Wednesday, November 26, 2014

Review: Pocket RPG


Pocket RPG is a Chibi-inspired Hack and Slash game originally created by Crescent Moon Games for platforms such as iOS, where you can find the game for only $4.99. You will also find the game available on Ouya and Android. Pocket RPG can be found on the PlayStation Store for $14.99 by searching its name or scrolling through the Indie section.
South African development team Tasty Poison Games has handled the movement of the game to the PlayStation Vita, taking the game and spending 5 months getting it ready for its release onto the device.

I've never played the game before on any other device and the game has no tutorial or cursory explanations of what to expect in the game, so its rather difficult for me to formulate how to explain in a great amount of detail what Pocket RPG is, but I'll give it my best shot.

Its actually a pretty basic and straightforward game. You go on quests that you unlock one by one. Each quest is broken up into a few parts and you of course have to clear them before eventually facing off against the final boss to be victorious.

While exploring and defeating enemies in a given stage, you can break certain items like crates and barrels to gain coins and sometimes other items like health potions. Some barrels you trigger by an attack will help you defeat enemies in different ways. For instance, if you open a green barrel all the enemies in the area of the burst will start attacking one another in confusion, giving yourself an opportunity to take control.

There will also be chests you can find which will not only give you coins, but also items such as weapons or amulets. These items can vary from extremely rare, powerful to very common weapons that you'll just sell to save inventory space.

Chests aren't the only way to obtain weapons as sometimes during a quest you’ll be asked to protect a special relic. Saving this relic from destruction courtesy of several waves of monsters will earn you a great deal of coins as well as a few good items to help you in the remainder of the game or merely serve as post-game fodder.


What is post-game fodder you might be wondering? Well, after you beat a quest you have to get your rewards, right? Right. Well, rewards are given out in the form of Skill Points and Coins. How many skill points and coins you get are determined by your accomplishments and your final inventory.

Skill Points will be used to unlock special moves for your characters to perform in battle. An example is the Slam Move the Blade Master can do. It’s his first unlockable and it’ll allow you to create a wave of damage around you to hit surrounding enemies. These moves will be executed in a combo just as in any other game, this move in particular being executed by pressing Square and pressing the attack button, X,in quick succession to jump in the air followed by quickly holding the attack button to finalize the attack. Completing quests will increase the amount of moves you can purchase for your character.

Coins are used to buy certain upgrades. Each character has their own set of upgrades to choose from, but all are used for the same general purpose: Improving your characters weapons and equipment. After each quest you may head to the armory with your plunder and go through your various options.

Looking at the Battle Mage right now I have the option to

‘Study Books of Fire’

“These spells deal splash damage and can knock back enemies.”

As is the case with the special moves, the amount of quests you complete will dictate what upgrades you’re able to buy.

Each time you start a quest you'll be set at level zero and given the most basic weapons. All those nice, hard earned weapons you earned in the previous quest? Gone as soon as you hit the post-game screen. It'll be up to your prowess as a fighter with the help of what you've earned that'll see you though to the end.

On your journey through Pocket RPG you are allowed to take your choice of one of three different character classes. These classes are the aforementioned Blade Master and Battle Mage with the Dark Ranger rounding out the group. As you may suspect, each character will have different attacks giving you the ability to play the game in new and exciting ways.



Something I find quite disappointing about this game is how I've come to find while gathering information to prepare writing this review that a variety of features have seemingly been stripped from the iOS version.

Looking over the Crescent Moon Games Pocket RPG page on their website lists one glaring omission from this Vita version - Leaderboards.

This is not available anywhere in the game, though it is possible the developer is going to add it in later on.

Another two things that appear to be missing are Random Level Generation and the ability to choose ‘Arcade Play’ where there are save points while playing or ‘Rogue Play’ where if you die, you die (assuming you don’t have a life revival item.).

I imagine that the items found during a level are indeed randomized, though I haven’t actually gone through to confirm or deny, but the stages are not in any way that I can see random otherwise. I don’t believe I have encountered any different number of enemies on a given level and the path I take after I have failed a quest is the exact same as it was the time before.

As with the Leaderboards, I’m entirely positive that the option to switch between gameplay modes is unavailable in this game. I’m confident that Rogue Play is always activated given that I just mentioned in the previous paragraph I've stated I've died and had to restart a level - Perma-Death.

