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If there’s anything I’ve learned after pouring several days of my life into the latest installment of Com2uS’s action-rpg Inotia franchise, it’s that no amount of Engrish exposure can truly prepare you for that strange moment when a gorgeous brunette clad in diaphanous silks informs a ‘pretty boy’ of an anti-hero that he is squirting blood.

This awkwardness informs a lot of the dialogue in Inotia 4: Assassin of Berkel [$2.99 / Free ]. While relatively free of the grammatical errors that usually plague such games, Inotia 4 has a rather, uh, unique way with words. Here, you’ll find imposing-looking orcs declaring that things are “kinda awkward” and villains that order their lackeys to “allure” helpless souls to a nefarious end. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, mind you. Unless you’re totally adverse to the idea of peculiar phrasing, the accidental humor actually offers a light-hearted touch to what otherwise feels like a stereotypical jaunt.

The story in Inotia 4: Assassin of Berkel is one built out of familiar tropes. For example, the protagonist’s an effeminate-looking but curmudgeonly chap who also happens to be young, gifted at the art of assassination and a member of the Shadow Tribe. His star-crossed love interest? A young woman who bears more than a passing resemblance to Final Fantasy heroines like Rinoa, Garnet and Yuna. Needless to say, this sort of sets the pattern for the rest of the game. Inotia 4 is a little bit of everything you’ve ever encountered in an RPG from the Orient. There are warring factions, magic, subterfuge, hidden pasts, and even an arrogant stranger with an overpowered weapon. If you were looking for something new, this isn’t the KRPG you’re looking for.

While I’m not particularly fond of the virtual d-pad utilized here or its periodic lack of responsiveness, the controls are pretty standard fare. It’s the interface that bugs me to no end. On top of many smaller issues, the deluge of buttons, character portraits, health bars and mana bars can make it literally impossible to see where you’re going. To be fair, it doesn’t happen all that often but when it does happen, you’ll take painful notice.

From an audiovisual perspective, Inotia 4 is neither particularly impressive nor completely humdrum. An odd mixture of Retina quality elements and retro-looking graphics, the game feels a little older than its actual release date. As for the audio, I’m somewhat on the fence. On one hand, the music isn’t too shabby; it’s the kind of stuff you would expect from an RPG. On the other hand, the sound effects left something to be desired for.

So, why play Inotia 4? Why go through strange localization and flighty controls? Why endure the storyline you’ve probably heard a thousand times before? Why did this get a four star as opposed to a plea for you to run away?

Simple. Because it’s actually pretty good.

Like a blind date between mostly compatible people, things can begin on a slightly shaky note. However, once momentum has been built, beautiful things can happen. If you have nothing against grindfests (it IS a Korean RPG, after all) and an obsessive-compulsive need to build the perfect party, Inotia 4 will eventually suck you in and keep you there.

The party system, though far from ground-breaking, is rather commendable. One of the things I liked best about it was the fact that while you can only have two party members (in addition to the protagonist) active at any given time, the game not only allows you to keep a stable of six but also ensures that all of them level up in an appropriate manner as you progress through the game. It’s a small feature but a clever one. Unlike many other RPGs, you can actually elect to mix and match your selection of humanoid minions without having to first devote extensive amounts of time to their personal developments.

Speaking of party members, they will consist of mercenaries summoned from item drops and, from time to time, the odd plot-generated NPC. Most of your time, however, will be spent with the former. Your mercenaries may belong to any of the six different classes available in the game. They also come with as many item slots as the protagonist, their own set of skills and statistics appropriate to the quality of the item that conjured them. While you’re in command of their equipment, you will need to cough up a few crystals if you want to change the rest.

As you can imagine, some of the appeal in the game lies in how you can tailor the composition of your party. Curious as to how pet-wielding classes will do against a stubborn boss? Bring them out and prepare for a crowded rumble. Fancy seeing how well three tanky priests can hold up against the game’s dungeons? Go ahead and test out that theory. Nothing will stop you. The level of micromanagement required is also entirely dependent on you. While you can choose to rely on your A.I settings, you can opt to take control of any of your characters at any given time.

