Let's just get it out of the way now - the game comes at a premium price. $5 for the core game gets you 4 character classes (Ironbreaker, Marauder, Wizard, Archer) and access to a barebones "story" that takes you from battle to battle using very generic, rinse-and-repeat quests. If you are willing to pay more you can get a Warrior Priest, Archmage, and Dwaf Trollslayer for $3 each, a new storyline for $5, and of course you can buy gold to afford the expensive gear (which so far hasn't been out of reach by simply grinding through quests).
The graphics of the game are solid, giving a top-down view of enemies and nicely-detailed dungeons. Attack animations are pretty generic with the exception of magic users, but I really appreciated that changing a character's weapon had a visual impact in the game.
The classes are varied enough.
- The Ironbreaker seems like a mildly tougher version of the Marauder, but I can't bench him because I love Ironbreakers and he is appreciably tough to kill. He hits pretty hard, especially since he inexplicably starts the game with a warhammer and no shield, but I eventually made him look the part and now let him hold down a group of enemies or eat a boss's alpha strike.
- The Marauder is a beast, sometimes getting up to 6 attacks in a single turn (with others getting 2). He's squishy so I don't trust him to wade in to battle without an axe and shield, but he is definitely my frontliner.
- The Archer is pretty generic and starts off the game missing a lot of ranged attacks, sometimes going an entire dungeon and only killing 2 or 3 enemies (compared to the 30-50 you may have to fight).
- The Wizard is a lot of fun, performing a hybrid role of the group's only healer (i.e. the only death that can really end a dungeon for you) and a melee finisher. He has some fairly weak magical attacks, but he really shines in healing or improving his allies while still getting to throw out a couple of attacks.
- I can't speak to the rest because $3 for a single character is a bit out of touch with reality.
I think the class balances work, although I'd really like to see what the premium classes play like. As characters level they are automatically assigned new skills, some passive and some that you can activate once per dungeon. I like the steady progression, although I never felt like I was playing a character I designed. It works when they get an ability I really like, but some are so lackluster I regret my excitement of seeing the XP bar slowly creep towards being filled.
Characters get XP at the end of a dungeon based off of how many enemies they killed, maybe how many they damaged, and maybe action related to helping their allies. I say maybe because the games barebones explanations are either buried or nonexistant. The game started me off touching squares, gaining Winds of Magic, and basically playing the game with no explanation as to what the heck was going on. Eventually a slow tutorial starts which was actually more helpful than just throwing a bunch of info at me all at once, but it only does a passable job of explaining the game's basics.
There is a way to tap items on the screen and get an explanation, but not everything can be interacted with in this way, so much of the game's intricacies are learned through trial and error, or finding help on the internet from people who were more successful with their trials. Stats on gear are meaningless to me, and special abilities aren't even explained (i.e. storing power was lost on me for 3 dungeons because I had no idea it stayed with me from start to finish).
Winds of Magic, the Wizard's spell resource, is the most infuriating mechanic I've seen in a game. Basically at the start of each turn some dice are rolled in the background and you're assigned Winds of Magic (think mana) up to his maximum capacity. If they roll 0, not only will he not be casting [healing] spells that turn, but enemies will also randomly spawn around your team, usually in a 2x10 corridor where you have to just stand still and attack meaningless enemies that slow your progress and give you an XP boost. At first it was neat because you had to position your characters well, be prepared with other means of healing, and hope you didn't roll a 0 during a combat encounter. However, that quickly wore off as I realized that it could sometimes take me 3 or 4 turns to get from one battle to another (or worse if I hit a dead end), and having that slow crawl punctuated with pointless battles felt like I was playing a 90s RPG.
The game controls are pretty much perfect. You tap to do everything, double-tap to attack, and the screen can be zoomed in or out to suit your needs. On the iPad, there is never anything too small that I miss-tap it, and on smaller devices I suspect the only thing that may be an annoyance is ability selection, but everything else is almost oversized, which is great for someone like me who wants to sloppily tap a screen and not worry about being off by a centimeter. One thing people complain about is that inventor is accessed by rotating your device - while I found this awkward at first, as long as you're careful not to drop your device it's actually very smooth and is one less thing on screen you need to touch. I wouldn't mind a way to have different options for when I want to set my device down rather than have to handle it, but it's a minor thing.
============Time for a baby rant==============
I'd also like to caution those of you who don't mind buying gold to accelerate the gearing process. Any time you perform an action outside of a dungeon, whether you're going to the shop in town, praying at a temple, or even travelling from town to town, there's a chance for you to lose a lot of your money, and you have zero control over it. I once went to level my Marauder, which can only be done in a town's Training Grounds. When I left the area, I got a message saying that my character got lured to a circus and was tricked out of half his money. Money in this game is communal, so my entire part lost half their gold stash because of a random mechanic that seems to roll a dice every time you do something. If you just spent $25 on a sack of gold and didn't blow it all in one shopping trip, there's a chance the game will be genuinely robbing you.
