Ever wondered what the worst selling DS game of all time is?
It's this....
Item Getter: The Relationship Between Our Science and Magic
According to it's developers 5PB it sold the grand total of 970 copies which for a DS game is shocking as even the shovelware ****e ubisoft churn out by the bucketload on DS probably sell x10 more copies. Finding anyone else who has even played this is hard, but it's actually a lovely game. Kind of sad it went by so unappreciated, was going to do a first play but it's kind of old now to do so, but i thought i'd provide a bit of info on it seeing as no website has anything decent on this. Seeing as nobody is going to play this there are no spoiler tags as i divulge parts of the story.
So what actually makes this game so bad? well nothing really, the graphics are basic yet they are still pleasing. The music & voice acting are generally good & the story is rather interesting too. In fact a good portion of the cut scenes are fully voiced too.
The game is based around 3 friends Piquet, Ellice & Ritt they end up visiting Piquet's dad's workshop. His dad is an expert in ancient civilizations & is working on a museum exhibition, while in his dads workshop they come across a strange device called Tribolt that looks like a diving sphere. They manage to get it open & climb inside for a better look, Ritt been the computer geek cant help but play wth the controls & accidentally sets it going so they end up transported. They think it's just rolled them down the hill into the woods but when they look beyond theres a huge kingdom that wasn't there before in front of them called Afillia.
They proceed into the kingdom where they are intercepted by the guard due to their strange apperance, they find out that the world they are now in is several thousand years into the past with no way back as the tribolt broke when it crashed. The science & technology from Piquet's world is regarded as magic in Afillia. In Afillia alchemy is what is regarded as normal science, they are arrested & thrown into jail due to Piquet using his mobile to take a photo of the guard wearing armour as Piquet hasn't seen anyone wear armour for real outside of a manga. They are taken to see the king where Piquet bluffs his way through convincing them that they are magicians by showing the king a lighter as they have never seen a device that can produce fire.
The kings guard is still suspicious that they might be evil magicians so he makes them write their names on the Grime tablet, an artifact that can detect people with evil hearts. The language in Afillia is based on the english alphabet for each letter there is a corresponding letter in the Afillian alphabet (in reality it's all spoken in Japanese hehe) these letters allow you to cast magic & other effects. Suffice to say they all pass the test & are allowed to go.
They end up enrolling in the alchemy school till they can find out how to fix the machine that brought them there, luckily for them the main teacher for alchemy is Tim Claster who happens to be the creator of the time machine or he will be when he invents it in the future, he is amazed when he sees his idea already built. The main part of the game is recreating the broken items to get the machine working again, Tim helps you with these items but they are very hard to make as some of them contain very rare ingredients.
So thats pretty much the prologue to the game, it's a game based on alchemy. There is no grinding & endless random battles to level up it's a rather quirky RPG. Your only goal is to get home by fabricating the missing parts of the machine while doing so you end up doing many quests to obtain the ingredients you need, ingredients are everywhere. You can find them on the ground or in trees or you can but them from the shops in town. You can also get them from the creatures that roam around. To get them from creatures you need to trap them using a elemental spell which you do by drawing the correct letter from the Afllian alphabet, if it's an element that the monster likes then they will drop an item. If your fast you can repeat the spell again while it's still trapped & have a chance at it dropping a rarer item.
In the school is the alchemy room in there you can do many things you can create items by using ingredients, either you choose a recipe from the list or you can try making one from experimenting. You get the recipes by talking to people or buying them. Once you have the items place them on the alter & use the correct letters to bind the items together, if your successful you will have the desired item. Sometimes you need to create an item to use it as an ingredient in another. You can also refine items by using a special potion, the items you create are graded out of 5 stars the highest star items are the rarest some recipes call for higher grade items, you can also distil items as well. Sometimes the only way to get an ingredient is to break it out of a created item, in the game theres over 1000 items to find so quite a task if you like hunting. Thats pretty much most of the game, what carries it through is the story, i found it interesting from start to finish the people you help along the way is what makes it fun.
Theres one other cool bit but thats mostly for online via the WFC, you have the ability to create your own items for the game & trade them online. You can draw pixel art for them & everything, to do that you need special chalk. The rarest chalk has all colours available to use but the more common ones have just a few colours to choose from, the chalks can be created or found if your really lucky or you can buy some from the shops in the game.