Inotia 4 is also a dream come true for those who just HAVE to have the best gear. By and large, there’s no shortage of equipment to collect. Random beasts will sporadically drop legendary headgear. Fusion machines will occasionally offer the chance to engage in repeatable quests, quests that will grant you access to recipes for absurdly powerful items. You will also find goodies from boss battles, treasure chests and their spoils, side quests and shady merchants marketing what may or may not be the next best thing. Inotia 4 makes it easy to be covetous and is shameless about rewarding those willing to grind their way towards glory.

You know what the best part of all this is? Your party’s appearance will change with every high-priced trinket you acquire.

By the way, I’m impressed with how Com2uS handled one aspect of their IAP system. In Inotia 4, crystals are used for, well, pretty much everything. Have a weapon you really want to make but lack the ingredients for? Pay for its creation with a handful of crystals. Want to resurrect your party instead of restarting from the last saved point? Cough up the crystals. We know you have them in there. While hardly the most unusual approach, Com2uS has made usage of those crystals as enticing as ever. In the grand scheme of things, five crystals is nothing compared to an hour spent scouring the maps for material. You almost find yourself compelled to conform.

In between all of this, crammed between the good and the bad, nestled between the occasional guilty crystal expenditure, that’s where the magic happens. Inotia 4 will have you mashing buttons, switching hot keys, pondering talent points and beating on artillery turtles without so much as a second thought. It will have you gathering ingredients for a powerful new weapon even as you effortlessly transform your glass cannon of a priest into a shield-wielding bastion of power. It will keep you trucking towards the next level, determined to see how your new weapon will do against the latest dungeon or how well your latest collection of party members will hold up. Inotia 4 isn’t the most original title out there but it certainly knows which buttons to press.

TouchArcade Rating:

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Aby Escape [ Free ] is the newest freemium title from BulkyPix and Pixel Ratio, and a 3D spin on the iphone’s popular runner genre. Instead of dashing full speed to the left or right sidescroller style, the game plants the camera just behind Aby’s back and leaves it to you to guide the terrified raccoon down paths cluttered with rocks, cars, animal herds, beer-bellied hicks who lie in wait until you approach, and other obstacles.

To keep your unstoppable force from running smack-dab into immovable objects, you tilt your phone to weave side to side, swipe your thumb up the screen to jump, and swipe downwards to drop to your knees and pull off a Catwoman-in-Arkham-City slide, minus revealing cleavage. (Yeah, I know. Can’t have it all, though.) The core gameplay idea is reminiscent of Temple Run [ Free ], but Aby Escape does a nice job at iterating on the formula with some new ideas and some variety.

The game features two game modes: Story, and Unlimited. In Unlimited, your goal is to stay alive for as long as possible. You accomplish that feat by weaving in and out of danger to pick up shoes that keep your perpetually draining energy meter topped off. Aby gradually picks up speed the longer you survive, making extended play an exercise requiring absolute focus and twitch reflexes. Besides shoes, you can grab coins with which to purchase power-ups, characters, new Unlimited levels, and other unlockables.

And that’s where the trouble begins. The first time you load up Aby Escape, only one Unlimited level, Greystone Park, is available. Two other Unlimited stages are available from the in-game store, but at a cost of more than 3000 coins each. Want to try Story mode? That’ll run you 7500. You can unlock these modes in one of two ways: grind Greystone Park and pinch your pennies for hours on end, or shell out real money for IAP coin bundles.

The unbalanced economy pervades in other ways. Besides new stages, the shop also sells items like speed boosts that blast you forward and render you impervious to harm. The problem is, every item carries an exorbitant price tag. Each item can be upgraded up to five times. The first upgrade for each item costs 400, the next 1200, then 3000, and so on. Handy, but a major cut into your savings when you’re stuck with only one level to play. Playable characters and different types of feet like hairy Hobbit toes go for between 2000 to more than 4000, but don’t alter the game in any way; they’re purely for aesthetics. I hate to harp on this point, but with only one level to play, I simply considered all other purchases a waste until I’d invested in at least one change of scenery to spice up my time with the game.

