Another great week for iOS gamers is now officially in the books. Our top rated reviews this week cover an incredible free to play game, the awesome conclusion of the Hearthstone expansion, a Metroidvania game… and an amazing port of a classic RPG. Weak week, it is not. Read on for our top scoring reviews we published this week.
Does not Commute, Free [Review] – Does Not Commute (Free) is a game that has looked appealing and intriguing since the day I got to see it in motion. Mediocre posted a teaser video of it, then they demoed the game to us at GDChttp://toucharcade.com/2015/03/06/gdc-2015-does-not-commute/, and it was one of my favorites there. The concept was super-fun to play with, and somehow, Does Not Commute got even better from there. The tweaked some of the things from the original GDC version, and made this an absolute must-have.
Hearthstone, Free [Review] – After five weeks of playing, thinking, and writing about Hearthstone‘s (Free) Blackrock Mountain Adventure (BRM), the fun is over and we are back to playing plain, old Hearthstone. No more Wings to explore, no more crazy bosses to tackle, and, more importantly, no new cards to get. What’s done is done though, and now that BRM is over, we can look back and see how Blizzard did in its second attempt at an Adventure after the successful Curse of Naxxramas. If we look at the Adventure as a whole, I believe that Blizzard did a great job thematically, perhaps better than with Naxxramas, as the Dragon-and-Fire themes was represented very well in BRM’s various wings. The card rewards were also great, and although they might not revolutionize the meta, I think they’ll help turn the RNG down a notch.
Rex Rocket: Mobile, $1.99 [Review] – When I try to think of indie Metroidvanias that can have lunch at the same table as the games that formed the genre name, the list is painfully short. Guacamelee, Shadow Complex perhaps, maybe Aquaria ($4.99). You would get people who would stand for and against those, I suspect. The one I think almost everyone would agree on, however, would be Cave Story, one of the more famous Japanese indie games. It’s huge, challenging, and packs in just the right amount of linearity. Its backtracking is generally handled in a smart way, and most of all, it feels like its own thing. It’s also the most similar example I can think of to Castle Pixel’s Rex Rocket ($1.99), which released on Steam and the WiiU in the summer of last year and just recently made its way to iPad.
Ys Chronicles 1, $4.99 [Review] – The actual gameplay is generally intact, however, and that means Ys Chronicles 1 is a must-have for any mobile RPG fan. It’s a sheer joy to play, full of a kind of upbeat excitement that doesn’t come around all that often. It will make you feel awesome one minute, completely crush you the next, and then fill you with a true sense of triumph when you finally overcome its challenges. The gameplay is a natural fit for mobile devices, and DotEmu has done a great job of porting it over with only the slightest of flaws. While I don’t think I would take it over the PSP version of the game, I’ll certainly take it in addition to that one. I hope this is just the beginning of a beautiful relationship between DotEmu and Falcom, because Ys only gets better from here.
Additionally, we reviewed a few other games this week. As always, you can dig into all of our reviews by clicking here. Alternatively, you can hit up specific scores by using these links:
Auto-battling isn't remotely ideal, actually. This becomes increasingly true the further in the game you get.
I agree with this review. The game was fun until auto battle. It gets so grindy that auto battle is too tempting to speed it up, and then you are not really playing it anymore.
Disagree. I had the same prejudice about the auto-battle, but when you play regularity, you notice that auto-battle is a good system for grind, only. And in this game you have a lot of grind. People now that too much grind is boring. Auto-battle balance the game to not have this level of nuisance.
Later in the game, you have to optimize the chains, and the auto-Battle is very imprecise. In PVP mode and raid boss is necessary to have talent to have good results, and auto-battle is useless.
Who is playing Dungeon Link realize that the game is more than the usual social games you have in apple/Google store. A nice game. Give a chance, guys.
therein lies the problem, lots of grind. why not just remove the grind and make it enjoyable?
but then again thats how these freemium apps get money anyway.
I have been scratching my head concerning auto battle games for a long time now. I've deleted several decent games because of it. They're designed with that auto battle grinding in mind so ignoring it will be just making the game progression frustratingly slow.
I really was excited by the line drawing aspect, it brings the pathpix art/puzzle games to mind, which I enjoyed the crap out of. But I just couldn't swallow the auto battle combined with the absolutely ludicrous install size for this kind of game.
Auto-battle is such a weird feature because in the western market we look at this kind of thing as "Wait, why wouldn't I want to play the game instead of just putting it on autopilot?" Meanwhile, in Asian gaming cultures, if you don't have auto-battle, forget about it. I've really yet to see a game that manages to bridge that divide very well.
The thing is, auto-battle is useful if you are leveling a new character or grinding event currency on the same stage over and over. However, you're only going to be able to reliably complete a stage on auto if you can beat it comfortable playing normally. So, it isn't something you would use when pushing ahead through content you haven't already beaten. Does that make sense?
Marvel: Future Fight does a good job IMO.
I think auto-battling hasn't been accurately assessed in this article. It only really works when most of your party can carry a member that you are leveling up through content you've completed.
Starting in the mid portion of the game, auto-battle doesn't make optimal use of chains or special abilities. Specifically, it fires them as soon as they are available rather than evaluating whether or not to wait for the next stage.
As far as F2P games go, this is one of the most generous I've played. I've not spent a dime and yet I've not run into a situation where I've had to wait for swords to refill.
wait til you hit a paywall. where you have to grind to evolve heroes/ find better heroes because everything is simply too hard no matter how perfect you play.
There are definitely places where the difficulty jumps and they can be unforgiving. Criticizing those is fair, but calling them paywalls is a misnomer implying you must spend money to get past them, which is definitely not the case.
The paywall boogie man... Grind is a given in these types of games. I'm saying that, relatively speaking, this game is a lot more generous with the in-game currencies than other F2P games. Once I was able to fill up my friends list, I've not dropped below a hundred swords. Granted, he double gold event may be spoiling my perception right now. Still, it feels like I've always got some worthwhile goal to chase even if my team isn't powerful enough yet to climb the main progression.
for most "paywall" games, grind is a given. like... grind / wait a month or just pay to (maybe) win now.
granted this game is a bit more lenient when it comes to that. but we would still hit a wall
Auto battle is a must in games like these. Without auto battle I dont play em because then its just a big boring grind like DH5 is.
I liked this game at first, but my interest ground to a halt when I needed to start making 5 and 6 star characters.
thank you, finally someone who understand what i mean by paywall
we have very different definition of paywalls then. I play 20 minutes in the morning and 1-2 hours at night, and I'm making a 6 star about every 2 days (started global launch, currently have 6 6-stars and 11 5-stars). There was a weekend I played a lot to use up all my swords, but I don't consider myself hardcore or anything. This game does not have a paywall to me - I define paywall as 'you have to pay or wait an extremely unreasonable amount of time to progress'. If you follow Channel 1 or the official forum or even reddit you will see plenty of people who are quite far in the game who is purely F2P. I know paywall exist in games, and I hate them too. But there is not one in here thus far.
for me its "you have to pay or wait/ grind an extremely ungodly amount of the old-repeated content just to progress"
which in this game, you have to grind the old levels over and over and over and over and over til you get a 5-6* unit with full 5-6* runes. so you can progress a couple new levels.
the puzzles can only be enjoyable so much, and the auto-attack makes it easier, yes. but the problem is in the paywall-grind
The root of the problem, as I see it, is that any game designed with the two objectives of making the best gameplay and making the most money will inevitably fail to achieve either.