iPod game misplaces its melody but still carries a tune.

Song Summoner’s top-40-worthy hook creates elaborate game characters by analyzing your iPod’s tunes. This mechanic could have been the game’s centerpiece, but seems unconnected; we couldn’t find a coloration between styles of music and the resulting characters. Even after wasting its great musical premise, Song Summoner provides a surprisingly rich role-playing game. Any fans of that genre will enjoy giving it a spin.

In an absurd, adventure-story quest to reclaim your brother from robots, your character progresses through a series of battles. You’ll be assisted by a few game-created helpers, but we initially enjoyed generating all-new characters that from selected music tracks. However, instead of a correlation between beats-per-minute and a character’s strength, for example, our song-based characters all felt random. What a waste. At least you gain bonus points whenever you play the tracks outside the game.

Frequent RPG fights require skilled management of your party and their abilities. We enjoyed the strategy in moving and using different characters, sort of like a story-driven chess game. Even with the muted music features, the turn-based strategy kept us singing along.

While the music features disappoint, Song Summoner’s depth and detail make it a role-playing gamer’s must-have.

Song Summoner
COMPANY: Square Enix
CONTACT: www.square-enix.com
PRICE: $4.99
REQUIREMENTS: iPod nano (3rd Generation), iPod Classic, or iPod (5th Generation)
Complicated characters include many attack, defense, and other statistics. Role-playing and strategy elements easily match titles on dedicated game systems.
Character attributes generated from your songs seem unrelated, squandering the game’s unique premise.