Unlimited levels feature challenges that reward you with coins, but some of them just don’t make “cents.” Buy two upgrades at 400 coins apiece, get 50 coins back for completing the challenge. Uh, no thanks. I bought an IAP item that gives me two coins for every one I picked up, but that only increased my income from a drip-drop to a steady trickle. Eventually I shelled out five bucks for 20,000 coins—not because I wanted to, but because I felt like I had to. It was either that or more grinding. I unlocked the last two Unlimited levels before diving into Story, a sprawl of levels spread across Greystone Park and two new areas, the same ones you’ll play in Unlimited if/when you fork over the coins.

Story tasks you with racking up a high score by staying alive as long as possible and collecting every pair of shoes on each stage. Running into obstacles knocks points off your score and sets you back at a checkpoint. Most checkpoints set you so far back that you’ll have forgotten earlier terrain in your effort to remember what to do in the area that tripped you up, which amounts to a lot of frustrating memorization and trial and error.

Technical issues also abound. The frame rate chugs sporadically, spelling certain death in trap-heavy regions. Also, since you spend the game running forward into the distance, terrain you pass slides backwards as you run along but some of it slides too slowly, clogging the screen and blocking your view of the next hurdles. More seriously, though, was a store calculation error—I had more than the 400 coins I needed for an upgrade, but the transaction somehow took my wallet down to -97, which shouldn’t even be allowed to happen—and a crash bug that dumped me back to the home screen every time I tried to load an Unlimited level.

With so many strikes against it, what could possibly convince you to help Aby Escape? Because I’ll be darned if it isn’t fun. Grinding grew monotonous only because, really, who wants to look at the same environment over and over in any game? Actually <em>playing</em> the game is quite enjoyable. There’s a feeling of satisfaction and skill in any runner game that comes from guiding your scurrying lemming over, under, and around obstacles, marveling at your response time, dexterity, and lasting for as long as possible before inevitably slamming into something that reduces your bones to a fine powder.

Collecting coins, shoes, and power-ups requires near dead-on collision to register, but aside from the somewhat sluggish tilt-controlled weaving that doesn’t always keep up with the game’s gradually accelerating pace, the controls usually responded sharply enough that I felt encouraged to veer into danger and risk another visit to the Retry screen if it meant snatching an out-of-the-way coin placed in front of a trap. The game also plays fair by giving you a chance to shoulder past obstacles like cars and rocks unless you strike them dead on, which made me even more willing to dash in front of dangerous objects and grab goodies.

Three strong redeeming qualities ultimately saved Aby Escape from outright deletion. It’s fun, it’s deep (you’ve still got all the challenges and your personal records to break even after you’ve opened everything up), and it’s free. If this were a paid game, I’d knock a star off the grade, and fairly. The game really should offer activities from the get go or at least mark down the fee for additional content, but what is there provides loads of entertainment.

TouchArcade Rating:

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How many games does it take before you can call a developer a sure bet? Radiangames has been bringing its games to iOS like clockwork lately, and we’ve been impressed. Super Crossfire HD [ $2.99 ] and Fireball SE [ $1.99 ] are both excellent games that iterate on arcade classics, and the newest entry, Ballistic SE [ $1.99 ], also returns to a popular well: the twin-stick shooter. Like its predecessors, though, it’s a thoughtful take on the semi-stale genre. It makes up for familiarity with a heck of a lot of fun.

Ballistic SE has two big things going for it. It has a system of enhancements that let you customize your game every time you play (not unlike the Jetpack Joyride update that just landed), and it has ballistic mode, which is pretty much bullet time. Every time you fill up your ballistic meter, a button is primed. Everything slows down when you hit it: your ship, enemy orbs, even the music. As panic buttons go, it’s impressive and stylish.

The game also has a lot of amber. The color is everywhere: menus, interface elements, your ship, explosions, you name it. At the risk of dating myself, I used to play games on a monitor that looked like that; I don’t miss it. But there’s a method to this monochromatic madness. The amber is safe, your eyes drift over it. Every other color stands out, and those colors universally identify your enemies.

