mobile RPG games

Clash of the Titans

A spin-off after the movie with the same name, Clash of the Titans the mobile game inexplicably has “Clash of the Titans The Movie” written on the menu screen, guess they really want you to know what it’s based off!

The game places the player in the shoes of Perseus, the son of Zeus, fighting against the Greek gods and their hordes of mythological creatures, so expect a lot of ugly minotaurs, harpies and medusas dying at the edge of your sword. Even though it features a top down isometric view like in most hack and slash games, there isn’t any free exploring to be made since all the levels are linear. The game has a minimap that you can follow, showing even the location of your enemies, something I consider rather useless in an already linear game. Not only that but once you start a level you temporarily lose control of the camera while it scans the entire level from one end to the other, something that takes out even more away from the pleasure of actually exploring the surroundings, and an annoying step you can’t even skip I might add.

The game also has some design flaws, from rolling boulders and traps that only hurt you even though they pass right through your enemies, to not having much explained to you when it comes to what special attacks and skills do. Some RPG elements come into play here, giving you a hp bar, a rage bar and an Xp counter and also allowing you to upgrade your sword attack, blocking and 3 special skills: a tornado shield attack, a healing skill called Io’s blessing and a rage regeneration skill called … well, rage regeneration.

There’s not much else to say about this game, you can give it a try if you’re a real fan and don’t mind the mindless hack and slash grind that it mostly offers, if not maybe wait for something better.

Vampires Dawn: Deceit of Heretics

I bid you welcome newly awakened one to the world of Vampires Dawn: Deceit of Heretics, a place full of over the top dialog and black humor, vampires, cults and the living dead!

Today’s mobile RPG game sure is unusual to say the least, the story is centered around a young girl who’s father turns into a vampire and kills her mother, as well as her awakening to the new found vampire powers and unlikely friends. It seems killing family is cruel even amongst vampires, or so says Vince, our young girl Lara’s new master. Joining them are Vince’s faithful and rather whiny skeleton friends called Manok and Romus, who seem to play the part of the proverbial angel and devil on Vince’s shoulder. A good thing about this game is that you do have some choices, being able to take the typical good or bad path most RPG games offer. This game also offers quite a lot of dialog, though most of it is over the top and can get pretty annoying at times since you just know real people would never talk like that. Nonetheless there are plenty of good jokes in there to make it worth while!

After the prologue part of the game you are pretty much free to take quests or explore the game world as you see fit, having the possibility to use the world map to get to places where the enemies are much stronger than you right from the start. It seems that the entire peasant population is also at your disposal since you can go around stealing from them or their homes as well as sucking the blood out of them until they literally explode! Also traveling on the world map turns Vince into a bat, but that just makes me wonder what happens to Manok and Romus? Does Vince turn into a giant bat and allow the skeletons to ride him all the way? Skeletons riding a giant vampire bat, now that would have been nice to see!

Anyway, let’s get on to the fighting! Combat is a mixture of real time movement until you meet a group of enemies at which point it goes into a tactical turn based mode with the same top-down view as the rest of the game. I must note here that stack of enemies are represented as a single one in the real time mode, so you never really know how many of them to expect. Powerful abilities are at your disposal: healing spells, AOE damage spells, paralyzing or freezing spells and so on, the usual RPG arsenal. You also have the possibility to equip all sorts of weapons and armors or use potions like in any other good cell phone RPG game. You can level up each ability individually up to 3 levels, however the stats get leveled automatically.

The music is pretty good, there’s more than one track, though most of them sound strangely familiar, but the graphics however are not that great. The game says to attack monsters from the sides or back but there are some things, and I do mean *things*, that are so poorly drawn that you can’t really tell which side is which. Seeing it’s a pretty old game though I guess that can be excused and it certainly shouldn’t hamper with the experience of playing through this pretty good cell phone RPG game. The only other drawback I can think of is that the game is maybe too big for it’s own good, at least if you’re the kind of person who wants to talk to everyone, enter every house or loot every chest, be prepared to spend a lot of time with this game. All in all a good and unusual mobile RPG, recommended especially if you want something vampire themed or if you feel like reading some crazy dialog and having a laugh.

Elven Chronicles

Well first of all I must admit something: I’m a RPG fan. Even more than that, I’m a Final Fantasy fan. And if you’re wondering what this has to do with anything and haven’t guessed from the pictures already, read on…

Elven Chronicles is a mobile role playing game, where you are put in the shoes of a knight called Rogan who has lost his memory and is on a quest to find out who he was. You travel alongside an elf called Jada who is a spellcaster, master of all of the worlds elements: fire, ice, lightning, earth, holy and dark. The quest takes you through forests, cities, icy mountains, caves and dungeons in search of your forgotten past, battling a variety of monsters.

The level up system is automated, each time you achieve a new level spells are automatically given and attributes are raised. Thus the only customization you have as far as how to play your characters is with what items you choose to equip them, for instance weapons can have added elemental damage of a certain type which may help against monsters weak to that element.

The magic system is based on elemental, holy and dark attack types, with each monster having a weakness to one element and a strength against it’s opposing one. Unfortunately if you attack the monster with the element it is strong against you will heal it instead of damaging it. The game designers were very uninspired when it came to naming the spells, instead of fireball or something they just use “Earth 1″ or “Fire 1″, the number indicating the level of the spell obviously. At least there is no shortage of spells.

The combat system is specific to old Super Nintendo RPG series and of course Final Fantasy which I mentioned earlier. Combat takes place in turns, where each character can choose one of four actions: attack, use magic, use item or retreat. Of course monsters won’t ever retreat, but they will use spells against you, some of them even having the ability to cast the extremely annoying “Heal” spell on themselves, making battles last two or three times longer then they should. However this can be overcome by appropriate timing, since monsters only heal themselves when under a certain amount of health so the key is to kill them with your most powerful spells before the get a chance.

The music is really good as is the sound in general, which does a lot to add to the atmosphere of the game, sometimes even more so than the NPCs or the relatively vague dialogue. On the map you move your party on, enemy monsters all appear as whirlwinds, color coded by battle difficulty (eg. green – very easy, blue – medium and so on), which is a really bad choice if you ask me.

Unfortunately the game is extremely long, with many battles which become repetitive, there are loading times everytime you enter a battle, leave a battle, enter an area, open the menu or the inventory which make the game seem even longer. Unless you like playing for tens of minutes in the same area this game will put your patience to the test. All in all a good game though, with a lot to offer especially if you want to dedicate it a lot of time.