When re-making or producing 16-bit era inspired role playing games, the Nintendo DS is where all the developers flock. The latest game to bring back those fond memories of the 90’s is Ignition Entertainment and their latest release, Nostalgia. This surprisingly enjoyable RPG will certainly remind you of your youth; at the same time, you will also long for something new.

Gameplay

The story behind Nostalgia takes place in a re-imagined 19th Century Earth. In this world, travel is done primarily by Airship and Adventuring is quite a popular profession. You take the role of Eddie Brown, a young boy looking for his father who has mysteriously disappeared while on expedition. As you trek to find your father, you will uncover an evil organization that is looking to take over the world. So not only will you attempt to retrieve your father, but stop the evil group from achieving their goal.

Nostalgia’s story fits in the middle of interesting plotlines. It certainly is not a boring story, it definitely takes a while before you really get an understanding of what exactly you need to do. The real plot to the game is not revealed to you until you’ve played through about three-four hours. Thankfully, once the story gets going, there is a lot to do and you will be traveling all around the world.

The linear storyline will have to traveling to various locations throughout the world. Your adventure will begin in London but you will see time in cities such as Cairo, Delhi, Toyko and Cape Town just to name a few. For the most part, your time spent in the cities is merely to gather information, complete side-quests or to upgrade your characters. When you’re not in those cities, you will be traveling to exotic locations and trekking through various dungeon like environments in search of vital story items.

The game’s combat system is extremely simple and takes very little time to get adjusted to. Your cast of characters is strictly four youths, each with their own special ability. The protagonist Eddie uses swords, his buddy Pad is a shooter while the two female character Fiona and Melody both deal with magic, the former is a White Mage while the later is a Dark Mage. All four characters have their basic attacks but each has their own special abilities that improve as you play through the game. After the completion of each battle, you are rewarded with Experience Points, Money and Special Points. Your Special Points are then used to upgrade your various Skills to make them more powerful. As you upgrade your Special Points you will also unlock other skills that can be used. You can either focus on improving one specific skill or spreading the wealth to all available talents.

Combat is not strictly fighting it out in the various dungeons. Nostalgia also features a heavy share of air combat. As you fly around the world in the various Airships you obtain you will fight different kinds of flying monsters and ships, all looking to stop you. For the most part, your Airship combat plays out in the same way as your character battles. Each of the four has a specific weapon on the ship that can be used. Air combat also sees you having to deal with moving targets. Enemies can shift from one part of the sky to the other and your weapons are more effective depending on where it attacks from. This facet of the combat will factor into how you approach each air battle.

While your character combat is fairly straight-forward and never too difficult, Air Combat is where most of your frustration will occur. Unlike your heroes who obtain excellent weapon and armor upgrades, your ship’s upgrades improve at a slower rate. One aspect of traveling in the skies is flying through different altitudes. Combat in the higher altitudes is down-right difficult. Enemies are always extremely powerful and deal out a lot of damage. Most of the time, you will attack with three of your four characters while the fourth is used to constantly repair the ship.

Once you do your best either repairing your ship constantly or managing to avoid the random air combat, Nostalgia still manages to stay interesting. The cast of characters are attractive even though they all fit the stereotypical RPG archetypes. While everything works well and is extremely easy to pick up, those who play RPGs on a regular basis will view this as just another game that fails to bring something unique to the table. On the other hand, those with less experience in the genre or who are looking for something with less micro-management will feel good with what is offered here.

Graphics and Sound

The developers have done a really nice job at recreating the end of the 19th Century. Locations are varied and even though they might not be true-to-life replicas, there is enough to give each area its own originality and flavor. Character and enemy designs are also done really well. There is some color palette differences in a few enemies, but that is standard fare in all RPGs. For the most part, there is enough variety in what you encounter. Animations also run extremely smoothly during battles. From the most insignificant enemy to a powerful boss, each have really nice animations that never feels cheap.

The only real downside to the art in the game is the large areas of the world that contains absolutely nothing. Too much of the map is simply high mountain areas are bare. It ends up being a bit of let down considering that so much more could have been done in this regard, even if something basic.

As well as having a lot of variety in its visuals, Nostalgia has a pretty nice soundtrack that offers a something different in each of the areas you trek through. It might not be as epic as other RPGs, it still manages to help to add to the game’s atmosphere. Along with the art-style, the music also fits the time frame of the game and varies from each location to fit the culture of that area.

Value

Nostalgia is a fairly linear affair. It’s next to impossible to get lost so novice gamers will never feel overwhelmed. The game’s side-quests revolve around completing jobs you take from the Adventurers Association or finding the location of rare treasures for the Royal Museum in London. Finding treasures simply has you flying around the world and ‘accidentally’ discovering them.

As for the Adventurers Quests, these typically have you taking on a request where you visit a person in one city then traveling to another to retrieve something for them. These quests are extremely repetitive and never really offer anything new other than the opportunity of potentially obtaining rare items. Completionist will enjoy this added extra aspect of the game while others will not do more than they have to.

Conclusion

Once you get past the slow story and the difficult Air Combat, you will see that Nostalgia is actually an enjoyable RPG. It might not offer anything original to the genre, it doesn’t alienate its audience by appealing to only one specific type of player. Those looking to play something that re-captures the great era of 16-bit gaming, this is what you need.