Heres some screens
Games homepage
It's this....
Item Getter: The Relationship Between Our Science and Magic
According to it's developers 5PB it sold the grand total of 970 copies which for a DS game is shocking as even the shovelware ****e ubisoft churn out by the bucketload on DS probably sell x10 more copies. Finding anyone else who has even played this is hard, but it's actually a lovely game. Kind of sad it went by so unappreciated, was going to do a first play but it's kind of old now to do so, but i thought i'd provide a bit of info on it seeing as no website has anything decent on this. Seeing as nobody is going to play this there are no spoiler tags as i divulge parts of the story.
So what actually makes this game so bad? well nothing really, the graphics are basic yet they are still pleasing. The music & voice acting are generally good & the story is rather interesting too. In fact a good portion of the cut scenes are fully voiced too.
The game is based around 3 friends Piquet, Ellice & Ritt they end up visiting Piquet's dad's workshop. His dad is an expert in ancient civilizations & is working on a museum exhibition, while in his dads workshop they come across a strange device called Tribolt that looks like a diving sphere. They manage to get it open & climb inside for a better look, Ritt been the computer geek cant help but play wth the controls & accidentally sets it going so they end up transported. They think it's just rolled them down the hill into the woods but when they look beyond theres a huge kingdom that wasn't there before in front of them called Afillia.
They proceed into the kingdom where they are intercepted by the guard due to their strange apperance, they find out that the world they are now in is several thousand years into the past with no way back as the tribolt broke when it crashed. The science & technology from Piquet's world is regarded as magic in Afillia. In Afillia alchemy is what is regarded as normal science, they are arrested & thrown into jail due to Piquet using his mobile to take a photo of the guard wearing armour as Piquet hasn't seen anyone wear armour for real outside of a manga. They are taken to see the king where Piquet bluffs his way through convincing them that they are magicians by showing the king a lighter as they have never seen a device that can produce fire.
The kings guard is still suspicious that they might be evil magicians so he makes them write their names on the Grime tablet, an artifact that can detect people with evil hearts. The language in Afillia is based on the english alphabet for each letter there is a corresponding letter in the Afillian alphabet (in reality it's all spoken in Japanese hehe) these letters allow you to cast magic & other effects. Suffice to say they all pass the test & are allowed to go.
They end up enrolling in the alchemy school till they can find out how to fix the machine that brought them there, luckily for them the main teacher for alchemy is Tim Claster who happens to be the creator of the time machine or he will be when he invents it in the future, he is amazed when he sees his idea already built. The main part of the game is recreating the broken items to get the machine working again, Tim helps you with these items but they are very hard to make as some of them contain very rare ingredients.
So thats pretty much the prologue to the game, it's a game based on alchemy. There is no grinding & endless random battles to level up it's a rather quirky RPG. Your only goal is to get home by fabricating the missing parts of the machine while doing so you end up doing many quests to obtain the ingredients you need, ingredients are everywhere. You can find them on the ground or in trees or you can but them from the shops in town. You can also get them from the creatures that roam around. To get them from creatures you need to trap them using a elemental spell which you do by drawing the correct letter from the Afllian alphabet, if it's an element that the monster likes then they will drop an item. If your fast you can repeat the spell again while it's still trapped & have a chance at it dropping a rarer item.
In the school is the alchemy room in there you can do many things you can create items by using ingredients, either you choose a recipe from the list or you can try making one from experimenting. You get the recipes by talking to people or buying them. Once you have the items place them on the alter & use the correct letters to bind the items together, if your successful you will have the desired item. Sometimes you need to create an item to use it as an ingredient in another. You can also refine items by using a special potion, the items you create are graded out of 5 stars the highest star items are the rarest some recipes call for higher grade items, you can also distil items as well. Sometimes the only way to get an ingredient is to break it out of a created item, in the game theres over 1000 items to find so quite a task if you like hunting. Thats pretty much most of the game, what carries it through is the story, i found it interesting from start to finish the people you help along the way is what makes it fun.
Theres one other cool bit but thats mostly for online via the WFC, you have the ability to create your own items for the game & trade them online. You can draw pixel art for them & everything, to do that you need special chalk. The rarest chalk has all colours available to use but the more common ones have just a few colours to choose from, the chalks can be created or found if your really lucky or you can buy some from the shops in the game.
Heres some screens
Games homepage
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