Sorcery! 3 Review

Developer: inkle
Price: $4.99
Version Reviewed: 1.0.2
App Reviewed on: iPhone 5

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Overall Rating:

Remembered fondly (and sometimes not so fondly) as the trickiest installment of the four books, Sorcery! 3 also feels like the most impressive of the episodes we’ve seen so far on iOS. You can dive straight into it if you want, but I’d strongly recommend playing the previous two games as the sweeping narrative is worth exploring.

This time around, you’re exploring the bad lands of Kakhabad, as you attempt to track down seven evil serpents that must be defeated. It’s about as easy as it sounds, so it’s fortunate that you have a few skills up your sleeve. As before, you can import your character from the previous book and you’d be very wise to do exactly that, providing your earlier character had some handy equipment with them.

As before, you choose where to go from a series of options, with a wide variety of paths to take. Combat is turn based with you dragging your finger towards the enemy to represent how strong you want the attack to be. You can cast spells too, by spelling out the relevant word. It's all that bit more interesting than mere dice rolls.

Unlike in the book, the serpents can move around, providing a much more open world experience. In a similar vein, time becomes so much more important here with you able to manipulate it. This manipulation is provided through a series of tower that you can track down, changing an area of the map to its past self. Throw in the rewind feature that allows you to retrace your steps as well as go back in time, and it’s clear that Sorcery! 3 has been heavily influenced by what’s worked so well for 80 Days. Wrapping it up leaves you with information on how many days it took to complete Sorcery! 3, adding an almost micromanagement-eque feel to things.

This ensures that Sorcery! 3 feels fresh to both newcomers to the series and to those who loved the books before. It also makes Sorcery! 3 the most well-rounded of the books so far, being challenging yet consistently gripping. As before, you can still cast spells by picking out letters, and the world map is so much more gorgeous than simple text options. It’s more than just a regular interactive fiction game, and so very worthy of your attention.