I’ve been playing Avalon Code on DS. I have mixed feelings on it, and may wind up giving it up. The premise is that the world is going to end, and the player character has been chosen to fill a book with things from that current world that will be recreated in the next one. In gameplay terms, this means you scan things into the book, which then allows you to manipulate their properties. For example, if you meet a fire-element enemy, you can scan them, remove the fire element from them, and stick it on your own weapon to attack them with. It’s a neat and interesting idea, but in practice kind of a hassle - opening the book and turning pages is too slow, and all the properties get mixed up so that if I want to do something specific I’m flipping through the pages (slowly) looking for the property I need.
Aside from juggling properties, you also level up the book by filling it in in more detail. Each screen of the game gets a map page, and non-dungeon ones start with half their points allocated. You get the rest by finding points of interest. In some areas this is easy - you look at the rocks in the field, or the shelves in a room. When you find something a little text box comes up describing it: “This rock hides hundreds of bugs” or whatever. On other screens it’s a straight pixel hunt. I got one in the middle of a field which said a single blade of grass brushed my leg. I actually kind of like having these things, and finding one randomly is sort of charming, but having it tied to levelling up the book sucks, especially once you get a special attack which is activated by the same button that you use to search meaning you can’t just mash the button as you walk around anymore. There are also screens where finding all the hidden points causes a tablet to appear which you can scan for a recipe for an item or weapon, so by not finding these things you are presumably weakening your character. The saving grace for this is that I suspect it’s all unnecessary. I don’t think the game tells you about this directly and I suspect you’re supposed to just find what you find and not worry about it. It’s not clear what benefit you get from levelling the book anyway.
Something I am liking in this game is its goofiness. The special attack I mentioned earlier is one that launches enemies into the air, and you can juggle them by pressing the attack button at the right time. Keep it up and they get higher and higher, with the view zooming out to show the whole area that you’re in, then the planet, then more and more outer space. It’s absurd and kind of a waste of time (it’s supposed to get you healing drops, but I find I take hits trying to do it as often as I get healed, and there’s almost no penalty for death anyway), but pretty fun.
I keep thinking I’ll drop the game, but I’m still coming back to it for now.