An enjoyable experience for DS owners.
Trace Memory is a point and click style murder mystery for the DS. It is about 50% exploration based and 50% story based, no battles in this one. I liked that though, I wasn't looking for a violent adventure, I was looking for some good puzzle solving and exploration.
In my mind I basically thought of this game as Resident Evil or Silent Hill without the combat or sluggish controls. Just some good old item based puzzle solving to progress through a large area. The puzzles don't get extremely difficult, although some of them definitly take some thinking outside of the box. You'll use your DS in ways you've probably never used your DS before. It's awesome to see that a game that came out early in the DS's life did things like this that no other game (I've played) has mimicked.
I was glad to find that there was hardly any backtracking in the game; it's not to often you come across that. However, due to the lack the of this as I progressed through the game and entered new areas I was hesitant to go back. As a result, I got stuck for quite some time on a few puzzles because in order to complete them I needed to go back to old areas and find items. It made sense after I did it though; so just keep in mind the things you see.
The story in the game is great. Towards the end it gets to be a lot to read, but personally I found it very interesting and immersive. I found myself really wanting to know how it turned out. It twists around quite a bit and confuses you with information that you're not sure if you should beleive or not. You'll know what I'm talking about when you play it. It's definitly worth paying attention to though.
The graphics are top quality for the DS. The environments look nice as do the character models. It has a over the top view while exploring and then you'll see nice drawings of things you can examine on the top screen which move down to the bottom when you choose to examine them.
The artwork is done extremely well. The characters all have a nice cel-shaded look while things in the environment are simply drawn very well. Although nothing is extremely exciting because you're exploring things like drawers and whatnot, it still all looks very nice.
It took me about 6 hours to complete the game and that was what I expected to play for. I personally don't want to spend 20 hours staring at my DS screen for one game unless I'm on a really long road trip. I love seeing my TV for that time for games, but handhelds just don't keep my attention for that long. So I think the game length was perfect.
Definitly a worthwhile experience, I'm very glad that I picked this one up. Hardcore action people may not enjoy it due to it's lack of battles, but anyone up for a good story and some good puzzle solving/exploration shouldn't pass this one up.