Light Apprentice Review

Light Apprentice is a RPG that integrates comic book story elements. It very much seems like a game that was designed with touch in mind, which avoids some of the problems that come with creating traditional games on iOS, but it also seems a bit too dumbed down and is a very, very short experience that ultimately doesn't feel worth the asking price.

The game opens by introducing players to the two main characters through some animated comic book panel-style drawings before quickly asking them to make a moral choice and throwing them into battle. The rest of the game then opens up slightly more into an adventure mode, but a majority of the experience is played out in story moments and battles, both of which are built to allow players to abide by their initial moral choice or not.

The most interesting thing about Light Apprentice is arguably its gameplay structures that allow for players to actually "walk the walk" of their dialogue-based moral choices. All too often games are criticized for containing weighty, grounded stories that humanize player characters in the face of a bad situation, only to later have players perform outlandishly violent acts that contradict the game's story beats. Although players can do this in Light Apprentice, they never have to, which is kind of a neat idea.

That being said, Light Apprentice is all too easy and all too short of a game for any of its interesting aspects to really go anywhere satisfying. The game's combat operates off of a simple one-touch system that allowed me to get through most battles completely unscathed, and it probably took me a bit over an hour (tops) to finish. Since this is a linear, narrative-based experience, replaying it adds little (if any) value to the overall experience.

Currently, the game only has "Chapter 1" available for play, which suggests that more content will be coming in the future, but the app also contains a restore purchases button, which could mean that this added content will come at an additional cost.

Overall, Light Apprentice is just too short and easy to justify paying $2.99 for. The game is fine, albeit very easy, but nothing in the game really has time to evolve or change, making the whole thing come off as a bit flat.