The enemy color coding is important enough that colorblind players might be at a disadvantage. The enemies are just orbs—some come in different sizes, but they all have the same general shape. But if you know what a given color does, you know whether an enemy is flying toward you or moving at random, whether it will dissolve before your guns or stand up to all fire. A firm grasp of the enemy colors is a good shortcut to survival.

Whether you’re playing Waves or Challenges, you’ve gotta survive. Waves pits you against ever-increasing waves of enemies, grinding you down over time. Challenges are a more vicious sort of play, with your choice of five pre-set combos of enemy types designed to take you out in short order. The one thing that can help stave off the inevitable? Your selection of enhancements.

Enhancements pretty much make the game. That’s not to say it isn’t good otherwise, but throw in enhancements and you essentially have a leveling mechanic that opens up a huge variety of play styles. You can speed up your ship, drop bombs in your wake, alter your shots, or speed up your ballistic meter. You can even pump points into your score multiplier if your confident that you don’t need any other boost more. It’s a fantastic little system.

Both modes give you access to enhancements, but they differ in how they present them. When playing a challenge you can pick ten enhancements right off the bat, and you’ll live or die by your choices from then on. In Waves mode you’re given a single enhancement point each time you hit a new level milestone. You power up over time based on your picks.

In practice, Ballistic SE plays out pretty simply. You have two sticks (with customizable positioning). One aims your guns, the other aims your ship. Standard twin-stick stuff. Aside from your ship there are three things on the field: enemies, of course, that come at you in waves, immovable bombs that destroy enemies when you hit them, and starbursts that increase your score multiplier. Deciding when it’s best to fly through the bombs is almost as important as learning to avoid and shoot down the enemy orbs. Knowing when to trigger your ballistic meter is another vital skill for long-term survival.

Long-term survival is, in fact, the name of the game. You get extra lives for hitting score milestones, so playing better means living longer and longer. The waves get ridiculous pretty quickly, but there’s salvation to be had with checkpoints that unlock after ever-increasing numbers of waves. You can restart from these checkpoints, but there’s a catch: the further in you start, the more your score will suffer. If you want to remain competitive on the Game Center leaderboards, you’ve gotta start from scratch.

None of these things are revolutionary; Ballistic SE doesn’t rewrite the twin stick shooter or bring us a brand new perspective on the genre. Instead, it’s an incredibly solid, well-balanced game that makes up in entertainment for what it skips in flash. Radiangames is carving out quite the niche on the App Store, and Ballistic SE does it proud.

TouchArcade Rating:

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Ladies and Gentlemen, start your engines. As Nimblebit’s Pocket Planes continues to barrel through its beta period, we’ve had a chance to try out one of its new features. It’s been added since our GDC preview and we’re pretty sure you’re going to like it.

You know how Tiny Tower [Free] and Pocket Frogs [Free] have missions you can complete—stock this much of certain items, or breed certain colors and patterns of frogs? Pocket Planes is going to have missions, too, but they’re competitive. For these ones, you’re going to need a little help from your friends. Or rather, your flight crew.

A new Flight Crew challenge will be posted every so often—maybe twice a week. The challenges look to be pretty simple: deliver as many jobs (pieces of cargo and passengers) to a certain city somewhere in the world. You can’t just take any old thing, though. Everything in the game has a destination, and the destination needs to match the city for this to work.

Your Flight Crew can have as many or as few people as you can muster, but the more the better: the crews who manage to bring in the most jobs will win some very cool in-game prizes. Like, say, the bad boy below. Look familiar? Nimblebit is hard at work making up some very cool secret planes as we speak—here’s hoping for a good ol’ fashioned airship. And on top of the cosmetics, it sounds like there will be a Bux reward to boot.

Now Pocket Planes is still a work in progress, so none of this is set in stone. But currently, the only thing you need to join a Flight Crew is a Game Center account (which you don’t need to share with your crewmates) and a common Flight Crew name. If I were the sort of person who wanted to get a leg up on the competition, I might use that information to hit the forums and start drumming up a good team of people. While I was at it, I might try to recruit a few of the folks who have put 2323 pages of forum posts into trading frogs in Pocket Frogs. Those dudes seem like they might have the dedication for the job.

