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We first checked out Liv Games over a year ago with Legendary Wars [$0.99 / HD], a great take on castle defense. Now the developers are back with Monster Wars [$0.99], the latest addition to the genre. Billed as a ‘follow-up’ to their previous game, Monster Wars succeeds at preserving the same great gameplay of its predecessor while tweaking elements and offering a new story complete with a load of new units.

For folks that played Legendary Wars, Monster Wars will feel very familiar. The majority of campaign missions still feature the same castle defense-style gameplay where you collect resources, build units, defend your own castle from the opposition while simultaneously moving forward attack units to take out the opposing fortress.

The campaign also brings back the side-scrolling ‘hack n’ slash’ levels from the previous game (for better or worse). Each successful mission rewards players with coins to spend on unit upgrades, with an occasional soulstone (premium currency that you can also purchase using IAP). Most importantly, the deep character customization also returns, giving gamers a ton of incentive to play the game as much as possible simply to level up your character stats.

Despite these similarities, Monster Wars does tweak some of the gameplay by adding new variations on the types of missions we’ve seen in the past. For example, there are a lot more escort quests that have you guarding a ‘Named’ ally or a catapult as you make your way towards the enemy castle. In the case of the catapult, you have to actually use it to take down supplemental castle defenses before you can even damage it. The side scrolling levels have also seen some additions, with endless runner and other objective-based missions being thrown into the mix. In general, these tweaks don’t really do much to change the core gameplay, but considering how well done it is, I don’t care too much.

While Monster Wars improves upon its predecessor in a variety of different ways, I think the aspect that folks will appreciate the most is the sheer amount of content available. The campaign is huge and takes an investment to complete. If you want to take a break from the main story, the game features several endless modes which put you right into the action for as long as you want. The fact that you earn gems and soulstones, which can be used to improve your units within the campaign, is a nice (and necessary) touch. Finally, once you’ve conquered everything you think Monster Wars has to offer, additional difficulties are ready to challenge you all over again.

Another great way Monster Wars differentiates itself is with the all-new cast of monsters that you command in your army. There are over 15 new creatures, from the lowly Skelly to the awesome Lich, with each offering different attacks, special moves, and stats to improve upon. Each of the base units also allow you to upgrade its tier, giving the unit new stats, a new look, and even occasionally new specials.

There is a ton of variety in Monster Wars, and considering you can only take a certain number of units into battle, there are a lot of different ways to plan and play. I was a little disappointed in the fact that ‘tier-upgrades,’ (along with the ability to unlock some units) required as many soulstones as they do. Considering Monster Wars doesn’t pass out soulstones as much as I would want, players will either have to shell out some cash or grind a bit in the endless levels in order to earn enough stones to see everything.

From a controls standpoint, Monster Wars does a decent job. Buttons at the top of the screen let you quickly set attack and retreat orders as well as set simple formations. I did find it particularly tough to specifically select units during the heat of battle as your characters all tend to bunch up while attacking. However, I can’t really think of a better way of implementing something within the confines of castle defense.

Monster Wars also continues the excellent overall presentation started with Legendary Wars. A great soundtrack sets the overall tone of the game while retina-quality visuals paint a vivid picture throughout the course of your adventures. The story, a tongue-in-cheek narrative telling the Legendary (pun intended) tale from the monsters’ perspective, feels a bit trite at times, but still does a good job keeping the player engaged. There were a few strange UI issues, like certain screen buttons not registering taps (almost as if the tap window was smaller than the actual buttons), but nothing detracting from the gameplay too much.

I imagine some folks may complain that Monster Wars feels too much like its precursor without much of a change to the core gameplay. I say, why mess with a good thing? While the game does feel like a re-skin at times, Monster Wars still does a great job taking the classic gameplay from Legendary and transplanting it in a new setting. Add in all the new content combined with the deep character customization and there’s no reason you shouldn’t be checking out Monster Wars.

TouchArcade Rating:

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An official, totally real spin-off of a PC Steam release that goes by the name of Tobe’s Vertical Adventure will be available on the App Store this month. As we write this, the folks over at Secret Base are hard at work on Tobe & Friends Hookshot Escape, a vertical and endless platformer that stars everyone’s favorite super weapon, the hookshot.