There are some features that are possibly added to the game. Looking over the same listing I don’t see the option to change the game’s difficulty nor do I see the ability to turn off the notifications of how much damage you’re doing. Granted, these aren't particularly noteworthy options, particularly in the case of the latter, but they’re something.

The difficulty can be altered from Normal to Hard and back again.

If you’re looking for this game to provide a fast pace and lots of action, you’re not going to find what you’re looking for. There is certainly a great deal of action in the game and you can find yourself facing a couple dozen enemies on your screen, but the game is anything but fast paced. Indeed, movement with your character in terms of walking around, there is no running, and attacking is rather slow and deliberate. There’s a massive difference between hacking and slashing in a game like Ys: Memories of Celceta and this.

I don’t particularly enjoy this slow pace, but I don’t feel its too much of an issue. It’s merely something I’m not used to doing, so I would think that the awkwardness of it has something to do with my not fully embracing it. I’d expect through a decent amount of gameplay I’d get fully used to it.

I find it extremely unfortunate to say this, but I have found very little enjoyment playing Pocket RPG in the hours I have spent with it. There is certainly a fun game in there, but for the time being it find itself buried and waiting to be uncovered.

Without any shadow of a doubt the game is full of a massive amount of bugs, a total I have not seen in any other game I've played in my lifetime with all honesty. It's quite surprising to me to say the least and is not a pleasant experience.

When I think about these things, I feel as though I’m playing a game well away from actually being on the PlayStation Store. I’m not sure what else I could think, it seems like these issues would have been found during Quality Assurance Testing or during a simple testing run with some people trying out the game reporting back their findings.

I hope these issues will be resolved will be solved in due time as I truly believe there is a great deal of potential stashed away like a diamond in the rough.

While only one glitch out of the numerous ones I have encountered will break the game, the rest are at best frustrating to see in existence.


Pictured just above is the game breaking glitch. As you can see my character is currently trapped behind two trees. I reached this position while I was battling some enemies and I wasn't paying enough attention to know for certain if I moved by there and was sucked in or I jumped and became trapped. Whatever caused me to go in there I could not see myself out so I lost my progress. Luckily not too much was lost.

I’d say that was the most serious issue I encountered, these next bugs I’ll list should be less severe.

This game freezes momentarily a significant amount of times during any gameplay session. I've noted this happening with the most frequency when I’m performing a special move. Having multiple enemies on the screen while generally attacking and moving around the screen with multiple enemies around me take the second and third slots of most frequent triggers.

This is almost assuredly the reason why I'm not enjoying myself very much as it breaks the flow of the game which is already a slow pace to begin with as I mentioned before.

While battling with the Dark Ranger there came a point where I assume I had unlocked a special extra which allowed me to shoot two arrows as a time. Great, right? Well, it started off well enough, but quickly went downhill. For a majority of the time the second arrow would fire slightly diagonally and to the right of the main arrow. You could tell the difference between them as your regular arrow is yellow and this new arrow is pink. I say it quickly went downhill because shortly after a few of these were sent off the extra arrow would suddenly appear to the left of the character far away from the bow and let loose in a straight path. Quite odd and I’m sure not meant to happen.

Some of the other issues I've noticed that I’ll spare the mundane explanations about are:

— Entering a quest as one character only to find yourself as another

— Being unable to perform combos at times.

— Being able to walk through a wall and stand inside of it

Given all I have explained I’m sure we can agree that in its current state the game is not worth the $15 price tag currently attached to it. I’m sure some of you were going to wait for a sale given the premium cost over other devices anyway, so this review merely solidifies that stance pending a patch or two and a price drop. Anyone on the fence about a purchase is almost assuredly off and on to one side at this point. If you were excited to see the game on the Vita and dying to play the game, you have other options to take advantage of right now to get your fix. This game will most assuredly go on sale in the future and you can pick it up then.

This game is by no means made entirely unplayable by these bugs as you can get around or ignore them, but with them the possible enjoyment is at a gracious bare minimum. There are better options in this price range, below it, and around it so if you have money burning a hole in your pocket I hope you’ll go for them.

Assuming the game’s issues didn't exist and looking past the premium it is over other systems, I believe I could see the value in this as a $15 purchase for someone interested in the game. It has an intriguing concept and the ability to be replayed over and over again for a great length of time.

1 comment:

  1. It's a small thing, but I never liked how games started including the ability to change difficulty at any time. Like you can dial it down if it's getting too hard then turn it back on. I feel like that is a cheat that's no fun. I remember first seeing it with point-n-click games and Fallout in the 90s.

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