Score: 9
"Enough about the turns already!"
date: April 10, 2009
I love this game: it's got neat graphics, a good simple exploration system, battles, classes... all good. My only real complaints are A: characters don't share gold, and there's no way to transfer gold between characters so far as I can tell, which makes saving up cash a little difficult, and B: a lot of the out of battle mechanics involve dragging objects with the mouse and (at least on my computer) it usually takes two or three tries to get a hold of them.
But the big reason that I'm writing this is to defend the turn system. YES, seriously. I actually LIKE the turns.
So first off, I should say that I am a cheap bastard. I will never pay for "tokens" or extra turns in this game. So I'm not defending this in terms of its financial genius, although it is at least less sleazy than, say, MapleStory (the "free" RPG where anything worth having costs real world cash.)
You may have noticed that this is described as a "casual" RPG; the turns kind of enforce that by making sure that you can play for a maximum of maybe a little over 90 minutes in a day (if you save it up for a couple days.) Which I'm sure is frustrating for people who want to sit and play for six hours, and I can sympathize. I've never been a full-blown WoW junky, but I've come close. But speaking as a college student with homework and projects and all kinds of things, I find it refreshing to have a fun game that won't let you play long enough to consume your day. I mean, I can't count the number of times I've set out to play a game for a couple of hours then get to work, and wound up finally quitting the game and collapsing into bed at 4:30 am. I'm grateful that I can't do that with this game.
So maybe this is more of a side-effect of the idea of the turns, but it's a side effect that I find extremely beneficial. I love this game. Thanks, edgebee!