If there was one genre with healthy representation at this year’s Tokyo Game Show, it was the action-RPG. It felt like everyone from the biggest media empires to the smallest indies were taking a stab at making their own action-RPG, and Taiwanese developer Auer was no exception. Their game is called Empire Of Angels, a free-to-play game that has you taking control of powerful warriors in Asgard in top-down 3D action.
The game uses a lot of the usual free-to-play RPG mechanics, including a premium currency, gatcha draws for new monsters, and so on, so if that stuff is a turn-off, you might not be thrilled with this one. The controls use taps and swipes to target enemies, dodge, and fire off special abilities, and you’re able to swap freely between your party members to take full advantage of everyone’s moves. The game also features a multiplayer colosseum where players can duke it out with each other. The in-game graphics are super-deformed and vibrant, while the 2D character art is done in a more usual style. The 2D art animates in, er, creative ways with the game’s mostly-female cast, an effect you can see in the promotional video in this article. It’s more goofy than anything, but you may want to hold off on watching that video if you’re at work.
My time with the game was pretty enjoyable, but it’s worth pointing out that the show version let me cheat like crazy to get around the free-to-play aspects. Still, the action is fun, if a little tricky to get the hang of at first. You tap to move your character, while dragging your finger will bust out a special attack, and I kept getting those particular two wires crossed. It’s a little tricky to evade enemy attacks since they tend to hit in wide arcs, but I probably just needed more time to get used to the controls. I played through a single stage that took place in a lush forest, battling multiple enemies before eventually succumbing to the boss.
After that, I poked around in the menus a bit just to get a sense of how the game was going to monetize. It seems to mostly be based around the monsters and the special abilities they bring to your group, so it’s basically the usual fare. That means it’s going to come down to balancing, and the game’s a little too early to make a call on that just yet. Auer is still looking for a publisher to help them bring Empire Of Angels out worldwide, but provided they can nail that down, we should be playing this one in 2016. I enjoyed what I played here well enough, so I’ll be keeping my eyes peeled for more information on this one and will pass it on to you should I come across it.
