If you can get past the game's flaws, LostMagic is a whole lot of fun.
The overworld in LostMagic couldn't be more straightforward. Each area has it's own spot on the map, and you simply move between each mark to get around, much like Super Mario World. Battles that move the story are marked with a special icon. These missions usually have a bit of dialogue before or after them, but other than that there's nothing to the game but fighting. The game's maps vary in size, although they are all manageable. Once you clear a mission you return to the overworld and open up new paths. Moving between areas without mission icons will initiate random battles, although these are significantly easier than those that are within the game's simple storyline.
The basic gameplay mechanics in the game are as follows: 1. You pick a character; 2. You tell the character where to go; 3. You draw runes to cast magic; 4. You pick a target for your magic. There's nothing any more complex about controlling the game. All of the aforementioned actions work well in the context of a fight, and allow you to manage your team pretty quickly. Herein lies the games biggest problem, though. Once you tell your party where to go, they are at the mercy of any trees, rocks, or corners that lie in their path. You'll have to plot out a path around any of these obstacles if your want your characters to get anywhere. This can be frustrating when you're racing against the clock to complete all your mission objectives, or when you're trying to coordinate an attack on a distant enemy. Eventually it becomes natural to take small steps towards your destination, but it's still lame.
The spell-casting in LostMagic is the game's biggest draw. During the course of the story Isaac will learn different runes that can be drawn on the touch screen. To cast a spell, you simply hold the L button and draw the combination of runes you want. There are over 400 different spells in the game that can all be made in this way, each of them based on one of six schools of magic. Once you learn a new rune, it's up to you to find out what new spells you can make with it. The spells range from projectiles to curses to barriers to buffs to cures.
Your party will consist of Isaac and any monsters you should choose to bring into battle with you. Certain spells in the game allow you to capture any of the games various animals for use in your group. Your monsters will level up when you take them into battle, so you can make just about any of them good enough to help you. Each animal is aligned with a different school of magic, providing one of LostMagic's more strategic elements. Each type of magic has an opposing type, meaning that a fire spell will do more damage when used against a water-based monster than an earth-based monster. While choosing your group, you can opt to bring monsters of the opposite alignment as your enemies to inflict more damage, but you run the risk of the enemy monsters doing more damage against you. The wrong group of monsters will all but ensure your defeat in a fight.
This brings me to, what most people will consider, one of the games biggest flaws: the difficulty. If you know what you're going up against, and you know what conditions you must fulfill to clear the mission, most of the battles are fine. However, you won't know any of these things until you actually start the fight. On top of this, all the battles are fitted with a pretty stingy time limit. This means that any decently challenging mission will take at least a second time to complete. While it might be annoying at first, you can learn to use this as a means of finding the fastest and easiest way to finish a match. There's just something gratifying about besting an enemy that, two turns ago, you never stood a chance against.
The graphics are generic, but they don't detract from the gameplay at all. None of the spells look particularly impressive, but none of them look dull. The environments are varied enough to keep things from getting boring, but none of them really stand out. The same is true for the audio. The battle themes are dramatic and upbeat, and the sound effects work well. Nothing too great or too bad here.
If you can get past the control issues, the generic look and story, and the bizarre difficulty, you will find that LostMagic has a lot to offer. The strategy elements are well implemented and the spell-casting is a lot of fun. If you're looking for a unique use of the DS functionality, or just a compelling RPG, LostMagic is worth a try.