Summon Night: Twin Age bears little resemblance to the Summon Night Swordcraft games that appeared on the GBA a couple of years ago. Twin Age ditches the side scrolling combat of the previous two games to accommodate a stylus-based approach on the DS. Bundled with some decent animation and a passable story, it comes off as one of the better RPGs on the DS.

I'm not a big fan of using the stylus on most DS games, as it usually feels forced, but with Twin Age it feels right. The combat system is lot like what you would find in a PC MMORPG. Click on an enemy to begin an attack, and click on spells, skills, and items to use them in combat. After selecting the enemy, attacks are made automatically with speed based on weapon type.

Up to two companions at a time will join you on the combat screen. One of which you can switch into on the fly. One of your two playable characters is built for melee and defense and the other is built for long range attacks and magic. Each of those characters can acquire new skills and more powerful versions of current skills through a skill tree (think talents in WoW or skills in Diablo). You only have control over one character at a time, and the others will be on autopilot based on AI settings you give them.

It wouldn't be called Summon Night if there wasn't some kind of summoning involved. Well, maybe it would be, but I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt. In Twin Age, enemies drop item that can be used to craft summon skills. Depending on who did the crafting, a number of friendly monsters will be created and ready for use by clicking on them in the skill bar like any other ability.

That's not the only crafting you can do. Other materials drop throughout your adventures, and you can visit stores where you can create new weapons and armor. Just like any good dungeon crawler, there's also a chance that these types of items can drop from enemies or treasure chests as well.

The bottom screen of the DS is used for combat and is displayed in a top down 2.5d perspective. The top screen is used to display a map of the area. So here is where the stylus use comes back to bite you. Using the stylus to exclusively control your character's movement and actions means that your hand gets in the way of the game. This is especially true when using skills since the skill bars line the left and right hand sides of the screen. Whether you are left of right handed, at some point you will be covering up the action while trying to poke an item or skill for use.

The number of skills to use is impressive, and some are quite clever, again borrowing from a Diablo or MMO-like system. The spellcaster for instance can create a poisonous bog to slow enemy movement and do damage over time. What better way to protect yourself than a little bit of crowd control? And with the mobs locked down, the caster can concentrate on healing the melee character, who is acting like a tank and absorbing the damage.

The only skills that don't quite work right are just limited because of the field of view on the combat screen. Some of the casters abilities work on an area of effect or in a cone that widens the further it gets from the caster. With the limited view, enemies are often too close to make these abilities effective since they don't get a change to fan out before they strike their target.

Twin Age is nice dungeon crawl for killing time. It's not a great RPG as far as that goes. The MMO combat system gets old just like it does in a real online RPG. Still, it was one of the better DS RPGs I've played, and stayed in my system for quite a while.