The story begins when an ancient evil is awakened and corrupts the world of Canvas Kingdom. It is up to the young Prince Pixel and his ability to transform himself into anything you create, to go on an epic adventure filled with unexpected dangers and excitement. Your goal is to save your parents and return the kingdom back to normal. The story itself is a bit on the remedial side, and it seems as if the dialog and direction of the game was leaning more towards children. Thankfully, the depth of the creation tool will keep any gamer, adult or child, interested for hours on end due to the depth and complexity of the drawing device.

Visually Graffiti Kingdom is a mixed bag. On one hand you have a drawing tool that allows you to create anything you can imagine. If you want a dragon, draw a dragon, if you want a sword-wielding monkey, draw it, and even if you want a giant Pac Man on screen thwarting enemies, you can draw it do. In fact, if you can think it, if you can draw it with the tools, it will become reality. The tool allows you to draw, spin, stretch, fly, walk, bend, flatten, gallop, defend, and attack. You simply draw the creation in 2D, and you watch your image come to life in full 3D! With the good comes the bad as in the other hand the places you visit and the characters you encounter aren’t very detailed. In fact, the world looks like a giant children’s nursery. Sure, some of the lighting and special effects wow you for a second, but the designs are flat and uninspired in most areas of the game. The characters you meet and enemies you fight look as if they were created with the same tools, but unfortunately by someone not too good at it. If anything, the game is delightfully colorful, but will be appealing more so to young eyes then older ones.

Audio also falls in the category with the youth in mind. The music is happy go lucky; take me down to Sesame Street goodness. The score itself is not terrible, but feels a bit juvenile. Voice acting, like Magic Pengel is atrocious. Honestly, who hires these actors? If the resume calls for actors who miss their cues, show little emotion, and have voices that sound like nails on a chalkboard, then I guess these actors fit the bill. Even the Japanese to English translations are a bit off. The audio is easily the game’s low point.

Gameplay is your basic hack and slash, or should I say punch and kick style of game play. You have a few button press combos you can attack with, but in the end, the gam play is very shallow. On the plus side, if you have a youngster who cannot handle the Zelda games quite well, this great starter title will start them on the road of pure Action/RPG nerdism. With 21 levels to complete, the game at least gives you plenty of bang for your buck. If the story is too kiddy for you, there is a very nice one on one character battle mode that allows you to upload two created monsters in a 3D fighting mode. While the controls are just as remedial as the action version, the jump in and play style may suit the gamers who picked this up for solely the drawing portion of the game.

The real “draw” in Graffiti Kingdom is the character creation itself. You can create up to 144 Unique Characters and save them on one memory card. Draw anything you like, it will become reality. Once you have created them, give them Karate moves, fire breath, laser beams, and more. The limitations are your imagination. You can even teach them to run, jump, gallop, and even fly. The personalization goes as deep as naming your creation and giving them voice samples that bring them to life.

In the end, I would have liked to see an expansion of the Magic Pengel style monster battling, especially with the more in depth and more user-friendly drawing tool. As a game on its own, it definitely seems geared for youngsters, as older audiences will be searching for their sanity trying to get through the childish dialog and weak story line. If you aren’t the artistic type or don’t consider yourself to be endowed with a great imagination, then this title isn’t for you. I can only really recommend this to gamers who have the creative bug in them and want to put their ideas to work. The drawing tool is great, and it is very cool to see your ideas come to life. Being artistic in nature, I really enjoyed this title. If you have such ambitions, or even enjoyed Magic Pengel, then by all means pick up Graffiti Kingdom.