The rest of the game is coming along nicely, from what we’ve seen, and it looks like Zynga hasn’t caught on to it so far (fingers crossed!). Nimblebit isn’t ready to commit to a release window yet, but it can’t be too far over the horizon at this point. So stick around—we’ll have much more to show you as Pocket Planes gets ready to touch down.

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Near the end of one of the “slowest” weeks we’ve had in recent memory, we casted a pod for mass earhole consumption. If you’re not a fan of our off-topic weeks you might want to avoid this one. But, do note you’ll be missing out on a lot of fun discussion: at the top, we dive into the recently released Xbox Live Arcade indie title Fez and ponder what an iPad port would look like, spit a little bit of game about next-generation consoles, and orally review hot new games like Burger Cat. In our second segment, we discuss anything and everything, but eventually get to your user questions.

It was a weird week, so we’ve got a weird show for you. If you’d like to listen, please do so via those handy-dandy links below. Additionally, you could subscribe to us on Zune or iTunes to get our latest episodes the second they hit the Internet.

iTunes Link: The TouchArcade Show
Zune Marketplace: TouchArcade.com Podcasts
RSS Feed: The TouchArcade Show
Direct Link: TouchArcadeShow-048.mp3, 34.4MB

Here are your show notes:

GAMES

• Trees of Life [$.99]
• MacGuffin’s Curse [$1.99 / Lite]
• Wawa Land [$.99]

JARED’S KITTY KORNER

• Burger Cat [$.99]

FRONT PAGE

• A ‘Battlefield 3‘ Companion App Hits
• Musical Chairs: ‘S&S‘ Hits Steam, Steam title Planned for iOS

Cutlass Cove, $0.99 / Lite – Cutlass Cove by independent developer Cheeky Mammoth is an action-packed pirate game that combines nautical combat with the strategic use of powerful spells and munitions. In Cutlass Cove you control a pirate ship, firing cannons at enemies and using voodoo spells to complete 60 challenging objectives and acquire 20 unique ranks.

Cutlass Cove is an intense pirate skirmish on the high seas where you summon whirlpools, unleash tornado storms, ignite brandy slicks, fire cannonballs imbued with destructive molten force, captain a ghost ship and feed your enemies to the sharks.

Cutlass Cove is a universal app that is available now in the App Store for $0.99.

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I’ll be the first to admit, when the discussion first started on giving Zach Gage’s SpellTower [ $0.99 ] five stars in our review last year, I distinctly remember raising an eyebrow and saying, “Guys, it’s a word game.” Truth be told, until then I hadn’t spent much time with SpellTower, but once I did… I was hooked. So hooked that this simple looking word game wound up as an honorable mention for our game of the year.

Nissa explains what the game is all about:

SpellTower isn’t bogged down with complicated rules or conditional abilities. The tutorial is only a handful of screens expressing a handful of simple rules. You can make a word as long as it’s in the game’s dictionary and it’s at least three letters long. Words that are five letters or longer clear letters all around them. You can’t make the same word twice, and if a letter has a number on it, it needs to be used in a word of at least that length. Finally, uncommon letters like Z, J, Q and X clear their rows if they’re used in a word.

Those rules will carry you through SpellTower’s four game modes, which change up how the board is presented. Tower mode gives you 150 letters to earn the best score you can. Puzzle mode adds a row to the board each time you make a word, and if any column hits the top your game will end. Extreme Puzzle mode follows the same rules, but requires longer words faster and more often. Rush mode adds new rows over time, putting you on the clock.

A fifth game mode was added in a recent update, introducing local multiplayer. It shouldn’t be much of a surprise, but, spoilers, it’s even more fun than just playing SpellTower by your lonesome. This update has also revitalized my love for this game, and I’ve spent the past week absolutely engrossed in SpellTower.

Since the update landed, SpellTower has been rocketing up the iPad charts, and to attempt to push the game over the edge and take on Angry Birds and Draw Something, its price is being slashed to 99¢. If you’re even vaguely interested in word games, you need to pick up SpellTower. Heck, if your mom has an iPhone, tell her to get SpellTower, I bet she’d love it, and maybe love you a little more in the process for recommending an awesome video game.

