I'm at chapter 16, the game has been a lot of fun.
Graphics: Great stuff for the DS. Large very well animated sprites, awesome spells, and extra cool super moves. The art is fairly generic but consistent. I REALLY like the super move cutscenes, they're so over the top and awesome. You'd think the main male lead (Aldo) was a gundam.
The monster designs are great and well animated. I'm really impressed how much shit they pack on the screen. Some dungeons are so packed the monsters just crowd around you, and there's spells and skills that can clear the entire screen and make you feel AWESOME.
Gameplay: Its easy, but the fun is keeping your character slightly overpowered and owning the field, creating new weapons, fusing special items with them. The ability to summon monsters is more useful early game than late. The casters are best used for healing and support, while Aldo is a dps machine. I started out using the caster, but Aldo's moves are just too good. from the chain attacks to the land slash, and the supers = wow.
The skill tree stuff is neat but it populates and maxes out fairly fast. By the last chapter you'll be throwing points into stuff just cause you wanna spend em. This is fine tho because you are almost always doing cool stuff early and mid game, and late game the fights get so manic the experience with full maxed out skills makes you feel like a badass.
For those complaining about the nerfed difficulty, even if they made monsters and bosses harder, this isn't what makes the game easy. This is: You are invincible while casting. Sure, the bosses are this way too, but say you have one character left and you're waiting for the knocked out characters to auto-res, all you have to do is use SP charge, which has a long cast time, and the boss cant touch you. Once your friends rez go back at it. SP charge is also FREE 800 SP in chapter 16, thats HUGE. Granted, you have to take this into account when fighting monsters and time your casting windows opposite there's to get your chance to do damage. Still, If they did nerf monsters when they brought it over it was to keep things from being tedious. I'm at 13 hours at chapter 16, so it'll probably be a 20-22 hour game, which is as long as it needs to be.
Sound: Decent music. Voice samples in general are kinda half assed. The VA that is there is ok, but as the game wears on there's less and less of it. By chapter 12 you're hearing a few exclamations ala Skies of Arcadia. "NOOO! OHHH! BOOOOO! YES!".
Controls: Excellent. Some of the best stylus implementation in a DS game yet. I never have problems doing what I want to do and switching between characters. I think one thing thats more of a mechanic than a control complaint is if you switch characters during a long cast the cast cancels, which sucks if you're trying to get a heal out of your healer real quick. The AI is sometimes not to swift out of a fight when it comes to support spells. Thankfully both main characters get support spells for themselves, so I usually have Aldo cast atk up on himself.
You can control the entire game with the stylus with ease.
Replayability: They say there's two unique stories, as there are two characters, but who would play through this twice? The story is boring and the dialogue is predictable. If this game had the more clever and funny qualities of Summon Night 2 I'd consider a second run but....
I'd nab it for 20 if you liked Children of Mana and want a nice accessible action/rpg on the DS.
