Tag: Elder scrolls »

Way back in 2009, Crescent Moon Games released an open-world RPG named Ravensword: The Fallen King. After years of titles developed and/or published by the studio, including various other RPGs, it’s returning to its big original hit, and it’s promising to be bigger and better than ever. Meet Ravensword: Shadowlands. Releasing on December 20th, it’s not only going to contain a massive open world, with numerous quests and things to discover, rivaling even console and PC open-world games, but it could be one of the best-looking games on the platform, as evidenced with my time on a near-final build.

The first hours of the game set the tone that this is an open world, and once the opening tutorial scene is finished, it’s open season. A town with dozens of buildings and giant detailed landscapes are immediately available. Want to go on the main quest, to discover what happened to the main character after the battle of Heronmar? Sure, do it. Want to mess around and join a guild, and help random citizens, affecting the character’s reputation? Do that, too. The game won’t say anything about it. In fact, doing a lot of side quests and exploring is highly recommended, because there’s plenty of tough foes that will come in the way, and the game prefers trial by fire. Spoiler alert: trolls and bears are a lot tougher than goblins and deer.

Weapon-based combat is simple: tap the attack button to use a weapon, tap on an enemy to target it, and hold down on attack to raise the shield. It does mean that shielding is not necessarily the most intuitive thing, but it does keep the controls from being overly-complicated. Magical items can add a third button for special attacks, and weapons and items can be set as quick use buttons at the bottom of the screen. In general, the best way to raise a stat like shielding or a weaponry type is to use it, or train it at a guild.

The game is going to be absolutely packed with content, if the sense of scale is anything to be believe: anywhere visible on land may actually be accessible in the game. Even many of the NPCs feature voice acting (usually for their first line), and a voice actor who worked on the Elder Scrolls series provides many of the NPC voices.

iPhone 5 owners are in for a treat: the game looks absolutely stunning, and only stutters occasionally in towns, for example. The build I have is “near-final” so it may or may not be sorted out, though the game is generally quite smooth. The draw distance is unparalleled as well.

Playing Ravensword: Shadowlands for several hours already, it feels like I’ve barely scratched the surface of this game, and there’s still mountains of content to discover. Between the vast landscape to uncover, and stories to unfold, this game could take a long time to truly discover all it holds.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is a huge game. I'm talking massive. Vast, even. With a wealth of content and activities from procedurally generated quests to blacksmithing and enchanting, calling it a little complicated would be an understatement. Each of the side activities can be incredibly involved, but none so much as alchemy. There are a virtual ton of ingredients to combine, each one with four different effects, in order to craft all manner of helpful and hurtful concoctions.

It's a huge list of items to keep track of, which is why we now have the Skyrim Alchemy App. It includes a complete reference guide of all the many, many ingredients as well as their numerous functions. It takes a lot of the guesswork out of it as most of an ingredient's effects are unknown until they're discovered through mixing or ingesting. This way, a player can simply check the app to see what works with what rather than expending precious resources. A recipe book which will allow users to save and load their favorite mixtures is already in the works and should be available in a future update.

With the biggest western RPG of the year (both literally and figuratively) still in its release infancy, having a little extra help with some of the more menial tasks is welcome. With that in mind, Skyrim Alchemy App can be had right now for $0.99.