Humble Mobile Bundle: RPGS!!! #3 - Mage Gauntlet, Wayward Souls

These are both action pseudo-rpgs by Noodlecake Games, the same folks that made the absurd but fun shoot-em-up Shooting Stars!, which piqued my interest from the start.

Mage Gauntlet is an action-rpg, in which your character ends up wearing the titular gauntlet and then has to fight through lots of monsters to save the world blah-blah-blah. The controls are surprisingly reasonable given they love the “floating joystick” thing, but is a locked d-pad actually that difficult to include, really? It's the style of game that I really want a real stick or d-pad and physical buttons for, and given that the gameplay gets rather repetitive, I need to actively enjoy the process of playing.

Wayward Souls uses the same engine, but it's much more of an action roguelike than an rpg. Pick a character, and try to escape the multi-floor dungeon you've been trapped in. The game dribbles out some story as you traverse the floors, all cutscene stuff. Mostly, you kill some things and nab some gold, then die, spend the gold to upgrade your hero and try again. And it hits me with pretty much the same problem: The gameplay is very repetitive; your character doesn't actually have that many moves and the dungeons are procedurally-generated with a relatively small monster selection in the first few areas. And the control scheme isn't my ideal for actively enjoying mindlessly playing a lot of that.

Overall: I don't want to give the idea that I think either of these are bad games; I think they're pretty decent for what they are. The graphics are nice and the concept is entertaining, but the combination of several factors made them games that I didn't actually want to play a huge amount of.

Unsorted Android Games for Review

Archlion Saga - A KEMCO/Hit-Point ad-supported game that gave me a “babby’s first jrpg” sort of impression. It’s very short, only two hours, and puts you through the motions of an rpg without actually making you try very hard. The IAP gimmick is “stars,” which you can use to double XP after a battle, fully heal the party, open certain chests and doors, etc. You can watch videos or pay money for stars; the thing is, there are enough of them scattered around the game that you’ll never need to. The different equipment carries different stat bonuses, but the number inflation of the game is such that it never really matters which gear you pick. Spells have charge times/cooldown times instead of using MP, so battles are vaguely strategic but mostly about attrition. And as per Hit-Point in general, the plot is ambitious but the translation is lackluster. Not much to it overall, but the price was right.

Tenmilli RPG - A free-to-play jrpg, and a reminder that you get what you pay for. The control scheme is surprisingly lousy, despite having static buttons. The translation is also rather lousy, featuring clunky Engrish and unclear directions. The game systems mostly make it to “unimpressive,” but feature odd design choices like level-ups only kicking in on your second step on the world map after a battle is over. The graphics and plot are both stock schlock. This feels like an RPGMaker game, and not one of the good ones. I have plenty of better jrpgs available.

Upgrade The Game 2 - A cute little concept that disguises and utterly vapid game: The game opens with placeholder graphics and, as you buy the upgrades (with gold earned by playing the game or watching ads), it goes to MS Paint art, then pixel art, then actual 3D graphics. You can also upgrade your weapons, but that often takes a backseat to making the menus not hurt your eyes or making the sound effects vaguely more tolerable. This is an excuse to grind and make numbers go up.

Final Fantasy All The Bravest - A very simple tapper game that was Square-Enix’s first attempt at this sort of thing, which finally got an upgrade to make it playable on my tablet. It’s terribly simple: You have a few dozen 8-bit sprite warriors that you tap to make attack, and when enemies strike back, your warriors are one-hit-point-wonders. If you’re wiped out, you can either wait for the warriors to regenerate (1 each 3 minutes) or use hourglasses (purchasable for real money) to refill them. You can also pay real money for “premium” warriors and areas based on various later Final Fantasy games (as the main game only goes through FF6). It’s short, and without waiting to recharge you could blast through all the areas in a few hours. This feels like it was assembled in an afternoon from a Final Fantasy sprite database.