Elven Chronicles Review

By , on September 27, 2009


Elven Chronicles
Download on the AppStore
3 out of 5

PROS

  • Great old school presentation and style, slightly pixelated visuals work well here.
  • The game’s controls are very simple and easy to pick up and play.

CONS

  • No auto-save function, if you don’t save from the character menu and exit the application, you’re boned.
  • The gameplay is boring; there’s a severe lack of quests and things to do besides the slow real time battles.
  • The game isn’t a proper RPG as it gives players very few choices in regards to their character or the game.

VERDICT

Elven Chronicles is a game with few points of merit, and overall feels clichéd, controlling and quite boring. While old school RPG’s can be a real blast to play, this is not a worthwhile title.


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Elven Chronicles follows the tale of a young knight and his magic wielding companion as they seek revenge on those who attacked his caravan and nearly killed him. It’s an old school, turn based RPG similar to old Super Nintendo Final Fantasy games. But unlike the original RPGs of that time, Elven Chronicles is a lot more restrictive.

Players control their character by tapping on the iPhone screen to move and when a battle event is triggered use attacks or actions. These battles, while being a pivotal part of the gameplay, just aren’t all that exciting. You’ll end up tapping the attack button constantly because most enemies will hardly give you a challenge. This is really disappointing as turn based combat doesn’t have to be mundane.

The game’s presentation is quite well done and while the visuals are a bit pixelated, they suit the old school game style to a T. The sound really doesn’t match the game however. It’s just not as magical or epic as you’d expect when fighting two giant minotaurs in an ominous dark cave.

Elven Chronicles is a decent game but can be barely classed as an RPG. The limits of your customisation are restricted to choosing which items to equip and there are no skill trees, stat upgrades and classes to choose and customise. Besides that however, the gameplay is very lacklustre and the clichéd ‘amnesia’ storyline doesn’t help excite players. While the game does do some things right, in the end, you might want to skip this one and try a different RPG.

Screenshots

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