We’re told that Tobe & Friends will stroke arcade desires, as well as provide a ton of differentiated play in its space. A total of four unique characters that offer unique hook, er, shotting abilities, as well as four different worlds and 20 pieces of equipment dot the game’s landscape. In a blog post, Secret Base notes that there’s more to the game like, say, “power ups, monsters, themes and chirpy musics” and more will be revealed later. Catch your first look in the trailer below:

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Also at Macworld this year was ZigZaGame Inc, the developers who are bringing Adventure Bar Story to the App Store. We’ve already gone pretty in depth with Adventure Bar Story in our hands-on preview, but another title that they were showing off is their Pokemon-style game Dragon Island.

Dragon Island has you exploring a huge world, battling and collecting over 200 different species of monsters. Each one can be evolved several times, and you can even collect recipes which will allow you to combine two different creatures to create a new hybrid version. Also, you’ll be able to battle bosses and claim their spirits in order to summon them in future battles.

Another interesting feature is that there are no healing spells or items in the game. You can return to the main town hub to heal, but if you’re out in battle and one of your creatures dies, then they’re gone for good. I kind of like this as it adds an element of suspense and risk, and should affect how you go about tackling battles and completing the many dungeons in the game.

To balance this, even though you can only battle with 3 monsters at a time, you’ll be able to bring more than that with you as you play. So if you do end up losing one, another monster from your queue will take its place. As you level up in the game, you’ll gain the ability to carry more and more monsters with you.

An example of 3 evolutions of a dragon

The world which you can explore in Dragon Island is massive, with tons of points of interest to discover. These include towns, forests, random battles, and dungeons. When you come upon a dungeon, it is randomly generated and turns the game into more of a rogue-like, and there will be one infinite dungeon where you can grind and discover monsters and items, as well as compete on a leaderboard for how many floors you can descend.

Finally, the battle system will be a traditional 3-on-3 turn-based affair. Each monster can have up to 4 skills, each assigned a special swipe gesture. Although your character doesn’t get involved in battles himself, you can still level him up as you would in a normal RPG, and then his stats will extend to the monsters under his control. In this way you can influence how you will play the game despite the massive number of different monsters in the game which are actually the ones doing battle.

I was blown away when I saw Dragon Island in action. The amount of creatures in the game, coupled with the ability to evolve them and level up your own character has the potential for just a ridiculous amount of customization and strategy. Along with a huge world to explore, a storyline, tons of items and abilities, and even an infinite dungeon, there will be plenty to keep you busy in Dragon Island. Be on the lookout for Dragon Island to hit in the coming months, or check out the thread in our forums for even more discussion on the game.

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Brad Nicholson said it best in our preview of Dungeon Crawlers [$1.99]: “It’s the video game equivalent of a mullet, reserved and business-like, yet fun-loving and goofy.” I’d add “A little bit awkward in any situation,” for both the mullet and the game. It’s a quirky strategy RPG that invests heavily in tropes of old, glorifies the Ghostbusters, and isn’t quite ready for prime-time.

Don’t get me wrong; fans of traditional SRPGs will find a lot to love if they give Dungeon Crawlers a chance. It’s a funny, charming, and mostly well-crafted game. You’ll run into a few glaring omissions, and you might have trouble with the game’s high memory footprint, but rest assured that Ayopa Games and Drowning Monkeys plan to address all of that soon. No matter how much I enjoy myself, though, I keep coming back to the same problem: Dungeon Crawlers is just way too ponderous.

The mix of dungeon crawling and strategic combat works well. Basically, you poke around a dungeon floor by floor, fighting baddies, finding secrets, and occasionally solving puzzles. The game slips into turn-based combat mode the moment you enter an area with enemies. A movement grid is laid out on the floor. Enemies take their turns, one by one, and then the heroes take theirs. It’s a good formula, but every bit of it is too slow.

Enemy turns take too long, and can’t really be sped up. Every movement and attack feels a bit slower than it should, and everything has to happen in turn. Sometimes it feels like no one has any idea how to land a hit. In combat that already feels too slow, a whole round spent with weapons missing harmlessly (or landing glancing blows, a common problem) is dull, dull, dull. It would shorten the game, but combat would be a lot more fun if the developers cut out the weak hits, lowered everyone’s miss rates and let you fast-forward through enemy turns.

If only they could apply that sort of trimming to the rest of the experience. For example, you start with only three of your four heroes: Payter, Aegon and Roy (if you’re thinking Ghostbusters already, those should sound familiar), and each gets just one ability initially. For the first few levels combat is mindless. Payter walks up to an enemy and slashes it. Aegon casts Magic Missile from further back. Roy heals whoever is wounded. Rinse. Repeat. It’s a fine way to start, but the game takes far too long to start filling your arsenal with new friends and abilities.

