Nostalgia

I'm a big fan of nostalgic "old-school" style RPGs as my catalogue of reviews suggests, but honestly, Nostalgia fell completely flat in almost all areas.

With the exception of the airship fights and the graded battles, Nostalgia does not innovate much beyond genre roots.

One name, one destiny. Nostalgia is an old-fashioned game, which adds nothing new to the actual RPG standards. Still, it's worth playing by those who recalls Skies of Arcadia's days with a tear in their eye.

Even with it's impressive handheld graphics, assortment of interesting characters and intriguing steampunk setting, Will couldn't help but feel that he'd played this JRPG somewhere before.

The gameplay is extremely typical of the genre, and the story is so derivative that you stop caring about it after a few hours. ]Dec 2009, p.86]

Nostalgia is a game for those who, well, want to experience some nostalgia. It's a simple, old-school RPG with new twists here and there that make the experience more fun to play through without changing things up too much.

If you're the kind of gamer who grew up on SNES and PS1 RPGs, then Nostalgia is a welcome trip back to your childhood and is sure to bring forth some fond memories. To gamers without that sense of nostalgia for the older genre, though, the title may be too simplistic and average to really enjoy, especially with so many more exciting and innovative RPGs available on the DS.

Old fashioned RPG, with many elements similar to Skyes of Arcadia and Wild Arms.

This simplistic, old-fashioned role-playing game sends you adventuring around the world but never manages to feel like an adventure.

There's nothing that Nostalgia does that's explicitly bad - the storyline isn't great and the writing is drab, but it's serviceable, and the battle system is solid without doing anything really interesting.

Nostalgia cheerfully opts to evoke our memories of other RPG experiences, most notably Final Fantasy X and Skies of Arcadia, but because it lacks the coherence and originality of its predecessors it never develops an identity of its own.

Nostalgia is determined to make its way in a crowded market on sweetness alone. It's charming and competent, but you can do much better on the DS. In this lousy economy, with so many quality alternatives, Nostalgia's attempt at repurposing fond memories isn't quite good enough.

Nostalgia suffers from being stunted and stuck in the past, but then I suppose that's where the title comes in. But it's more a placebo for the genre than anything productive.

Aside from the random battle system, I can't think of anything bad to say about Nostalgia. Interesting setup? Check. Good story? Check. Amazing presentation? Check. Exciting method of travel? Check. Plenty to do? Check. But none of that stuff can overcome the developer laziness and player annoyance that comes with the random battle system, which is even more grievous here because it extends to the airship travel, not just the on-foot dungeons.

For some it may be worth trying out, but there are many JRPGs on the DS right now that are more fun, more charming, more worth your time, and more likely to remind you of the good old days of being a young RPGamer.