Tell her TouchArcade sent you.

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Fans of 2D Minecraft-ing on iOS have had it pretty good with the excellent Junk Jack [$2.99/Lite], but the developers at Bytebin Studios want to know what would happen if you take a similar Terraria/Minecraft sandbox idea, placed it in a steampunk setting, and let everyone connect to one giant persistent world together online MMO style. The result is Deepworld, and you can get a pretty good idea of what it’s like in this new gameplay trailer.

Deepworld is in an alpha state but is close to entering beta, and as the game stands right now it contains procedurally generated worlds, a robust crafting system, a day/night cycle and weather effects, and a limited number of enemies. It will also be coming out for Mac, and since the game world is stored in the cloud, there will be cross-platform play between the iOS and Mac versions.

Longer-term goals for Deepworld are a dynamic ecosystem that can be dilapidated and brought back to health, a steam-based power source for creating vehicles and machines, and social game types like Capture the Flag and Freeze Tag. While the idea of something like Deepworld is certainly intriguing, it’s also incredibly ambitious for an iOS title. I’ll feel much better once the initial product gets released and I can actually try it out, and much like Junk Jack or Minecraft itself, Deepworld will likely evolve over time.

It sounds like Deepworld is set to initially launch pretty soon, and we’ll keep an eye out for a specific release date. Until then you can swing by our forums to talk about the game.

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It’s not easy to make a unique platformer. You either have to be trusty with your design skills and make a game look out of this world and startlingly unique, or you have to have some sort of wizard when it comes to your level design skills. Luckily, the people behind Gunman Clive [$1.99] have a little of both, and it makes for one of the best platformers I’ve played for years, on iOS or any other platformer.

Gunman Clive comes out of the gate shooting with an incredible look, which has a hand-drawn feel and makes you feel as if you are playing a game on the page of a tea-stained sketchbook. As Gunman Clive, you play the rough-and-tough Western hero on a mission to save the mayor’s daughter from wild bandits. Not that any of that matters, because as soon as you get an eyeful of this game you’ll drool a bit and forget any of the storyline in favor of sucking up the pretty graphics with your face.

Controls are pretty simple in Gunman Clive — a directional pad on your bottom left and a shoot and jump button set on your right. I wasn’t nuts about the floaty directional pad at first — it felt like my thumb was spending too much time in the middle of the screen — but eventually I adjusted. It’s handy to know you can jump into the menu and change the size of the d-pad or choose to make it static. For me, these small changes made the game much easier to play.

If you have ever played a classic platformer from the NES era, especially Mega Man, you will feel the echoes of them in this game. I giggled the first time I got a weapon drop too — it was a spread gun. If you people are trying to make me relive all those fine old days spent perfecting my Contra runs, it’s working.

You can also expect excellent level design here, which goes far beyond the basic jumps of most iOS games these days. Physics also come into play, but in a unique way that leaves most of those physics-based titles out there in the dust. And later in the game, you get to ride an actual rocket. Quite the contrast to the good old “Oh, an ice stage… a fire stage … a forest stage” boredom that so many of us are sick of. You won’t be bored with these levels as Gunman Clive keeps it fresh throughout.

One thing you might find, however, is that you may experience some frustration while playing Gunman Clive. That is because it actually is quite challenging. The level bosses in particular will take you some time to get used to. They have that bombastic feel that you don’t get often enough as well — I feel like I’ve played against too many end level bosses these days that don’t feel dynamic at all.

These bosses are hulking mammoths ten times your size, which I personally like. As far as challenge goes, though, I found myself wishing that the checkpoints would come a bit sooner after playing through several particularly difficult parts over and over. Or perhaps, an easy mode? Maybe I’m just out of shape from my NES days.

If you love platformers, you have to pick this beauty up. It really is a standout in all categories. The only possible turn off I can see is the difficulty, but maybe that’s just a fine excuse to bone up on your skills. Get that itchy trigger finger ready and come out of the gate with guns blazing, and you should do just fine.

