Game review: Ravensword: The Fallen King - iPhone / iPod Touch (From Your Local Guardian)

Game review: Ravensword: The Fallen King - iPhone / iPod Touch

11:20am Tuesday 24th November 2009

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Ravensword: The Fallen King has had iPhone and iPod Touch gamers whipped up into a whirl of anticipation for a while now.

Now the hotly anticipated title is here it turns out to be very good – although it is slightly different to what I was expecting.

My pre-release impressions of the game led me to believe it was going to be akin to the stats and skills laden RPG of Dungeon Hunter, another iPhone/iPod game.

When played it actually reminds me more of another Chillingo game on Apple’s mobile devices, Return To Mysterious Island, which is more of a slow-burning hmm-what-do-I-do-here sort of adventure full of intrigue and discovery.

Ravensword ends up being light on hardcore RPG elements, focusing instead on action and adventure in a vast open fantasy/medieval world.

In general gaming terms it’s quite Zelda-esque.

When the game starts you’re given a short tale about evil creatures and a missing king.

After that you see your character waking up in a bed in a house in the town of Aven. Your hero has lost his memory, but kind Beatrice who has been looking after him explains how he was found unconscious in a nearby forest.

Beatrice gives him some food and tells him to go see a man called Donald in the town. Donald sends you off into the woods to kill some rats for his food stand in exchange for gold coins, and so the story begins. Your hero sets out armed only with a club on an epic quest to save the kingdom after he first discovers who he is and how he ended up where he is.

It does fit in with the amnesia theme, but the game is quite tough going at the beginning. There were a few vague pointers about what to do but it wasn’t especially clear. If it wasn’t for the strategy guide to the game it would have taken some time figuring out I needed to acquire a dagger before I could take on a mission from the blacksmith.

Even with this information it took many vicious beatings from what I assume were goblins before I finally got the weapon and was able to move on.

Luckily this is a game in which you can’t die. When your health is depleted by goblins, orcs, trolls or any of the other monsters you simply wake up back in the room where you started.

This is also a game in which quests don’t land in your lap like they do in many RPG games. There is no set path to follow – instead you’re left to your own devices to roam the expansive 3D world taking on missions and side-quests, talking to other characters, slaying beasts, finding items, earning wealth and gaining experience.

The game has been designed in a sandbox style and even after completing the main plot you can carry on playing.

Visually, Ravensword is a very impressive game.

The ‘ye olde’ environments are vibrant and lush. It’s clear a lot of effort has been put into getting this game looking great.

The game should work fine for everyone but if you find performance needs a helping hand then you can switch foliage and shadows off to optimize it further.

The atmosphere in the game swings from jaunty and light at times to eerie and dark.

Audio features whimsical medieval music but also some very gory sound effects when you get into fights with monsters. You can even hear creatures creeping up on you, giving the game a scary dimension.

Controls are very basic but work well.

A virtual joystick deals with moving forward and backwards, and also shuffles your character left and right. You can pan around by swiping the screen with your finger.

Combat in the game uses an auto-targeting aim. Tap on a creature to lock on to it, then hit the attack button. It’s a little fiddly sometimes tapping on monsters but otherwise it’s a very simple combat system.

Other buttons on the screen let you perform a jump, look in your inventory and switch between a first and third-person perspective whenever you want.

The game has a good auto-save function for when you need to exit.

Even though the style of play in Ravensword is slightly different to what I was expecting I don’t think there is too much to criticise it on in the end.

However, RPG purists will complain it is too shallow.

There are no classes or skills and no customisation of the main character before starting the adventure.

The game also has a very rudimentary levelling up system. As your hero gains experience points are automatically added to his stats for strength, endurance, dexterity and luck. The improvements to the hero’s abilities don’t seem to make a huge difference and the stats don’t seem to matter an awful lot.

There are no new abilities to learn during the game and there is also very little in the way of casting magic.

Compared with other similar games, there are very limited numbers of weapons and items.

The inventory only provides sparse information about the things you do own, making it difficult to compare their usefulness.

I don’t mind the lack of all these things in this particular game because the absorbing adventure has been more than enough to keep me entertained but the balance in the game won’t be to everyone’s liking.

Ravensword: The Fallen King was an extremely ambitious project for its two-man development team to take on, but what they have achieved on the mini iPhone/iPod devices is a mightily impressive feat.

For value for money this has got to be among the best in the App Store, not just for the quality of its design but also for the hours of game time it potentially provides.

There aren’t really any other games on the platform which offer the same degree of freedom and discovery.

If you’ve got a thirst for adventure and don’t mind a lack of depth in the RPG department then Ravensword awaits you.

Verdict: 8.5 out of 10 – An epic, free-roaming sort of adventure game, arguably the closest thing yet to a Zelda game on the iPhone and iPod Touch.

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