When most people hear the acronym MMO (massively-multiplayer online), the first game that probably comes to mind is Blizzard's World of Warcraft (WoW), and for good reason.  The online adventure easily attracts over ten million dedicated users, with most spending untold hours traversing and exploring a digital world, with digital friends, and engaging in all sorts of digital adventures. Only the monthly payments are real, which has led many fans to seek their thrills in less famous (and less expensive) lands.  Perhaps most notable is Ragnarok Online, an online phenomenon from South Korea, and one of the earliest forbearers of the current free-to-play online adventure craze.  It's been around for years, preceding WoW by several years, and continues to thrive.  Why not share the fun and bring the experience to a dedicated gaming console?

Ragnarok DS offers up a consolidated version of the popular computer version, with considerable modifications to the original game in terms of scope and gameplay.  Gone are the thousands of online companions and near-infinite levels of customization and potential adventuring, replaced with a largely solitary adventure with a heavy emphasis on character personality and combat.  It also retains the same look and overall feel of the original, with colorful and detailed sprites that can be changed with dyes and accessories, and offers up its own version of multiplayer gameplay for those looking to take things online.

The result is a role-playing experience that's less massive, yet still somewhat online, and one that filters through to the DS console very well.  Whether the significant changes will be enough for the dedicated Ragnarok fan to put down their mice and keyboards for a handheld and stylus is uncertain, but I thoroughly enjoyed my time in the scaled-down world of Midgard.  Ragnarok DS offers up a full story, with characters and quests that will most likely satisfy anyone looking for a more traditional RPG experience, at least one of the Japanese grind-and-advance variety.  Its story is cliché, but its perspective of events told through the main character is rare. Its supporting characters are equally cliché, but their flaws are what set them apart.

You play as Ales, a young man whose father abandoned the family early in life, and whose mother has just recently passed away.  These experiences have turned him into something of a misanthrope, and with a rather large chip on his shoulder embarks into the world to seek his fame and fortune.  Along the way he runs into Sierra, an amnesic young girl on the run from a surly group with nefarious purposes, decides to stick with Ales.  Along the way there will be many battles as our band of heroes level up and grow stronger, meeting new friends and villains along the way.  Is this a predictable journey? Absolutely, but its only part of a larger experience that will help Ales realize his ultimate goal of starting a guild of his own, becoming the richest guy around in the process.

Ales swears, fights, gets jealous and struggles with his life throughout the game.  It's rare to find such a greedy and selfish character in the lead of an adventure like this, and say what you will about an otherwise predictable and familiar storyline, be happy because this kind of trait is hard to find.  He seems more natural because he doesn’t always try to be the best guy in the group, and will often let other support characters offer up chances to be the hero for a change.

The game play turns you into a virtual maestro, as you'll be using the DS stylus to attack, move and use skills, and almost never utilizes the buttons on the DS for any purpose besides shortcuts.  This works remarkably well, and is similar to how Nintendo has handled recent Zelda DS games.

Classes in the game offer up different play styles and the help of two NPS with mild customization on their habits and the ability to make them attack by tapping them and tapping the enemy afterword gives you some control. Classes break down to the simple jobs like in most fantasy games, with Swordsman, Mages, Acolytes (Healers), Archers and Thieves, but they manage to throw in two new classes that are not in the original game just to spice things up. Swordsman and Thieves operate on simple (yet effective) "run and beat them down methods" while Archers and Mages prefer to camp back and drop killer meteors, or simply shower them with pointy sticks. It should be said that you can’t get the other two classes, Shaman and Dark Knight, until later in the game, so the key is persistence if you want to unlock all the game has to offer.

Thankfully, you’re never locked into your choice, unlike the original game, and are free to switch to whatever you want. Purists will typically build a character with stats maxed to make them nearly almighty, and that's very possible with the system here. Every job has its own bar for leveling up, so when you level up in experience you can up your stats, and when you level up your job, you get another skill point to drop into something.

Most fans looking to play Ragnarok DS will probably be wondering how its much-touted online capabilities work, and that requires some explaining.  What's available here isn't the same experience of the original MMO, far from it, as the focus is almost entirely on the single-player adventure.  Instead, the game almost goes out of its way to seclude those looking for some online excitement into a separate entity of its own.  The multiplayer is handled more like a "Survival Mode with Friends", where you all meet up in a single area and grind your way down the pit until you reach the end. Enemies scale with you and get progressively more difficult, and every five levels there’s a boss waiting to help ruin your day. Each boss is one you’ve run into while running through the main quest, and after you beat said boss, you get XP and are able to bid on the major drops that come from defeating him.

Even in this limited form, it can be satisfying to roll with a small group of friends (limited to three others) who are in the same room as you (via ad-hoc) and smash a load of enemies with sheer force.  I can definitely see this game creating an unholy alliance of Ragnarok and Anime fans, and will no doubt become required playing on the convention circuit.  Playing through the internet (Nintendo WiFi) is a bit stifled, as communication is limited to using premade messages, although its worth mentioning the game doesn't force players to use Nintendo's own Friend Code system to.

The lack of true online adventuring is probably where most fans will take issue, and that's understandable, given the franchise its based on.  The DS is more than capable of approximating the original experience better than what's here, and could have even offered real-time voice chat through the available (but often underused) microphone headset, or through the stock microphone in the console itself.  There are so many ways the developer could have handled this better, one can't help but feel disappointed.

Ragnarok DS is an interesting adaptation that mostly works by flipping the focus of its original namesake, offering fans a considerably more involving solo adventure, yet ultimately disappointing online experience.  But those looking for a more traditional RPG experience will find themselves in a grinding paradise, helped along by a cliché-ridden story with characters they should feel comfortably familiar, with interactions that alternate between funny and dramatic on cue.  It's fairly obvious who this game was created for, and even its lackluster online mode shouldn't keep it from becoming a cult-classic in the accepting world of anime conventions where Ragnarok fans and DS owners flourish.