I was first introduce to Ravensword via a friend who was pretty much obsessed with it. He strongly recommended me to get it so I did and I was hooked too. It is also my first experience with RPGs on the iPhone. Up until now I have been mostly been playing shorter, pickupandgo games like iCopter and Bike or Die but now I feel like I’ve been missing out because Ravensword is quite simply awesome.
In Ravensword: The Fallen King you play the ‘Unknown hero’ who’s job is to free the town of Aven from the control of the Demon King who has use the power of the Ravensword to capture the king and to put him under the demon’s spell. You need to through the game gathering magical runes which you will use to get rid of the Demon King to set the King free.
You start off unconscious in a bed. You wake up and you do not know who you are. You get a little story-line from the woman who has looked after you but then you are free to go and take a look around the village of Aven. The game is very open and you can spend all your time doing pretty much whatever you want. The game is full of quests that you need to complete as you progress through the game.
You move around in this game using a joystick at the bottom-left of the screen, two buttons and swiping on the screen to pan around your view. I felt this took a while to get used to because you need to use both hands to control yourself and sometimes, at the beginning, you will find yourself blocking your view with your fingers. After a while though, this no longer becomes a problem and you become fluent with the controls. The two buttons are simple enough. One is for jumping and one is for attacking.
You start our with only a club but as you go through the game, and get more money, you can buy additional weapons and armor from the blacksmith. There is also a magic store where you can buy different enchanted items and the wizard will also recharge you items so I assume the enchanted items run out of power as you use them. I have not yet got that far in the game though.
Around the village there are quite a few gates which lead to other parts of the land. At the beginning it is recommended that you only go to the Forest area because the beasts in all the other areas will kill you instantly. But as you kill easier beasts such as goblins, rats and wild boards you will level up and become a better fighter.
The fighting is simple. It is a ‘button-masher’ meaning all you have to do is continuously press the ‘ATTACK’ button and eventually you will kill the beast (or be killed). I think this suits the game and the platform that you are playing it on because anything too complicated wouldn’t have worked on the iPhone’s small screen. Tapping on your enemy will cause you to lock onto it allowing you to stay viewing it whilst you move around and double tapping brings up a menu with details on the beast. Each beast you kill gives you experience points and always has some kind of loot for your to pilfer varying from weapons to money to the skin of the beast. Most of the items that you find can be sold to the relevant dealers.
The game has very minimal loading times and the fact that it saves you progress automatically on exit is a big bonus. The game is fulled to the brim with quests. There are the quests that you must complete to progress in the game but also there are side-quests which you can do for money such as collecting dead rats for the trader Donald.
The area in which you can explore in this game is immense and it feels like ages when walking from one side to the other. The areas include the village of Aren, the mountains, a forest, a cemetery, a dungeon, meadows with a farm and a few more.
The graphics with this game are excellent and it runs pretty much flawlessly on my iPhone 3GS but on my friends iPod Touch original, it is quite jumpy. Still play-able though. I have come across a few glitches in the game in a my hour or two of playing including a floating bear but they are not major problems.
Overall there is not much wrong with the game at all. It is fun, good-looking and slightly addictive. The graphics are great, the storyline is great and the fine-detail in the game is excellent. You can talk to everyone in the game and if you run into a hanging sign or walk into a some barrels, the will move/fall over.
It is an impressive game and for it’s price is a definite buy. You can find Ravensword: The Fallen King for $6.99 on the AppStore [iTunes Link].
Screenshots:
That ‘friend’ also told me that it was hard to get into/hard controls…Is that true?
I didn’t find that. The controls took a bit of time to get used to but then it’s all ok