Tingle's action RPG adventure is partly bizarre, partly fun, and partly dull.

User Rating: 6.5 | Mogitate Tincle no Barairo Rupee Land DS
I was curious about this title, given that it wasn't released in the USA, but was in Europe and Japan. After playing it, I can see why... it's almost a fun game, and it's certainly unique, but this action RPG is no Zelda...

Tingle is a near-middle-aged loser that wants to become rich and live in the lap of luxury. He can do so if he manages to collect a million Rupees. He collects rupees in various ways:
1. Fighting monsters
2. Collecting ingredients to make objects to sell to various shop keepers
3. Finishing quests

That's the story, and that's really all there is to it. Quests are basic fetch quests, or kill everything quests, or wander through the maze quests.

Combat has you run smack into wandering monsters on the map, then tap the crap out of the little "fight cloud" (like a cartoony cloud of the two critters fighting) with your stylus.

You gain quests, information about quests, abd buy items from townspeople by bribing them -- you must choose how many rupees to give them. If you don't offer enough, they still keep the rupees, and you get nothing and must try again. If you ever run out of rupees, game over. It's a cute game mechanic, but can be pretty random and frustrating.

So on and on the game goes... it has some very limited RPG elements, but is a little more action adventure than an RPG.

The good:
+ Cute, funny, albeit dated by today's standards, graphics
+ Unique gamne mechanics (trading rupees for everything in the game)
+ Very lightweight adventure moves along pretty quickly.

The not-so-good:
+ Minimal sound and music
+ Limited gameplay can get old quickly.
+ Not much variety throughout

Overall, it's really not worth the $30-$40 it'll cost you, but if you can get it cheaper, it's a cute diversion.