TouchArcade Rating:

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Linux Tycoon, in case you’ve never heard of it, bills itself as “the world’s premiere Linux Distribution Building Simulation Game.” It’s got similar gameplay to the many other Tycoon-style games out there, with one gloriously nerdy twist. In Linux Tycoon, you’re not building railroads, managing hospitals, or anything like that, you’re trying to build the world’s greatest Linux distro.

You’ll analyze and select the software packages included in your distro, fix bugs, and manage both your volunteers and paid staff while trying to keep the file size of your distro reasonable… And much more. There’s even an online component, which will turn Linux Tycoon into the world’s first MMOLDBSG, or, for those of you playing along at home, that’s a “Massively Multiplayer Online Linux Distro Building Simulation Game.”

If all goes as planned, Linux Tycoon will be submitted to the App Store for approval sometime next week, and released as soon as Apple gives the thumbs up. Pricing is yet to be announced, but it sounds like it’ll be in line with what you’d expect.

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If there’s one thing that can be said about Square Enix, it’s that they’re excellent at the whole production values thing. Chaos Rings II [$17.99/HD] is absolutely stunning. From the gorgeous musical score to the voice acting to the vibrant landscapes, there is a lot to savor in Square Enix’s latest turn-based RPG. However, that’s not really surprising. We are talking about Square Enix, after all. How often have they published a new game that does not make you whistle gently under your breath? The real question is, ‘Is Chaos Rings II more than a pretty face?’

The plot here works something like this: an apocalyptic force is threatening Earth with impending doom and there is only one person in the universe capable of stopping it. Can you guess who that is? Yup, that’s you. Sort of. In Chaos Rings II, you’ll play as Darwin, a rather effeminate-looking chap that had been unwittingly pushed into the role of the Nominator. As the Nominator, his job is to sacrifice the Pillars (a bunch of people that were forcibly drafted for the dubious honor), harvest their spiritual energies, complete something called the Rite of Resealing and seal away the Destroyer in order to save the world.

Here’s where it gets problematic for poor Darwin. To begin with, he wasn’t supposed to be the Nominator. Due to a freak turn of circumstances, he acquired the position after he unwittingly killed the original candidate. To make matters worst, he sort of murdered the poor bastard in front of the Pillars. Under normal circumstances, this probably wouldn’t have gone over so badly. After all, one predestined murderer is the same as the other, right? Obviously, that wasn’t the case here. You see, the Pillars in the Rite of Resealing are always composed of those who have some form of attachment to the Nominator. As you can imagine, this makes things a little bit awkward. Not only do you have to murder innocent people, you’ll have to murder some innocent folk that had ties to the dude you unintentionally axed.

(In spite of the religious undertones to the game, the eventual evolution of the plot will probably grab a smirk from any atheists in the audience.)

Intriguing as this all sounds, however, there’s a slight problem. While the Japanese voice acting is rather superb (my best friend, who is Japanese, assured me that the voice acting is also supported by decent lines), the localization is not. Technically speaking, there’s nothing wrong with it. There’s no rampant Engrish, no glaring grammatical errors, no spelling mistakes that may evoke a heartfelt palm to the face. Nonetheless, that doesn’t change the fact the English text feels … lackluster. The dialogue’s also anachronistic in places. Words like “gotta” and “c’mon” pop up from time to time to rattle your sense of immersion. As such, I can’t help but feel as though the full potential of the plot was never realized. Something had to have been lost in the translation. Still, it could have been much, much worse.

Gameplay-wise, those who have any experience with the original game or, JRPGs in general, will probably find themselves in familiar waters. For the most part, the game operates in a fairly linear fashion. You’ll be given a task and told to advance to a certain location. You must then make your way through an assortment of random encounters before achieving your goal. From there, you’ll have to go back to the central hub and begin the process anew. There isn’t much else to do. You get a certain amount of freedom in determining the sequencing of events but that’s pretty much it. There is no open world exploration. There are no mini games to engage in. What saves Chaos Rings II from being completely linear are the side quests that you eventually acquire from the corpulent, cat-like Piu Piu (he’s the only merchant available to you and your party) and and his scantily-clad cutouts.