It’s a shame, because I doubt many mobile gamers are going to wait the hour or two it takes for things to start getting interesting. Try to be the exception, because it’s worth it. Even though Dungeon Crawlers has a limited roster of characters, its encounters get both challenging and strategic. Much of the strategy is in learning to carefully position your party members. Payter, for instance, eventually learns to stun the enemies that surround him. Predicting where the enemies will move, you can put him in just the right place to get surrounded. Then you can line up Aegon to hit the grouped up baddies with an AOE, and keep Failston blocking the way back to Roy. Mana isn’t a consideration, but action limits are, so healing is a once-per-turn affair. If a character falls, they’re out of the game until the next floor.

Failing isn’t a a huge deal, since you can always restart from the beginning of a level or an encounter. But that decision really hurts when encounters start lasting for half an hour or longer. You should be able to offset this by using the coins you collect to buy potions in a tight spot, but you can’t. A shop is coming, as are IAP coins for the poor adventurer with a wealthy player. The game can already be completed without the store, though, so the IAP will be optional in the extreme.

Unless, that is, you try to plow straight through. Dungeon Crawler’s loot system rewards the explorer. You won’t find much if you just stomp around killing enemies and opening chests, and your equipment will quickly fall out of date. If, on the other hand, you manage to find the levers that hide secrets in nearly every level, you’ll be at the tip-top of your game. The game could use a balance tweak or two to keep less-curious players geared enough to fight, though. The loot is all pre-determined, and it really hurts your chances if you miss a few secrets.

Even with all the frustrations and issues, I really dig Dungeon Crawlers. If you’re a sucker for references, this game plays with a ton of them – from the blatant and encompassing Ghostbusters theme to jokes about things the younger crowd might still understand. That’s on top of an engaging adventure tale that does its best to keep you interested in slogging through fight after fight. The characters, the music, the level design and environments – all great. You get the idea: the game would be fantastic if only it were pared down, cleaned up and sent out much more streamlined.

Until then, a cautious recommendation will have to do. If you’re looking for an old-school strategic romp through some very traditional dungeons, you’re in the right place. But these aren’t play sessions you can cram into five minute smoke breaks. Dungeon Crawlers is built to last – for better or worse, you’ll get hours out of it. If you’re a sit-back-and-be-patient sort, you’ll be just fine.

TouchArcade Rating:

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Check this: footage of Oceanhorn, the Cornfox & Brothers adventure game joint that seems to resemble the best Zelda ever in both style and tone, is now available. We’ve embedded the video just below for your viewing pleasure and aren’t worried in the slightest that it will be pulled despite being labeled as a “secret” video. This is a PR stunt for a title that made waves when first announced, and hasn’t seen substantial coverage since.

We’re not complaining, by the way. We want to see more and realize that Oceanhorn: Monster of Uncharted Seas could be a big deal when it hits later this 2012. Not only is it fascinatingly gorgeous, but it’s also mechanically and functionally inspired by Zelda. The world desperately needs more of these kinds of games, and if these cats can pull it off, a lot of people are going to be very happy.

Also, in entirely unrelated but sort of related news: If you’re into Wind Waker, check out this fan-made imaginary Wii U sequel trailer that just hit YouTube and is blowing up all over Twitter. Bananas!

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On this week’s episode of The TouchArcade Show, we push through discussions about feral dogs, the Mindfreak, and accents in order to bring you the latest, hottest, and best-est in iOS game news and chit-chat. At the top, we dig into unreleased titles like Adventure Bar Story before we dive into more known quantities, like say, Triple Town. Post-break, we weigh in on heavy stuff like the Zynga vs. NimbleBit, uh, issue, and of course, get to a few of your listener questions.

Oh! We also had a special guest this week: Joseph Leray. If you’d like to give us a listen, go ahead and do so via the links below. Additionally, you could subscribe to our feeds at iTunes and Zune. All the cool kids do the latter.

iTunes Link: The TouchArcade Show
Zune Marketplace: TouchArcade.com Podcasts
RSS Feed: The TouchArcade Show
Direct Link: TouchArcadeShow-036.mp3, 33MB

Here are your show notes:

GAMES

• Adventure Bar Story
• End Night
• Ash II: Shadows [$2.99 Silver Edition / $4.99 Gold Edition]
• Triple Town [Free]

FRONT PAGE

• Zynga Rips Off ‘Tiny Tower’
• Unofficial ‘Dominion’ App Hits The Store
• Tweet-Land Has A Release Date

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What happens when three visionaries get together and tease an awesome game? You get The Other Brothers, which is a game that certainly has the look and style of a next-level iOS game. On the other hand, you also get almost nothing in the Fine Details Department, and that’s a monumental bummer considering the promise on display. I mean, just look at that.

