The name Ravensword carries a lot of weight in the world of TouchArcade. The original game in the series, Ravensword: The Fallen King, which is sadly no longer available, launched in late 2009 while the App Store and mobile gaming was still in its infancy. It brought with it an expansive open world to explore and an action RPG experience similar to something like Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls games but shrunk down for the iPhone. While not quite as large or robust as a full console or PC game, the original Ravensword was just plain remarkable to play on an iPhone almost a decade ago. A few years later, almost six years ago to the day in fact, a highly-anticipated sequel was launched called Ravensword: Shadowlands ($6.99). It raised the bar over the original in just about every way, and even though mobile gaming had made tremendous strides in the years since the first Ravensword’s release, Ravensword: Shadowland still stood out as an impressive feat for a mobile game.
Being that Ravensword: Shadowlands came out nearly six years ago, I was pretty surprised to see a new update pop up for the game today which optimizes the game for Apple’s latest iPhone X models as well as introduces improved lighting and higher resolution textures. It’s been a while since I fired up Ravensword, and indeed it is shocking to see just how impressive this game still looks all these years later. The visuals are nice and crisp now and everything runs in full screen on iPhone X models. There are a couple of quirks that stood out, namely the navigation bar at the bottom of the screen not autohiding and occasional onscreen stuff being partially obscured behind the notch. Nothing game-breaking that I’ve seen so far though. In a world where it feels like every other day we’re dealing with a beloved mobile game becoming unusable with a new software update or being pulled from the App Store entirely, it’s refreshing to see a developer continuing to support a game that’s as old as Ravensword: Shadowlands.
If you’ve never played Ravensword before and crave something along the lines of an Elder Scrolls: Oblivion that you can stick in your pocket, definitely consider checking out out the newly-updated Shadowlands. For more information on the game you can check out our original review as well as Shaun’s incredibly in-depth RPG Reload article on the game.
