First playing this game in 2011, I loved it. I played occasionally and could not stop until I got stuck. It came out at the same time as the Prince Caspian movie, riding its success.

Now I’ll analyze the game to help Narnia fans and bystanders, alike, decide whether this game is a good buy.

Released in 2008, Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian provides a quick-to-play story-mode for DS that lets you experience the incredible world of Narnia. With a DGamer feature, you can share achievements with friends.

So without further ado, let’s jump in!

Graphics: 5 / 10

With mediocre graphics, the gameplay suffers. The game background and characters uses inferior graphics that are comparable with graphics on older consoles from games released years ago.

On the other hand, smaller features show improvements. Story scenes from the books use updated graphics for images and fight scenes use clear graphics for puzzles and characters.

While the 3D of characters does work well, the game lacks fine detail, making the display slightly blurry and making the trees and other objects look less realistic.

While the game attempts rendering light through shadows, they do not affect characters. Ground surfaces that look 3D are merely rendered in 2D, including large rocks. The character walked on top of the rock as if it was at the same level as the ground instead of a few feet higher. The same applies with stairwells.

While rough graphics that only have a few redeeming qualities, the score remains low. 5 / 10.

Sound / Music: 6 / 10

While repetitive, the music tracks do bring thrill and excitement to the game. When playing through difficult sections where you must avoid enemies or fight battles, the music fits perfectly.

However, the same somber, dangerous type of music plays throughout the game. With little variation, the music can get tiring in outdoor settings, where lighter music would be more apt.

Sound effects do help gameplay in this game. Although they have virtually no variation and poor quality, I didn’t find them annoying or excessive; They’re simply decent.

While the music / sound has its downsides, the atmosphere they provide slightly raise this category above mediocrity.

6 / 10.

Addictiveness: 5 / 10

With exciting dangerous levels, you’ll easily play for over an hour when you first start. However, unnecessary and tedious tasks permeate the game, losing my interest if they take more than a few minutes.

Battles, while fun, keep you immersed in the game and can be addictive at first. As you progress, they still remain fun, but not addictive.

While it’s a short game, you’re not likely to unintentionally finish it in one sitting. Soon after playing, finishing the story becomes the only fun reason to keep at it. When I first starting playing, I only played once in a while for about a half-hour. The lackluster graphics contribute to this effect.

Since the initial excitement dies quickly, the score lowers to 5 / 10.

Story: 7 / 10

With a decent storyline taken from the popular movie and books, the story is a strength of the game.

While you play as many different characters throughout the course of the game, the plot centers around Prince Caspian, who aims to take the throne as its rightful heir. You combat evil beasts and soldiers of King Miraz, who from the very start of the game, wants to prevent Caspian from assuming the throne. The birth of Miraz’s child starts the conflict, causing Caspian to run away from the palace.  

Since the storyline is decent, the story rates 7 / 10.

Depth: 3 / 10

The only depth appears from the side missions within levels. While I’ve never used DGamer, since it requires others to have the game, they provide depth by devising statistics to compare with others.

The levels have virtually no replay value and there is only one mode for the game, story-mode. I found this highly disappointing, since after beating the game, all you can do is play back through it.

Since the story scenes remains the only interesting part as the game progresses, once you beat the game, you have little incentive to replay.

With very limited gameplay and no other options than story mode, the depth lowers to 3 / 10.

Difficulty: 7 / 10

The level of difficulty turns out to be surprisingly decent. Battling requires playing stylus games where you trace lines, connect dots, or shoot arrows at targets on the screen. They go at a pace just fast enough to be difficult, so they’re hard to play mindlessly and you need quick finger movements.

On the other hand, If you’re facing a single opponent the battle can be easily cheated with multiple players. While you attack the opponent with one character you can be ready and quickly select another player and attack subsequently with no time in between. While a single mistake can break the loop and let the enemy attack, I did not find it difficult to keep switching players and attacking until the difficult enemy was destroyed.

With multiple enemies, the difficulty does increase as at least one of them will attack after each battle scene.

Difficulty also arises from the tedious nature of some activities. From the start, characters occasionally engage in irrelevant quests that divert from the storyline, such as spending ten minutes picking apples from trees. You can’t progress until you finished, so if you even miss one thing, you’ll be stuck until you can figure out what you did wrong.

With decent difficulty arising from battle and side-quests, the difficulty rates 7 / 10.

Overall: 5.7 / 10

Graphics : 5 *  25% = 1.25

Sound / Music : 6 *  20% = 1.2

Addictiveness : 5 * 25% = 1.25

Story : 7 * 10% = 0.7

Depth : 3 * 10% = 0.3

Difficulty : 7 * 10% = 0.7

Sum = Overall Score = 5.7 / 10

This mathematical comparison of important categories leads to a mediocre overall score of 5.7 / 10.

Since the game had no pronounced weaknesses and strengths, it could not score above average. While it had a few quality features, it mainly tried to use the success of the series to boost sales without attempt from the designers to make a great game. With lackluster graphics and poor depth, I only recommend it for specific cases.

You may decide to buy it if:

1. you love the series and want to play a decent story of it on the DS

2. you want a straight-forward game that you can play a little at a time until you win

In those two scenarios, I recommend this game.

Please share your experiences with Prince Caspian for DS! Any comments are welcome!

Thank you for reading!