Love Hack And Slash RPGs? Give Devildark: The Fallen Kingdom A Try
DevilDark: The Fallen Kingdom ($0.99) by Triniti Interactive Limited features an old king that has caused a plague upon the land. It’s your job to take up arms and banish the monsters, saving the world from darkness.
This game is a hack and slash adventure, with plenty of monsters to fight, tons of treasure to collect, and a huge world to explore.
By all accounts, Devildark should be a great experience, but it has a huge flaw at the moment. It appears that the developers did not test this game on the new iPad, and none of the menus or menu buttons render at the proper size. Instead, they are all iPhone sized.
Because of the UI problems, Devildark is not currently playable on the iPad. For the rest of this review, I used my iPhone, and I’d highly suggest skipping this title if you plan to play it on an iPad, at least until there’s an update.
Aside from the iPad UI problems, this plays like a typical hack and slash game. Movement is controlled with a joystick on the left side of the screen, and attacking is done with the sword button on the right side of the screen. Most of the game consists of clearing out hordes of enemies, which will earn experience and loot.
When you level up, you will be able to invest skill points in different abilities, increasing stats like toughness (additional hit points) and shield proficiency (additional armor).
There’s a town where you’re given quests and where you can buy supplies to outfit your character. A green arrow shows you the direction you should walk in to obtain new quests and a map view allows you to explore new areas.
The graphics in Devildark are colorful, cartoonish, and polished, and the gameplay has potential, but the whole thing just feels unpolished at this point. Even on the iPhone, the UI is clunky and unresponsive.
Not to mention this game bears some striking similarity to DeathSpank, the comedic action RPG from the Xbox Live Arcade, but Devildark is lacking the quirky humor that made DeathSpank such a fun game.
Sure, Devildark is priced at just $0.99, but the whole game is riddled with in-app purchases. Gear becomes hard to obtain at higher levels, driving players towards purchasing crystals to get the equipment necessary to progress. If you don’t want to buy gear, be prepared for some serious grinding. There are also ads, at the entry screen and during the pause game, which shouldn’t be present in a paid app.
This game needs a lot of work and several tweaks, so I recommend saving your cash for something better, at least until a significant update is available in the App Store.
