.  For instance, there’s Petcho, the default monster that you get early on can talk to humans, not to mention that he can kick the crap out of guys, hitting enemies harder and faster than the main character could. Not a bad trade-off, despite his annoying commentary. You can also take monsters to the coliseum to duke it out with other monsters, or your friend’s monsters using DS to DS Wi-Fi.

When I say the game is thinly veiled as an RPG, I’m directly pointing at the lack of character development as well as the plot, which is not exactly inspiring. The majority of the plot occurs in the town, which means that if you reach a plot point, you’ll usually be restricted from going further in the tower until you jump back out and talk with the annoying NPCs in town, all of whom pretty much hate you. The good news is that, as with any good tale, the people begin to accept you over time; this would be more heartwarming if it weren’t for the fact this about-face might be happening because you keep bringing them medium-sized silver nuggets. It also takes forever to wander around the town, and so many areas of the town are blocked off early on that it becomes frustrating.

In terms of character development, you have no idea what it’s going to take to level up again, which at the same time makes leveling up such a pleasant surprise. You don’t actually have any control over your characters’ stats, and have little ability to control your character’s growth, stats or trade throughout the game.

While you can summon monsters, you really have little control over them. You can’t make them cast spells, defend or attack in any particular pattern. You have to maneuver around and just hope that they’re smart enough to be in the right place. When you provide the player with a party system, it seems pretty important that you also offer some sort of control over what they can and can’t do, and Tao’s Adventure fails in this aspect.

Sure, you can buy weapons and armor and upgrade them in town and with potions, but that’s not really too much fun. Wielding a sword doesn’t feel that much different in comparison to wielding a staff, with the exception that you can’t cast a spell without having a staff equipped. Generally, the gain in attack power comes from your leveling up, not from your change in weaponry.

Speaking of casting spells, the controls have some real issues here, mostly because of the unnecessary use of the DS touch screen. With the exception of movement, every single command in this game must be performed using the touch-screen, and you’ll have a difficult time moving diagonally without the touch-screen. All of the battles are turn-based, which also means that if you screw up your movement, you might be leaving yourself open to attack.

When spellcasting, you’ll need to use the touch-screen to draw a pattern, but it really has no bearing on the game, because if you mess up, you can just cancel, take a look at your spell book, and try again. As you continue to level up, you’ll get access to more spells which require more complex “air spelling” patterns. It’s just a lot of unnecessary stuff. It makes me want throw up my hands and just ask for a permanent map on the bottom of the screen and be done with it.

There’s also no quick way to save the game. To exit the tower, you’ll have to cast a “Bound” spell (which you cannot do with a monster around), which will allow you to exit the towers as well as to visit any floor on which you’ve previously cast the spell. Once you exit the tower, you have to wander to town, into the Inn, and then save in the only save slot the cart provides. Here’s the kicker: you can’t just cast a bound spell and go back into the tower.  You have to run back into the tower, enter the first level, then cast to go back where you were!  Sure, we can put the DS to sleep, but why not just allow us to save while we’re in the dungeon so we can save a little battery or go do something else?

Where Tao’s does shine is its graphics engine, which really feels like it’s a bit over-powered compared to the rest of the game. The majority of the world is rendered beautifully using polygons. The town looks great, but unfortunately, once you’re in the tower, the engine really goes to waste, because the game just crawls through a simple dungeon, and there’s only so much you can do with different styles of stone walls.

Had this game went the traditional story RPG route instead of a dungeon-crawl format, comparisons would have been made with some of the Square RPGs that came out on the PSone, but instead, you have an average crawl with a really nice engine. Actually, Square did have a dungeon crawl on the PSone, Chocobo’s Mysterious Dungeon 2, which had randomly created dungeons, another area in which Tao’s Adventure misses the boat. This would’ve added some much needed replay value to the game, especially since there’s not a lot of variation on how you can play the game.

While I did not have any chance to share monsters with another DS, I did partake in some of the one-on-one monster battles against the CPU in the Coliseum, once I had collected and hatched some eggs. Quite frankly, it’s not very fun. It employs a paper-rock-scissors format where I really felt like I had little to no control. In fact, I was more successful not controlling my monster at all, and putting it on “choice” mode, which is basically auto. The feature is really a throw-in for the kids who may want to trade monsters, but outside of trying to get your monster leveled up quickly, the multiplayer doesn’t really do anything here. It would’ve been a cool feature to be able to dungeon crawl together, but alas.

Overall: 4.5/10

Tao’s Adventure has its problems, most of which I believe spring from the unnecessary usage of the touch screen, and the fact that it seems like they were never able to figure out whether they wanted a true story-based RPG or a dungeon crawl. They compromised, which means fans of both will probably be left unhappy. That being said, if all you’re looking to do is level up for a while and you’ve played through all of the GBA RPG classics, and you’re willing to forgive the control scheme, then give it a shot; it’s a lot to ask, but this will still hold over some fans of the genre. If you’re waiting for the next Final Fantasy or Golden Sun, then pass for now, and keep hoping that Konami will put the fine game engine to use in a much deeper story in the future.