The original Touch Detective was a beautiful, though somewhat flawed, entry in the adventure genre. A year later, Atlus is back with the second entry in the series. We’ve seen several new adventure games on the DS; how does Touch Detective 2 ½ compare? Did SUCCESS manage to improve on the original game’s flaws?

Read on for our full review.

The first thing that any player will notice about this game is the artwork. The twisted “Tim Burton meets anime” aesthetic that permeates this game is one of the main reasons to play through the adventure. The developers did a fantastic job of crafting a beautiful-yet-bizarre two dimensional world to explore. Every scene is full of little details to explore, from the strange skeleton cultists to a museum full of political propaganda. The developers of Phantom Hourglass should have taken a cue from SUCCESS — 2D on the DS looks far better than 3D, especially when creating a cel-shaded game. Touch Detective 2 ½ looks like a strange cartoon and is a treat for the eyes throughout.

Touch Detective 2 ½ is a textbook example of an adventure game. Its interface should be instantly recognizable by anyone who has played an adventure game on the PC or the DS. Everything is stylus-driven. You move your character and interact with objects by tapping on them. Such a simple interface can still be easy to mess up, but SUCCESS thankfully succeeds at delivering a precise control scheme. Input is flawless throughout the game. There’s also plenty of game to chew on here. There are five “cases” in all for you to solve, as well as a series of bonus missions. Completionists will also have a “touch list” to fill by clicking on special objects hidden in each case.

Since this is an Atlus game, you can expect the writing to be top-notch. They don’t disappoint here. The dialogue has a certain dry sense of humor that kept me laughing throughout. The most amusing parts are when Mackenzie’s thoughts are displayed on the top-screen. I cracked up when her thought and what was spoken aloud were complete opposites. Like the artwork, the story and situations in Touch Detective 2 ½ often carry a certain sense of the absurd and bizarre.

All of this sounds great, but there are a few problems with the game. Due to the lack of any sort of on-screen cursor or indicator, many situations force you to resort to a pixel hunt until you find a certain spot or item. We’ve had nearly two decades of adventure games, developers should have figured out how infuriating this is by now. Several of the puzzles in Touch Detective are either entirely too easy or nearly impossible. Who would have guessed that you needed a banana to clean a handle?

Fans of traditional adventure games will find a lot to love in Touch Detective 2 ½. The twisted-yet-lovely two-dimensional artwork and stylus-driven interface evokes fond memories of hours spent with Sam and Max or Guybrush Threepwood. Unfortunately, Touch Detective 2 ½ also retains some of the problems that hurt its predecessor and have plagued the adventure genre since its inception. Lose the pixel-hunting and think a little more about those puzzles, and the next Touch Detective game will be a “must-own.”

The Verdict: