I can remember being very jazzed about Animal Crossing arriving for the GameCube, playing it avidly for a few weeks, and then gradually tapering off my activity once other games and life began competing for my time. Virtual worlds weren't as prevalent in 2002 as they are today, so games like Animal Crossing were much more exciting. Now that any Tom, Dick, or Harry can sign up and be playing instantly for free in persistent worlds like Dofus or Maple Story, the allure of an A.I.-powered virtual world fades. Even with those reservations, you'll be impressed with your first view of Magician's Quest: Mysterious Times.

Using the DS screens to full advantage (looks particularly nice on the DSi), Magician's Quest spreads the view evenly from top to bottom, providing depth-of-field and perspective that stands out immediately. The gameplay is heavily weighted toward design and customization of items, so there are lots of options to decorate your living space and your character. The world you explore is limited in size, but you'll uncover a lot as you explore. There are nice touches throughout, like bumping into a character and triggering a response like, "Was I in your way?" The audio is great for music and sound, with a variety of tunes you can purchase as you customize your magician's pad. Lack of spoken parts (in English, at least) makes for lots of reading - the dialogue is written well in most instances, but repeats itself too often. You are encouraged to interact with other "players" but this doesn't feel genuine unless the payoff is there in terms of variety. Options exist for free text entry or an ideogram-style of dialogue between players, but when you spend most of your time interacting with an NPC, there isn't much to talk about.

Fans of the Life Simulation genre will be pleased with Magician's Quest: Mysterious Times, especially since there hasn't been much outside of Animal Crossing or to hang one's hat on. Whether there is room in the market for a variation on this theme will be answered by how well Magician's Quest does on store shelves. At the risk of sounding overly acerbic this early in the review, we'll put ourselves out there and say, "We just don't get it." There is something appealing about closely managing the many elements of your game world, including the design of your character's outfit and home. There is certainly something appealing about uncovering the stories behind the characters wandering the world you inhabit, and exploring that world in search of rare items. Game after game has included one or more of these elements, but the Life Sim is unique in making the collection and management process an end in itself. If my life were nothing more than gathering items and decorating my home, I'd jump out a high window. The personal, financial, or other character growth that enters most games is largely absent in Magician's Quest: Mysterious Times, making for a pretty hollow experience.

In defense of what's been accomplished here, the developers built a fabulous sandbox and did include ways to share your world with other players through the wireless communication. For a close-knit group of friends, this might be a tipping point to justify buying copies of the game and playing together. We wonder how many of these close-knit groups exist, and how long they'll stay interested in Mysterious Times once they find out there aren't that many mysteries to explore. The majority of the game feels like training, which is appropriate considering that you, as the main character, are in school, learning how to be a wizard. Collecting items and capturing bugs or fish to collect items becomes part of the equation, along with shopping and building friendships. The coolest parts of the game are the events timed to your real-world day/night cycle, or the time of year. This can be faked by changing the clock on your DS, but why would you do that? There are also some narratives scattered through the game that you can uncover and "solve" by exploring and interacting with special characters, but these are one-shot events that ultimately don't add that much to the gameplay. Players that have experienced full-on multiplayer worlds, a game genre which is reaching a younger and younger demographic, can enjoy the familiar elements in Magician's Quest: Mysterious Times, but will likely still feel the loss of the spontaneous interaction and randomness that only humans can provide.

There's no challenge here in the traditional sense. Taking classes involves some knowledge quizzes, all easily answered if you were reading the preceding lines of dialogue. There aren't any special tricks for controlling your character or navigating the world that require training, so the only obstacle is the time required to amass items and skills. This lack of direction or goal could be touted as open, non-linear gameplay, but there's a point where lack of linearity equates to "being lost." Younger players without strong reading skills will just flounder immediately, or wander around until they get bored with the few areas open to exploration. The instructions for various controls are introduced, and the characters you interact with will give you tips, but everything is presented in written dialogue. The help system in the game is feeble, so you're left to figure things out using the accompanying manual or whatever you can uncover through exploration and trial or error. Perhaps the more patient gamer will enjoy that sensation of not knowing what to do next, or why. We found Mysterious Times a bit too heavy on the "mystery" when it came to helping players achieve that sense of accomplishment and purpose that we generally associate with a game experience.

Just as the visual interface is intelligently done, the controls are smart and planned out nicely. Touch-screen isn't even a requirement, if you prefer to handle everything using the face-buttons and (L) or (R) buttons. Many actions, like moving objects out of your inventory, feel like they're happening in slow motion when you attempt to use buttons instead of touch, but buttons will get the job done. This layout also allows for hybrid control options, so left-handers like us can use the tool selection feature mapped to the (R) button to cycle through wands, fishing rods, shovels, and hands quickly while reserving the other hand for movement controls. Each part of the touch-screen interface is mapped in some way to a button, and there aren't so many menus that one gets lost. The communication system, where you are supposed to type pictures that convey ideas into the screen and communicate with other characters, works well enough but is a bit ridiculous. Since there's no deep communication going on between your character and these NPCs, why bother making things more complicated, eh? Being able to save anywhere and anytime is a nice option, as is having the option to save multiple profiles on one game card.

The good, smart features mentioned just don't add up to anything that is greater than the sum of its parts. It's questionable whether being equal to the sum of these parts is enough to make a splash when games like Animal Crossing and The Sims are filling the banal simulation niche quite nicely. Players looking for a different take on the genre, or who have played out their copy of Animal Crossing won't be disappointed by Magician's Quest, but they won't find more than "Crossing 1.5" in this package. Better multiplayer, especially wrapped around a virtual world component, would make Magician's Quest: Mysterious Times something to behold. Instead, we have a canned world and canned characters acting out events that never feel quite as new and exciting as the developers might have hoped. Like that character in the Thomas Wolfe novel that returns home to find things changed and unfamiliar, you really can't "go home again" to this kind of experience after you've spent time in a MMORPG.