Furthermore, the game behaves like a childish Dungeon Master in terms of reward vs punishment. During one of these random events my dwarf saw a bull rampaging through the streets and then turning towards me. Now I'm in a fantasy game where I'm a hero who just took down a huge troll, saved the city from goblins, saved a local governor's kid, and recovered a lost artifact. It's up to me to stop the bull from hurting anyone or destroying property, right? So when given the option to "Stop the bull" or "Jump out of the way" ... being a hero ended with me killing the bull and having to pay a huge chunk of money to the bull's angry owner. Save a bard being beated up by thugs? Have him trick you and leave you for dead in a dungeon. I once found a piece of armor that was more powerful than anything I'd seen so far, and I was terrified to put it on for fear that it was some torture device ripped straight out of the Saw movies and would blow my head off with a high concentration of fairy dust.
That's just bad storytelling, and so far I've only had 1 good thing happen to me (weee, 50 gold to put toward a 1,900 sword I want!)
============Back to the review=================
So the big questions: is it a waste of time? I'm going to switch it up and go through the pros and cons of how it uses your time.
Pros
- Time outside of dungeons is minimal. Everything is handled through a series of menus disguised as a town.
- Getting back to adventuring is equally quick. Items are generally stat upgrades so you don't have to do much thinking, upgrading is simply paying X gold to progress, and consumables are (so far) hardly necessary to purchase.
- Dungeons are over pretty quickly, lasting maybe 10-20 minutes depending on how quickly you walk around, whether you make a turn down a dead end, and how often your bad Winds of Magic encounters are.
- The game is excellent for a single play session. You sit down, do your dungeon, massacre some orcs, spiders, and rats (the only enemies I've seen), and then collect your reward. For extended play sessions it gets very monotonous.
- Each character is easy to learn, making the learning curve relatively small. Protect your Wizard and you're golden.
- The game is very well made. Items are flavorful, the classes are fun, the graphics are clean and slightly dark, the help system is relatively useful (just have Google handy), and the fights are fun. While strategy is only really necessary on the last battle, there have been times where I've been so drained of resources that the boss fight is a true challenge that leaves me with one living party member. Otherwise you can walk happily along, slaying enemies and slowly creeping toward your next level.
- It seems to save your progress midgame. I had the app crash on me because I kept trying to be clever and pull a bunch of archers around a corner so that my melee could rip them apart (which wasn't necessary since ranged units are incapable of hitting). Every time the enemy would be unable to see at least 1 character, the game would crash. Fortunately I was only 1 turn behind, meaning I hadn't really lost any full turns. That is huge in my book, and can be make or break for a game that features mindless grinding.
Cons
- After a few levels, nothing changes. Enemies come in a few basic varieties: archer, melee, spellcaster, elite versions of those three, and enemies like Trolls with huge health and damage.
- The gold requirements to progress escalate quickly. You start out earning enough gold to equip and level everyone, then you start scraping by while following the main story quests and a couple interesting side quests. Before long however you can afford to level 4 characters and get them above-average equipment without spending hours grinding.
- When you do grind, you'd better make sure you finish the dungeon. If your party dies, or you don't fulfill a victory condition in time (which is usually kill all enemies in X rounds), you get nothing and start from the beginning. I quit the game for a few days because I lost 30 minutes due to dead ends and Winds of Magic battles, then lost because I had to kill a group of elite enemies in 4 rounds or the cave would collapse on me.
- The game moves slowly, and there's no real option to speed it up. The enemies turn can be sped up by hitting a button each turn, but otherwise your characters mosey around the dungeon, swing dramatically, and in 2013 it feels glacial.
There's also the matter of dead ends - the game is basically a series of square rooms and rectangular hallways. You never know what the dungeon looks like because it gets unveiled as you reach the edge of a current room. In most (possibly all as you level up) dungeons there's at least 1 fork in the road where you can go down 1 of 2 mysterious hallways. This of course takes 2-3 turns to get to the end of a hallway, followed by a room, followed by 1-2 more hallways and room, only to realize it's a dead end. Then you have to walk all the way back to the fork.
Maybe I'm paranoid, but I"m pretty sure its a 90-99% chance to hit a dead end. I honestly only remember 1 time where I chose a path that led to the boss, and I've done at least 10 of them. Refer to my comment about immature Dungeon Masters for why I wouldn't be surprised if it was that arbitrary. - Without the visuals, the game is just a series of battles in a square area. Nothing but corners block line of site, and only a fountain in the boss room (every boss room) requires that you walk around it. There's no buttons to push, no cover to use for defense bonuses... not even a graphic for quests that have a hostage to rescue. I can't pick this game up for awhile because I honestly don't know if it goes anywhere or if it just keeps running in circle, having you kill the same enemies to get gold or better gear.
My cons have more text, but don't let that dissuade you. The pros are basic, but if you have a limited playtime it's an amazing game. I happened to play it when I had a bit more free time due to a back injury, so my usual "rest time" experience was skewed and found the flaws to be more glaring than normal. If you like the Warhammer universe, dungeon crawls, or laid back strategy games, buy this game. It's the price of McDonald's drive thru, and it's so much more satisfying. Take your time with the game, don't be in a mad dash to keep progressing, and I think this will be a very welcome addition to your library.
See you tomorrow!
See you tomorrow!