The RPG genre has begun to pick up on the iPhone recently, with traditional games, unique hybrids, and even MMO’s beginning to surface on the device. Action RPG’s are also starting to come in spades, and as a lover of RPG’s, I’m thrilled that the genre is receiving an increasingly strong presence on the iPhone. Chronicles of Inotia: Legend of Feanor was released last year with a good amount of fanfare, as it was one of the more prominent RPG’s yet released on the system. The game received generally positive reviews, but had the effect of leaving the more demanding RPG gamers like myself largely unsatisfied.

Feanor is the main character, and his legend begins as he mysteriously appears from the sky one day and begins his quest to rid the land of evil. As you might gather from that introduction there’s little in the way of storytelling in Feanor, and the character itself rarely has anything to say and no character development whatsoever. The mute (or nearly mute) hero is a common RPG staple (so as to not potentially alienate the player from his character), but those games typically consist of full parties of other characters who pick up the vocal cord slack, which Feanor lacks. If you like RPG’s for the storytelling, you’ll be severely disappointed with Inotia.

That said, action-RPG’s are more about gameplay than storytelling for the most part, but Feanor, sadly, is fairly shallow in this department as well. The gameplay consists of wandering around random fields, hacking up the random spawning monsters that appear, and that’s about it. This in itself wouldn’t be so bad if the combat was actually fun, but it amounts to little more than tapping an enemy and watching as the action unfolds. A combat system similar to the early Ys or Zelda games would’ve made a much better choice; instead the game mimics Diablo’s endless clicking with its screen tapping, minus the fun of collecting tons of loot, which is what drives most PC action-RPG players onward. I almost hesitate to even call it an action game, as it basically amounts to a battle of stats with the monsters. There’s no real skill involved in playing the game, which naturally gets boring fairly quickly.

Feanor picks up a pet companion on his journey which is a nice touch, though not nearly as interesting as it could’ve been. Your companion doesn’t fight with you, it merely exists within your menu, levelling up via the items you feed it, at which point it will bestow stat bonuses on yourself. The pet feels like little more than a cosmetic middle man that could easily be removed from the game with little loss (a system where you simply consume the items yourself to reap the benefits would’ve amounted to the same thing).

Another disappointment is the lack of save spaces. You’re only given one save slot, meaning it’s impossible to have back up files in case you want to go back and try something in a different manner, or even in the event you simply want to replay the game again, in which case you’d have to delete your original file. Granted, the first point is rendered somewhat mute, as the game is fairly linear, with simple quests and little customization to switch things up, but it stands as a disappointing oversight nonetheless.

The graphics are unquestionably attractive for an old-school gamer like myself, consisting of beautiful (and beautifully animated) sprites. There is some degree of choppiness in the action at times, but the game runs at a good framerate for the most part.

For gamers looking for some simple mindless fun wrapped around an RPG shell, Feanor may suffice, but with more and more quality titles hitting the app store, more discerning gamers may want to look elsewhere for their mobile RPG fix.

Pros:

• Charming sprite graphics

Cons:

• Little to no story or character development
• Mindless combat

Score: 5.5/10

Price: $2.99

Chronicles of Inotia on iTunes

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 16th, 2009 at 6:17 am and is filed under iPhone Action Games, iPhone RPG Games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.