The first post on the game’s new blog describes The Other Brothers as “a pixelated family fun adventure [game] of running, jumping, collecting, racing against the clock …” with a suitably mysterious twist. A Kotaku post has some more concept-y type of art if you’d like to see a lot more than what’s on display in this post. We’re on a mission to get a lot more details, so definitely stay tuned.

[Via Kotaku]

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Alright, so even though Meanwhile for iOS [99¢] isn’t normally what would come to mind when you think of iOS games, it’s something that I bet most people out there aren’t aware of. Also, if you’re the kind of person who likes Choose Your Own Adventure style books like the variety of gamebooks we’ve posted about in the past, this will be right up your alley. Maybe you’ve got kids that like comic books, Meanwhile would be equally perfect in that situation.

I first heard about its physical book form, which is worth checking out just so you can see the clever way its all laid out. You make decisions in the comic book, then follow colored lines to the next panel you should be reading. The amount of decisions included is just silly, as the book boasts 3,856 different possibilities. The plot follows a kid named Jimmy who goes from deciding if he (or, you, as the reader) wants vanilla or chocolate ice cream to deciding the fate of the world after encountering mad scientists, time machines, robots, and tons more.

The comic is targeted at kids in grades 4-6, so if you’re an adult looking for some hard-hitting plot points, you’ll likely be disappointed. If, however, you’re just into comic books and want to check out a really clever implementation of a Choose Your Own Adventure style comic, this is 99¢ you have to spend. The way they adapted the actual book to iOS devices is fantastic. I particularly enjoy how you still see irrelevant (to your particular story path) panels as you read through the comic, which really just makes you want to replay it over and over again to figure out how to get to something you saw that was particularly crazy.

It’s on sale today only, due to an update landing which adds completely re-mastered high resolution art. So, don’t wait too long or it’ll be back up to $4.99.

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Buckle up; Adventure Bar Story appears to be pretty radical. I just spent a good chunk of time with a pre-release build of the PSP port, and while I do have a reservation or two about its virtual controls, I couldn’t be happier with the overall port job and its core play, which is satisfyingly genre-bending.

Imagine if your everyday 16-bit JRPG hooked up with a management sim. In Adventure Bar Story, you control a young girl attempting to save her bar from being stolen or bought out by a renowned and rival neighborhood restaurant. In order to prevent this, she’ll need to learn how to cook, buy or gather ingredients in RPG-like zones complimented by random battles, assemble the ingredients into a dish, and then profit.

Mechanically, there’s a lot going on. In order to cook food, for example, you need recipes and the right tools for the job — blenders, pans, and so forth. The Item Shop stocks new stuff every day, but you can also get recipes from talking to NPCs or even experimentation. The cooking UI has several layers, but they’re all straightforward.

Dungeon diving — and I’m using that loosely here since the first few zones are set in fields — has several components. There’s the turn-based battle system, which packs in all of your usual RPG trimmings such as special attacks and in-battle item usage. But there are also food drops littering the ground that you’ll want to pick up at the risk of random encounters, and a leveling system, that, in a weird turn, has nothing to do with battle. Eating what you make levels up each character. Battle just earns you battle skills. Progression to new areas seems to be contingent on in-game cooking goals.

The entire experience is split into days and months. A typical day goes a little like this: I run to the item store to stock up on curing potions, and then I travel to the latest dungeon in order to pick up all the free food. When I get out of the zone, I shoot over to the bar’s kitchen and start looking at what I can assemble. After I make the food, I take a gander at which ones will give me the most EXP and then I eat a few to power up my dudes. After that, I select the dishes I want to serve and open the bar.

There’s some nuance to everything. The ingredients that you pick up aren’t always main ingredients; rather, they’re just component parts of a single ingredient. Wheat, for example, has to be used with a blender to create flour. Flour and water make pizza dough, and so on and so forth. Customers also appear to like different things more on different days, so there’s a little more to becoming the next great bar.

I’m so high on this because it’s the best of every world. I’m not spending hours and hours senselessly grinding, and I’m not cooking fake food until my eyes bleed. The mix of action and simulation feels right. The pacing is good.

