Mage Knight DS and assinine controls

[Gabriel]

So, the other day I got Mage Knight Destiny's Soldier. I wanted to talk about the interface for the game, because its a poster child for the kind of stuff that gets shoehorned into DS games.

 

Mage Knight is a strategic game. While the tabletop game it is based on is played on a freeform surface, this DS port is played on a hexgrid. The game is turn based, so there's no reason for quick reflexes, only tactical thinking. You're probably thinking "that sounds like 15 years worth of tactical games" and you'd be right.

 

The dual screen gimmick in this game presents the overall battlefield picture on the top screen, while a close up screen showing only a handful of hexes at at time is used to select and maneuver your troops. Occasionally the top screen will show damage effects on your units, but mostly its just there to show where the units are on the board.

 

This is bad, because it's a contrived way to create a reason for each screen. The battle overview screen is actually the more useful screen. The screen where you see and move your units around is zoomed in far too tightly to be of any practical use. In fact, there have been years worth of games which consolidated all of the information into one screen, and do it with more conciseness. In short, the dual screen use in Mage Knight is completely unnecessary and actually damages the game when a more conventional presentation would have been superior. Practically all they need to do is zoom the lower screen out and include some of the top screen info in a bar along the bottom.

 

Then there are the controls. The buttons and D-Pad are used for minor functions like scrolling the map, skipping text, bringing up the save menu, etc. Everything else in this game requires the absolute MANDATORY use of the touchscreen. There is no other choice.

 

Now, if movement actually worked like the game implies, then the touchscreen might make a bit of sense. Allegedly (and what I was expecting), a unit will move along the path you draw for it. In actuality, the game has it's own pathing procedures and follows those rather than paying attention to how exactly you're drawing a line.

 

Now, since the game has been forced into a hexgrid instead of featuring freeform movement (ala the first Arc the Lad game for the PS2), it turns out that drawing precise paths doesn't matter as much as it can in the tabletop game. But the other problem is that the touchscreen is so inaccurate that you sometimes don't know where the hell your unit will end up. It isn't unusual to be looking at where you're dropping a unit, then remove the stylus from the touchscreen, and have the unit suddenly move to another square where you don't want them.

 

Another problem is, when selecting units, the area you tap to select them is a few millimeters higher than where you'd think it would be. Some may say this is a calibration thing, but, trust me, I've seen the calibration screen of the DS more than I'd care to. It is not a calibration thing. Of course, the designers probably recognized this problem, because in one of the few concessions to non-touchscreen controls, they let you cycle through units with the A and B buttons.

 

This all begs the question of why a turn based, hexgrid, strategy game doesn't have an option to let you use tried and true cursor and button controls? At least Advance Wars DS let you use conventional controls. Instead a game has been forced into an interface which doesn't fit it and does nothing for the game. But, that's the story of the entire DS library.

 

Sadly, it's a good game. Sad, because it has been marred by atrocious controls. Like the boardgame, luck plays a very large role. Last night I had a bad fight where I rolled 5 critical fumbles in a row and had all my front line fighters drop dead. But that can happen in the boardgame too.

[sega saturn x]

So was this a rant on the game or what a crappy idea the DS features are. I'm a bit confused, was it just a review?

[Gabriel]

So was this a rant on the game or what a crappy idea the DS features are. I'm a bit confused, was it just a review?

 

Just a stream of consciousness rant about the game. I would have to play it a bit more for a review, at least to make sure that my strange run of bad luck on the game wasn't some designer's idea of balancing the difficulty. Oddly, I have yet to see a critical hit, although I've seen lots of fumbles.

[neotokeo2001]

I have been waiting to see what type of controls this game has before buying it. Looks like I will wait for the price to drop. Forcing the user to use the touch screen is a bad idea. I don't mind tapping the screen to choose a power-up or something but having to play the whole game that way ruins it for me. You would think that any turn-based game(console or hand-held) would look at the current best (Advance Wars) and at least give you the option of standard controls.

 

With the coming of the Wii expect to see a lot of games ruined by forcing you to use the new controller. We shall see.

[Atari Master]

The features on the DS are not really meant to be used all the time. And when you do have to use them all the time, it's usually in doses.

 

It sucks, because this game looked really cool.

[+remowilliams]

Those design decisions do sound a bit unfortunate. This is one of the very few of the recent releases that I've had interest in. I do think I'll still be picking it up though.