Overview
Save the princess and the world by teaming up with new characters and moving across the globe in this low-priced, throwback role-playing game. It’s not outstanding, but as one of the App Store’s first RPG titles, Vay’s got all the traditional basics—magic, weapons, armor, special items, witty dialogue—to be a convenient and enjoyable mobile RPG companion.
Gameplay
As far as gameplay goes, those familiar with Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy, Pokemon and other RPGs won't find anything out of the ordinary here.
Vay follows a pretty typical RPG format: explore, investigate, gain experience, save the princess.
The game’s main character moves around and approaches people or objects with taps on the screen and gains experience and money with each victory in battle.
Whenever a battle occurs, the view will change and each character will have a turn to perform an action that the user selects, such as attack, cast a magic spell or use a special item. A character’s health and magic abilities will depend on his level of experience.
The graphics and animated videos are very rudimentary, but the game does make up for it with entertaining dialogue and a very user-friendly system for managing character items and equipment.
Whoever wrote the script for this thing had a good time doing it.
Review
If you were never much of a Zelda or Final Fantasy fan, and perhaps think that such people are nerds, then this is not the game that will turn you into an RPG nut. It’s pretty basic and one-dimensional. That said, RPG addicts will find that it’s decent, cheap and has good entertainment value.
Just think about all of those instances that you were stuck with some dead time and could have been leveling up your most beloved character (oh how I miss my Aeris from FF7) or earning money for a cool new sword or piece of armor. Well, with Vay on your iPhone or iPod Touch, that can happen wherever and whenever you want it to.
But while Vay is convenient and user-friendly, it isn’t too dynamic. The story is pretty typical by RPG standards and there are no mini games, special abilities or distinguishing components of this game.
Even the magic spells are pretty standard and unrewarding. If I’ve spent hours earning money, leveling up my character and gaining new magic spells, it’s pretty disappointing to find out that the only major difference to be noticed will be in the numerical amount of damage that my characters do. New weapons, armor and character abilities go almost unnoticed visually (it’s hard to see if anything has happened and an attack swipe is pretty static and unexpressive) and graphics for new magic are extremely limited (most variations of spells look the same).
The game can be challenging and does force you to have a good combination of experience, abilities and items in order to take on more complicated foes that have the ability to incapacitate and confuse your characters.
Summary
Vay is convenient, user-friendly and will satisfy those with RPG cravings. It’s not very complicated, but it is solid and well-made.
