You can only opt for touch screen or buttons only by pressing the Select button and frankly, the traditional way has its own problems too but not because of the DS. It’s more of an interface design problem. For some reason, the menu design differs from the general SRPG that you maybe used to playing. While nearly all SRPGs have the commands “Attack”, “Magic”, “Skill” and “Item” listed separately on the main menu, LA have them all as sub-commands under “Attacks”. This means you have to navigate through one extra command before you can really see the main menu. It might not sound like much but it really slows down the game unnecessarily, especially if you ever decide to change your mind when issuing commands. It’s an awkward way of arranging the menu really and it’s another reason why the classic and stylus controls should have been implemented together.


The interface is actually more cumbersome than it should be.
The interface design problem doesn’t stop there. During battles, stats of your currently selected party member are displayed on the top screen. Usually when you hover your cursor over the enemy their stats are displayed but not in LA. You have to deselect your current unit first and then select the enemy unit before you see anything. And if you want to check multiple enemy stats, you’ll have to this for every enemy unit you want to check! Very tedious and again, it’s just bad interface design just like the menu. Only half of the top screen is used for displaying all the essential stats SRPG players will want to know. The other half is displayed with other bits of information you’re unlikely to find useful such as what equipment, skills and spells your units currently have and they really could have put this side of the screen to better use. It would also be good if the game automatically pre-selected the nearest enemy unit like most SRPG do. On the bright side, at least the game caters for both left and right hand players.

There’s a Wi-Fi supported versus mode available where you can use the characters you’ve trained up to battle a friend or someone anonymous but, you don’t actually gain access to this mode until you’ll played half way through the game. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to try this feature out because I couldn’t find an opponent using a random player search.