Battleheart

This week its a change from the mainstream to the slightly more obscure. Battleheart is an RPG game for mobiles costing a mere £1.99. For the purposes of this review i am using iOS 5 on an iPhone 4 so i don't know how well it runs on lower operating systems or devices, however i do know it requires iOS 3.1 or above and is also available on Android.

Mages, Paladins, Archers and......Pirates?

Battleheart is what i would call a "classic" RPG, there is no world as such but you do have a selection of characters that you can choose from, each with their own abilities and perks. It is not an Adventure RPG like The Elder Scrolls series, it is not a Japanese RPG like Final Fantasy, it is probably not like any other RPG that most of you have played. Battleheart is a basic RPG but this is definitely in its favour. I have played a multitude of RPGs on my iPhone but none have sucked up as many hours as Battleheart has, i am currently sitting on over 5 hours of play which makes it one of the most played games on my phone.

Nice short, but challenging levels make for a great experience.

One of the reasons Battleheart manages to get picked up again and again is because of its level system, not the character levels but the game levels. Battleheart's levels are designed in such a way that you can pick the game up for 10 minutes and then put it away again until you have another spare 10 minutes, split up into small battles. There are always just enough enemies to make it challenging but not too much as to cause you to have to stop playing half way through a battle. This makes it extremely easy to level up your characters whilst only playing for short bursts of time, which is a must for a mobile RPG player who doesn't have the same amount of time to sit down and play a full console or PC RPG. The enemies are also varied enough to keep you from getting bored, increasing in difficulty slowly enough to keep the challenge of a fight there.

The Paladin's abilities are a lifesaver sometimes.

As character leveling goes Battleheart has one of the best designs going, this includes some major RPGs. Characters level up based on how much they do throughout a battle so it's easy to level up specific characters by having them do all the work or to level up your entire party by spreading the work equally. In most party-based RPGs i tend to find that one or two characters rise above the rest but with Battleheart this doesn't seem to happen which is obviously a major plus point in my books. Apart from the basic leveling up of attributes (in Battleheart's case strength/magic and defence) there is a skill tree section for each character type where each 5 levels gained allows you to pick one of two abilities some of which are passive abilities while others can be used during battle. These abilities can range from simple power attacks to ones that can be combined with others to make a character more powerful, such as my pirate barbarian who has an ability to increase attack speed, a rage ability that increases power but also increases damage taken and a passive ability that negates the negative effects of his rage ability, so when used together my barbarian because both strong and fast. But you don't have to pick which abilities to use there and then when a character levels up, you can change abilities quickly from the Academy section of the menu meaning if you're finding a battle particularly difficult you can not only change your party line up but you can also change that party's abilities to suit the battle situation.

The Leveling system is simple enough to understand but offers a wide range of different set-ups.

Speaking of your party, you can easily pick up new characters to use in your party from the Tavern, where characters can be picked up from a price. Obviously the higher level characters cost more to purchase but once they are in your party you are free to use them as you wish. To further increase your parties strength you also pick up various items from completing battles or by purchasing them from the shop with money earned in battles. This is where my one problem with Battleheart comes in. Unfortunately there is a very limited amount of items available, with only 8 being available for purchase at any one time from the shop. These items also change after each battle so if you decide to save up for that one item that will help you there's a fair chance it won't be in the shop next time you visit. Battleheart does get around this to an extent by allowing you to upgrade offensive and defensive items but for a greatly increased price when compared to buying it directly from the shop. For example, upgrading a cutlass to a greatsword would cost you 300 gold but buying the greatsword directly would only cost 200 plus the money you recieve from selling the cutlass.

The shop only offers 8 items at most at a time and most of the time you won't want any of them.

Asside from that one small problem, I can find no fault with Battleheart. Even the controls are excellent and intuitive, considering it is a mobile game i was not expecting the controls to be brilliant but Battleheart allows you to move each character individually with ease and if you can manage it you can move 2 or more characters at time, depending on how many fingers you can get on the screen. The abilities are easily visible, not taking up too much screen so they never seem to be in the way and even the biggiest of enemies take up no more room than they need so your characters are always easily visible and ready to be moved if needed. When selecting which enemies to attack you do exactly what you think you should do, you just draw a line from whichever character you want to attack to the enemy you want to be attacking, its as simple as that.

