The Dark Spire is a fairly unique RPG for the DS that's only really going to appeal to a small niche of your typical RPG fan base. It's a game that's heavily reminiscent of old school dungeon crawlers like Wizardry, and bears a somewhat striking resemblance to more recent Atlus titles, most notably Etrian Odyssey 1 and 2. Still, it's a pretty interesting title if you have the patience to get into the class system and dungeon exploring side of it, but at the same time it's taken from a formula that's definitely starting to show its age.
As the game begins you hear about the Dark Spire, and you're given the ability to create new party members (or you can select from a small group of pre-created characters) and you'll put together your party of four. The starting classes are pretty basic for most RPG's, with Warriors, Priests, Thieves, and so on. There are a few different races to pick from as well, Dwarves, Elves, Humans, and Halflings. Depending on the race you pick, you'll be able to select not only your class but see some differences in the stats you can have randomly assigned to your characters when they're created. I do wish that the game would allow me to assign the stats as I see fit, instead of giving me a roulette wheel chance at getting things where I want, but on the flip side you do have the chance of getting more stats if you manage to get some lucky picks in, and you can always wipe the character and start over until you get something more to your liking.
Once you've put together your group of characters, then you'll be introduced to combat, lock picking, and the general feel of the game through a small tutorial. There's really not much to learn, and anyone that's played an RPG before will understand the basics. The game is taken from a first person perspective, and the majority of the time you'll be navigating long corridors filled with doors to small rooms or other hallways. There's a map that creates itself as you move about, but it never shows your actual location (there's a magic spell for that). It can be easy to get a bit lost, and you might find it useful to resort to the old pen and paper map-making skills from your younger years. Enemy encounters are frequent, but not so much that it becomes annoying. However, it takes a while to level up, and dying is pretty easy if you're not aware of whom you are fighting or how many enemies are ganging up on you. For the most part you can back out of fights easy enough before they begin, with little to no harm. Every so often you'll get stuck in a battle, but it rarely happened to me. You'll learn quickly to pick and choose the fights you want to go with, what enemies can overpower you easily, and what to expect, but it does require a lot of trial and error, which will definitely put off the more casual player. I can't really hold it against the game though, this is how it's designed to be played, and I actually had a lot of fun with it, even if my first few hours were spent restarting the game and trying a new group to find the right dynamic.
The save system, thankfully, is merciful, and at any point in the dungeon you can pause and save your game, and having a few save files at a time will save you a lot of heartache in the long run. Outside of simply exploring the Spire, you can take on side quests in town that will net you some bonus experience, and then there are your typical RPG staples of an Inn, Shop, and so on to outfit your characters prior to exploring. Death can be pretty costly early on, and sometimes you're better off with saving up your money and creating a new character, or simply taking from the pool of pre-existing characters.
If you're feeling adventurous, you can even switch the Dark Spire over to an old school mode of wireframe settings, which is pretty much impossible to play without creating a map on the side. In the wireframe set-up it's impossible to mark landmarks or other markings on the walls around you, unlike the more graphical presentation in the regular mode. It's neat to see, I suppose, but not really practical for most players.
The soundtrack here is fantastic though, easily one of the better handheld soundtracks that I've heard lately, and probably worth picking the game up for that alone. Also, I believe the current release of the game comes with soundtrack disc, so even if you don't want to play it that much, I'm confident that you'll find some tracks to enjoy. The soundtrack is bolstered by a pretty solid translation too, which keeps in tune with other recent Atlus translations as being top notch, and while the story is pretty basic and not exactly front and center, the bits of dialogue and random people you encounter in the Dark Spire are pretty well done.
Still, it's obviously not a game I can suggest to everyone. It's not a great introductory RPG, and like I mentioned earlier, even among RPG fans it's only going to appeal to a small group. However, if you enjoyed titles like Etrian Odyssey, I think you should absolutely give The Dark Spire a try, it's definitely taken from the same vein, and while it's a bit more archaic in design than EO, it's well worth playing. Just keep in mind what type of game you're getting into, and realize that the challenge bar is pretty high, and you should have some fun with it.
