Tag: Jrpg »

KEMCO, the Japanese mobile game publisher, has announced that 3 of their mobile games are going on sale today. You can pick up Symphony of the Origin, Silver Nornir, and Chronus Arc for only $0.99 each.

The sale starts today and will run until June 25. Now is  great time to check out these 3 JRPG's.

Popular tactical RPG Record of Agarest War started out on consoles, and was brought to Android, but now it's finally on iOS.

In a somewhat surprising move, the game was released to the App Store with very little fanfare. Still, it's here now so why not check it out? All the hours upon hours of gameplay, massive combos, monster capturing, giving birth to the next generation's hero (for up to 5 generations), and more are present and accounted for - it's just been shrunk down. Pretty cool, right? It's a wonder nobody's been talking about it.

You can grab Record of Agarest War off the App Store now for $14.99. Additional dungeon DLC and in-app purchases are available.

* Over 100 hours of gameplay
* 59 outstanding soundtracks
* Full 720p HD graphic assets
* 40 cut scene videos
* Fully voice acted with 16,000 character voices
* Over 400 different Magic spells and Battle skills
* Over 400 Enemies and Characters
* Capture monsters to join your army
* Story stretching 5 Generations of heroes
* Enhanced battle system including combo system, break and overkill
* Support for full touch interface, virtual on screen controller and iCade support
* Automatic save backup to iCloud.
* Support for Leaderboards and Achievements through Game Center.
* Language: English text with Japanese voices.
* Airplay support
* universal application

I’m always a bit leery of starting up a “traditional” iOS RPG. It’s not that I dislike the subgenre; it’s just that the results are typically hit or miss. Usually miss. Sticking with the awkward baseball analogy, RPG Aeon Avenger is like one of those overly dramatic moments in a sports movie where the batter looks like they’re going to miss, but they tag the ball anyway. They don’t necessarily hit a home run but at least they aren’t out. Well it makes sense in my mind, anyway.

Aeon Avenger is a lot like playing an awkward RPG styled after Chrono Trigger. An unlikely hero gets swept up in an adventure spanning multiple time periods, never leaving his world, per se, but seeing it in several different states over the centuries. In Lake’s case (yes, his name is Lake) it all begins when his family is slain by a mysterious man who can control monsters. With the aid of a wandering swordsman and a time-traveling sorceress, he sets out to put an end to the mysterious Man in Black, time paradoxes be damned.

Despite a generally simple look and some fairly uninteresting maps, Aeon Avenger does have some pretty impressive sprite work both for the portraits and enemies. It also uses an interesting system that allows any character to equip any weapon type, but they’re also most effective with their preferred implement. Different enemies also have particular weaknesses to certain weapons so it can sometimes pay off to switch things up a bit. In addition to the weapon system there are a number of skills that can be equipped to a given item to grant its wielder additional abilities. Of course not all skills can be used with all weapons but it’s a nice way to really diversify the group.

As I’ve mentioned the maps are rather bland, but the overly sensitive movement controls (complete with overly restrictive hitboxes for the virtual stick) make them even more of a drag to navigate through. After a while I gave up on exploring because it was so bad, and I love exploring. It’s also a shame that the script is so awkward. I didn’t notice many actual errors in the dialog, but it just doesn’t read all that well and the overall story is rather hard to get invested in. And what’s up with having to go into the “Status” menu to equip things? Why not, I dunno, use the “Equip” tab in the “Tools” menu instead?

I can’t honestly call RPG Aeon Avenger the next big iOS RPG, but it’s certainly not a bad entry into the genre. The story isn’t exactly captivating and the combat is fairly standard, but it does make use of an interesting equipment system that’s worth experimenting with.