iPhone App: Ravensword

November 30th, 2009

= 4 stars

Embark on various quests in this first person, adventure role playing game.

The Good

• Impressive graphics by iPhone standards: the world is three dimensional, which fully draws you in once you leave the safety of the town.
• Immediately familiar gameplay: slaughter stuff for experience and treasure, equip your hero with better weapons and armor purchased from various stores, and learn of new quests through conversations with villagers.
• Necessary variety is eventually revealed: a bow and blast arrows make an indispensable weapon. Quests range from killing a scary monster hidden above a series of winding staircases to saving a child in spooky dungeon. Landscapes include snow covered mountains, burning lava, to rolling pastures.

The Bad

• Awkward controls: A left D-pad allows movement in any direction, but it doesn’t control which direction you’re facing. To rotate, you must swipe the screen in any direction. Running in a circle requires a rather odd, two-handed maneuver. This could have been solved with having left / right of the D-pad control your rotation (Doom Classic).
• Initially confusing quests: I wasted time shooting beehives before realizing I had skipped over several simpler tasks.
• Occasionally odd graphics: You can end up suspended in mid-air at the world’s edges, dead bodies appear to fall partly beneath the ground, treasure boxes don’t open, and the killer rats and imps just look ridiculous.

Conclusion

Ravensword took a little time to get into, but I soon became hooked and played obsessively through to its eventual end. Yes, it’s yet-another-role-playing-game like many others, but it’s on the iPhone — which makes all the difference.

iTunes App Store Link: