The best RPG ever to grace the GBA.
The overall concept of the game is to run around to seek what is wrong with the Earth, or whatever it was the big rock ball with an eye told you to do. After that, you will get 4 people into your party. Each is aligned to one element. Along your quest you will come across small mystical creatures called Djinni. These Djinni are the focal point of all combat in the game. Depending on what element the Djinni is and who you equip it to, you character will have different magic. Djinni can be used as a special skill attack as well. The Djinni Corona, a fire type, will make a heat shield around your party, while another Earth type might use a strong Earth oriented attack, or increase attack. Each and every Djinni does something different with the special skills. Deeper yet, the more of kind of element Djinni you equip to one character, the more powerful Summons the will get. A Summon comes from the power of the Djinni, so the summon will be elemental oriented. There are 4 levels of summon, each extra level granted for every extra Djinni of that type you have equipped. Using this system, a player can sit there with there face stuck to the gameboy thinking about whether or not they should that Djinni to this person or that person. The decision actually will make or break your character. It is surprisingly fun to sit and do nothing while thinking about how to arrange Djinnis.
10/10-This is the Djinni/combat system in a little more detail. Lets say you have 1 of every kind of Djinni. You have some options. You can give each Djinni to it's respecting elemental character, or give it to someone that will make special magic combinations with it. Maybe you give Wind to Garrett, the fire type, for the wind/fire combo. This will give Garrett ninja style magic. Instead of his fire magic like Burn or Inferno, he will get spells like Bamboo Spikes or Lightning. On the other hand, if you give the same wind Djinni to Mia, the water character, they will get a totally different set of magic. Mayhaps you want to give the Fire Djinni to Ivan, the wind dude, so he has the fire summons plus his wind, fire, and or ninja magic. Maybe you give Isaac, the main Earth dude, a variety of different Djinni to have him set to go for skills.
Summoning was pretty clever. You can't summon out of nowhere. You would destroy everything without challenge. Instead of using Djinni to summon, you use the Djinni's leftover energy to summon. When you use a Djinni, it takes a certain amount of turns for you too use it again. If you use these Djinni and they are on standby, you can summon. If you use enough before the 1st one recovers, you can use higher level summons, up to level 4. No magic needed, you just need to use Djinni consecutively. Instead of a decrease in your power supply, it's a strategic move. Pretty clever. Using the higher level summons can be challenging because of this system. It adds more tactical element to the game. Should I cast magic? Use a skill? Should I let the Djinni recover or follow up with more skills for a summon? Maybe an item or attack? Should I switch weapons? Who should heal? What character should I give this or that too? Every single little thing matters and WILL make the difference during a fight.
The storyline of the game is this. As I said earlier, all life revolves around fire, water, wind, and earth. Special people can control these powers. The Sol and Luna and symbols of great importance. Eventually, you'll come across a sort of floating rock entitiy that tells you( darn near forces you) to stop whatever it was from doing something or other. ( spoiler free is fun to write). You will travel around the world solving problems that hurt the planet. The main antagonists are Blue guy and Red girl. They are fire oriented, and seek to do stuff that you don't want them to do(yup, still having fun with it). 1 of these things is not activating the Lighthouses, but I'll leave that for you to find out. A couple of plot twists along the way like someone disappearing and being someone else will come along. On a serious note, the story does seem to drone on off topic in between lighthouses. A charming story just barely enthralling enough to let you remember what the whole thing was about, but once it gets there, it edge of your seat stuff to see what happens next. This is not because the game is complicated, but rather since it took so long to get to that point. Really then, it can't be counted as a good thing. The story is a 7/10.
The graphics are beautiful. The gameboy has been graced with the wonderful colors, hues, and animations of this goodness. The were not lazy at all with a single thing. Every detail has been made a joy to look at. There isn't really much else to say about the smooth power of the games graphics. 10/10
The sound- Not much to say. Normal gaming music. I guess an 8/10.
Overall, this game is a darn near bite size masterpiece. Not a single one of the 16 give or take times I beat it did I get bored. At no point will you not want to play because you don't know what to do or you died in a dungeon, because it's just that charming of a game. 10/10