Also, if I didn’t know this was a PSP port, I wouldn’t have guessed. This game feels and looks good on iPhone. The team has added a lot of touch-centric stuff to the UI, which goes a long way in making it relatively friendly to the platform. The virtual d-pad is a tad too touchy for my tastes, but it’s not an end-of-the-world problem, and more than likely, it’ll get ironed out well before the game is released.

One thing that’ll ruffle some feathers is the IAP. You can buy in-game jewels with real money, and with them, you’ll be able to buy special “rare” or “import” weapons, recipes, or even ingredients. The IAP doesn’t feel necessary, and heck, it’s not even a part of the core experience — it’s a bolted on, iOS exclusive feature that compliments the full PSP offering.

We’ll get much more evaluative in our official review, but I definitely think this is a game you should keep your eye on. Tentatively, it should see a release on February 28th at $.99. The usual base price will be $2.99.

UPDATE: We got some word on the IAP, so we changed some wording around. The complete PSP game is all here without the need for IAPs, according to the developer. Neat!

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JRPGs are a tough sell these days on iOS. Typically ports making their way from other systems, most seem characterized by substandard touch control integration and shoddy English translations. Fantasy Chronicle [$2.99] thankfully only suffers significantly from one of those two issues. While the translation is certainly lacking, the core gameplay and controls make this RPG an enjoyable experience, assuming you’re into a lot of grinding.

Fantasy Chronicle follows the story of Light, a mysterious youth adopted by a small village who begins his training to join Holos Over, the hero guild charged with ridding the world of evil. During his adventure, Light encounters strife, grief, revenge and nearly every other RPG cliché under the sun. While the story isn’t going to win any awards, it does just enough to advance the narrative and keep you playing, which is more than I can say for some of the other games in the genre.

One area that Fantasy Chronicle does a great job with is its battle system depth. Players control a maximum of three main characters at any time, and each of those characters can employ the aid of a guardian beast – monsters that have their own stats and special moves and can share the damage incurred by the character they are attached to. In addition, you can also set various tactics for your guardian beasts which impact the amount of damage they share with their companion.

I also enjoyed the material/crafting system that Fantasy Chronicle employs. Every enemy you defeat has a chance to drop some kind of raw material that you can later use to create or upgrade your weapons and armor. Upgrade your equipment enough and you have an opportunity to convert it into a different item entirely (assuming you find the crafting book for the new item). Soon after the intro, you also meet an NPC that’ll automatically find certain material for you depending on what locations you tell him to search. It’s a neat little addition that lets you supplement your materials to make the crafting experience a little less monotonous.

Control-wise, while I don’t think Fantasy Chronicle does a particularly good job with its touch controls, the virtual D-Pad controls are very responsive. I particularly liked the optional control toggle that lets you quickly switch between touch and D-Pad controls whenever you wish (this is particularly useful because the D-Pad is huge and blocks a lot of screen space). It’s a feature I think more games could use.

Like many other JRPGs on iOS, Fantasy Chronicle suffers from a mismanaged English translation. Casual conversations between characters feel disjointed, and there’s a lot of story (and non-story) related dialogs that are borderline incomprehensible. It’s never a good sign when I get to a story section and I find myself trying to speed through simply because I don’t really care too much. Granted, I’ve seen plenty of games with a more horrid translation than Fantasy Chronicle, but considering its RPG roots I’m always a bit more critical of an element I consider essential.

The biggest issue I think Fantasy Chronicle contends with is eventual tedium. Each region that you explore has a town acting as the central hub with quests, with a few surrounding areas inhabited by baddies. Typically, you’ll enter the town, get a few quests with mundane objectives usually involving kill nearby enemies, and then you return for more quests. Do enough and you’ll unlock a story-based quest that expands on the narrative. Eventually, you’ll get to progress to a new region with the quest hub and you get to do it all over again.

Because of this type of mission structure, Fantasy Chronicle tends to feature a great deal of grinding with not a lot of story reward. You’re going to grind for mission objectives, resources for crafting, and for experience (although the last one not so much). Missions typically take you back to the same areas again, and when you’ve found yourself over leveled for those areas, the experience becomes an exercise in how fast you can push the attack button during battles.

There are undoubtedly some JRPG fans out there that embrace this style of play. Considering that Fantasy Chronicle gets a lot of the underlying gameplay and controls right, I’d actually recommend it to those types of gamers as a title worth checking out. However, if you’re looking for something a bit less formulaic or a game with more emphasis on story quality, Fantasy Chronicle may not be the RPG you’re looking for.

TouchArcade Rating:

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