A lot of your time will be spent moving through the exquisitely presented remnants of your world. Along the way, you’ll stumble across equipment, items and, of course, random encounters. You’ll also get to move through ’shortcuts’ in the world. Once you dive through a portal, you’ll find yourself in this odd little realm that would probably not look amiss in a cyberpunk setting somewhere. Here, you’ll also be called upon to partake in some incredibly light puzzle-solving. Each of the accompanying characters have a special ability that will allow the party to access a part of the world that cannot otherwise be reached. For example, Li Hua is capable of punching through barriers while Connor can shoot at distant targets. Needless to say, once you’ve sacrificed somebody (yup, you’re going to have to kill those people), you’ll lose permanent access to those unique skills.

While it doesn’t deviate too far from the standard formula (you’ll be able to attack, cast magic, defend yourself, occasionally escape from combat and utilize items amongst other things), combat in Chaos Rings II is actually rather entertaining. There are plenty of variables to juggle and even more to worry about. To begin with, you’re going to spend a lot of time deciding if you would rather have your characters acting separately or together. If you choose the ‘Pair’ option, you’ll have access to stronger attacks but will also open your party members up to damage that they would have not taken otherwise. Acting ’solo’, on the other hand, will provide you with more control but less of a punch.

It gets even more complex than that, of course. Technically speaking, combat in Chaos Rings II is turn-based but the reality is that things are also highly dependent on speed. This can be a serious problem if your opponent is armed with some truly devastating moves. If they have the opportunity to assault you before you can defend yourself, you can expect to see the ‘Game Over’ screen faster than you can enunciate your favorite obscenity. Additionally, there’s also a layer of ‘rock, paper, scissors’ that you will have to factor in. Depending on what forces are currently in play on the battle field, attacks and defenses may increase or decrease accordingly.

On top of that, there is also the Break Gauge and the Charge Gauge. The former was inherited from the original game. It’s a pretty nifty mechanic that monitors the flow of the battle. When it is marked even, neither parties will receive bonuses. However, when it sways in favor of you or your opponent, the Break Gauge will cause the beneficiaries to increase in potency. As for the Charge Gauge, it functions something like the Limit Break mechanic in the Final Fantasy games. Once it has filled up to a certain extent, you’ll gain access to your ‘Awake’ and ‘Advent’ powers. The latter will allow you to summon a massive being known as, well, an Advent that is associated with the Human Sophia (that thing you get after you’ve defeated the creature born from a dead Pillar) you currently have equipped.

Speaking of Sophias, those form another interesting component in the game. While Pillars are the only ones capable of bestowing the command of a monstrous critter upon you, you can also acquire Sophias from the game’s menagerie of enemies. Each ‘Monster’ Sophia will grant your characters certain atributes and skills. Once you’ve unlocked the right recipes, you’ll be able to acquire even more abilities by combining Sophias in a certain way, something that adds considerable depth to your character customization.

On a more shallow note, I’m going to take a moment to once again remark on the fact that Chaos Rings II looks pretty darn sweet. It is, by far, the prettiest game in the franchise yet. Compared to its predecessors, the resolution in Chaos Rings II is so much higher, the backgrounds more lavishly detailed. Even the characters themselves look more refined. That said, I’m really mostly in love with the little things in the game, things like cherry blossom petals suspended in the air and waterfalls trapped mid-motion.

As for the music, I’ve nothing but good things to say about it. I would buy the soundtrack if the Malaysian App Store would let me do so but I can’t so I’ll settle for assuring you that it’s something that would deserve a spot on most playlists unless, of course, you have an aversion towards soaring vocals and epic-sounding melodies.

In many ways, Chaos Rings II is the quintessential JRPG. You will spend a lot of time grinding. You will be gently but firmly led along the story’s path to its inevitable end. You will see all of the familiar JRPG tropes. However, that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but your decision in regards to whether or not you actually want to purchase the game is going to be dependent on this. For all of its flaws, Chaos Rings II has done more than ample justice to the formula. It’s refined, it’s meaty, and it’s definitely worth the high price of entry.

TouchArcade Rating:

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