Basic gameplay is exactly the same, although some concessions have been made to make the game's largely offline story mode more approachable. The main game has you controlling Ares, a mild-mannered kid who wants to start up his own guild and be a great adventurer like his father; you make this happen by recruiting party members and carrying out quests in the realm of Rune Midgard, building up your gang to the point where they earn new jobs and more powerful skills.
This is the first time that Ragnarok has been released for a non-PC platform -- which GungHo head Kazuki Morishita says is "something we had hoped for since before online service began [in Japan]" -- and the publisher is doing everything it can to make the adventure accessible for new gamers. The Nintendo DS version runs largely off the stylus, which serves the same function as the mouse in the PC game. You tap the screen to attack enemies and retrieve items, and the game occasionally asks you to draw circles and other designs in order to pull off spells and skills.
