Games based on movies have a well-earned reputation as being stale products used mainly to advertise the franchise and make a quick buck. And handheld games based on movies? It’s usually best to stay far away. Is that fair to every movie game out there? No. But in the case of The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian it’s sound advice.

Based on the slightly disappointing sequel to the first Narnia film, the game follows the same split storyline. It begins with Prince Caspian fleeing the treachery of his murderous uncle, only to find himself alongside the fabled Narnians, who have grown to distrust humans since the Golden Age of the Pevensies’ rule. During his flee Caspian blew hard into Queen Susan’s horn, summoning the former rulers back from 20th century England to Narnia, so that they could help restore order.

Obviously things don’t go as intended, and the story follows each group as they attempt to unite with the other and ultimately have everything end happily, perhaps with a song and dance number. Not surprisingly, things don’t go as intended with the game either.

I will give credit where credit is due: Fall Line Studios tried hard to make this game unique with the fairly innovative combat. Unfortunately, the combat isn’t strong enough to support the game, and isn’t quite innovative enough either, as it grows stale about 20 minutes in.

How it works is rather simple. Battles take place in real time with attack gauges building up, allowing actions to be performed. Once it’s full, you can attack or do whatever. After you tap your character then tap the opponent, various on-screen challenges will appear to complete your attack. For some who use heavy swords like Peter, you need to quickly squiggle the stylus across multiple swords to make them touch a center point. (Just like real sword fighting!) For others, like Susan with her bow, you draw back the arrow and shoot at a moving target, hitting the bullseye to cause more damage.

Since it’s real time, you can also intercept enemy attacks, effectively countering them with your own maneuver, or attack multiple people at a time with your entire party.

Still, it gets boring quickly because it’s never challenging. It may seem like a complicated battle system on paper, but remember: this is a children’s game. That means you’ll rarely (if ever) die, and even if you fall asleep while moving your DS across the screen you can still probably pull off some nice victories.

Outside of battles, the rest of the game is a complete bore. The game was clearly rushed to meet the movie’s release date, as there’s very little to do outside of combat. With an RPG—especially one based on such a classic tale—you’d at least expect service to be done to the source material by making the plot strong, right? Wrong. Cutscenes are composed of turning your DS sideways and reading it (which an animation helpfully reminds you to do every time in case you can’t tell all the words are sideways), and there’s no character development to speak of, either. It’s all rather pointless.

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