Battleheart is exactly what is needed by a mobile platform RPG game. It's simple to use with lots of characters to use and abilities to try. It can easily be picked up at any point in the day and played for hours but just as essentially can be put down at a moments notice if required. Battleheart has given me hours of entertainment so far and i have no doubt it has lot more to give me still.

Battleheart gets:

5 Barbarian Pirates!!! (out of 5)

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Minecraft

I know it's been a while but here we go, ROUND TWO!!!!! *DING DING DING*


This time round I'm reviewing the ridiculously popular (given its still in beta) Minecraft. Last time i reviewed Batman: Arkham City which was an easy choice, an excellent game that i had been playing for days before writing the review. It wasn't such a clear choice for this review though, currently i have a stack of games in my room that are begging to be played and i struggled to single one out to play and review but thanks to today my mind was made up for me.

It's not much at the moment, but it's my home.

After seeing the landmark post from Markus "Notch" Persson on Twitter last night telling everyone that the 4 Millionth download of Minecraft had been completed, i felt the sudden urge to start playing it again. Like most adopters of the Lego-like game, at first i was confused about what to do and it seemed as if there was nothing to do, just roam around and arbitrarily collect minerals and create items to get more minerals. Of course at a basic level that is all you do but therein lies the greatness of this game. Minecraft does to video games what Lego done to plastic toys decades before, it gives you the basic materials to build something and then lets you do whatever you want with it.

Minecraft can be very dull if you are coming into it thinking it's going to be this amazing game that can rival the most popular game franchises and I'm sorry to say this is what i thought of it at first. I initially thought that it was nothing more than a boring blocky game that had nothing to it, luckily i soon saw the light. After a few hours frustratingly wandering around looking for my first coal vain i decided to just start digging into a nearby hill in the hope i would find something. It was then that i started imaging how i could open up the small space i had made into a large room, possibly with windows and doors (at this point i was unaware that you could actually make doors and glass for windows) and that is Minecrafts greatest strength, the players imagination. Thanks to the seemingly limitless scope of Minecraft you can use your imagination to build ANYTHING you want. My first run around in the world had me making a small room in the side of a mountain, my second had me building an evil lair in a skull shape and now that I'm getting back into it again I've decided to build a lake-side modern cabin with the hopes of building a fully working tower with elevators and penthouse suite.

Like Lego, but more WIN

But using you're imagination is only half the fun of Minecraft. Although i still think that the players imagination is the biggest factor in making the game work, there is also the sense of adventure and wonder you get as you travel around the randomly generated world. In order to craft whatever you want you first have to mine the right resources (see what i did there?) and this requires finding blocks of ore that you can mine that can then be smelted into usable materials such as iron. I know it doesn't sound like much but unless you are prepared you could easily be ambushed by one of the games monsters which, despite them being made of blocks, can be a harrowing experience.

Of course, these monsters don't come out until night time so as long as you have a safe place built by nightfall you should be safe. On long journeys, however, when you are in search of more coal or iron you can easily be caught out by the setting sun and then face a deadly run back to you're house/safe area. This has happened to me on occasion and somehow it has quickly become one of the most stressful experiences i have had in a game. Having to get back to my semi-built house as fast as i can, trying to remember how to get back (there are no maps for guidance unless you make one yourself) and having to be ever watchful for mobs (Minecraft's monsters) hiding behind the next tree is both exciting and terrifying.

To start with i was sceptical of Minecraft, as are most people still, but I'm glad i gave it a chance. Although it doesn't seem like a very complicated game and it certainly isn't going to be winning awards for best graphics anytime soon, Minecraft is as amazing as your imagination makes it, you can build your dream home, you can construct working models of your favourite cars/planes/spacecraft if you get to grips with the pistons, levers, buttons and switches. There are people that have made 1:1 scale replicas of famous vehicles or buildings, one person made a working 16-bit computer (they made a computer within a game within a computer!). My advice is to by this game before it comes out of beta later this month and you miss the chance for the beta discount.

 Minecraft gets:

4 and 3 Quarter 8-bit Gold Bars! (Out of 5)

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