World to Conquer (by Easy 8 Software)

Have to say, I really like the look of this. I've got no time for a new game, but will watch this one and pick it up over the summer if the reviews are good. Hope this one is a good one.

Got it. Will try to post impressions later tonight.

This looks worthy, I might have to take a plunge on this after I get through with Knighturn. Looking forward to impressions.

Just missed the codes for this one, but it looks killer. I'll pick it up if squarezero ends up liking it.

looks really good, hurry up squarezero

I've played about 10 battles so far. It's overall its a fun game. I really like the graphics, animation and controls. Its easy to zoom in and out to see the battlefield.

So far I don't see my characters developing though. Every battle (or set of battles, sometimes 2-3 in a row) you get a set of characters to use. I don't see the characters improving other than maybe more units in the next battle. Thus, I don't see any secondary attacks yet.

I noticed a big problem with the archers line of sight. For some reason my archer don't get the same line of sight the AI archers get. For example, I would move to get my archer in range of the AI archer, then the AI's archer would hit me. The next turn I still can't see the AI archer (for line of sight) so I would move closer to the enemy archer. The next turn the AI archer would hit me again. This would happen over 4 turns, and then my archer would die because the AI archer could shoot around objects in the level.

Yeah, controls work surprisingly well for the small screen.

There's no experience points or leveling up. You get new, more powerful units to work with every few battles. It's not an RPG - it's more like chess with D&D characters. Summoner is my favorite - he can transform trees and rocks into monsters.

The player and cpu controlled archers have the same abilities. Archers can shoot from behind trees, rocks or other units - something the computer will use to its advantage. You can hide behind a tree, using it for cover and shoot at other archers without having to worry about being hit. Or you can stack two archers next to each other for double fire power, hide an archer behind a beefy soldier, etc.

The support page has a pretty good FAQ with description of units and tactics.

One thing that helps a lot is getting a sense when to press the attack. You can usually retreat to get computer opponents to follow you out into the open, then swarm them.

Alright, I feel like I've barely scratched the surface here, but I've played it long enough to get a feel for the game. Before anything else, I should say that the game is not retina- or fast-app-switching- ready, though it does look okay on an iPhone 4 screen and it does save after every turn.

The basic mechanics work very well -- selecting units, moving them around the map, attacking, etc. I love the way the zoom works, taking you close to the selected unit, giving you a full view of the map with a couple of taps. The whole thing moves fast, too, which help to keep the flow going. I also like the way that missions are comprised of several battles in a row; losing units early on can really make the latter part of the mission much more difficult. I can't speak yet to how complex the tactic will get, since so far I've seen only two different kinds of troops (melee and archers).

The biggest problem, though, is that there's little sense of progression in the game. There's a campaign, but the story is barely sketched out and the characters non-existent. The action starts in the middle of a sneak attack (basically a tutorial), which could have worked okay if the game had paused immediately after to give us some background. Your units don't have name (just "soldier" and "archer") and they're not upgradable (something that you find even in something as shallow as Rebirth of Fortune). After four missions I haven't seen much variety in the environments (beyond the location of rocks, trees, and other obstacles). I should also note that as the poster above noted, there is something odd about the archer's line of sight; often you end up no being able to target an enemy that is clearly within your range. I assume that it's a bug, though -- hopefully the developer will clear that up.

As I said earlier, I'm just scratching the surface, and the game is fun enough to keep going with it -- I'm actually curious to see how the other kinds of units work. Perhaps the story will get more interesting. But it's easy to see how these assets and this tactical interface could have been used to make a real SRPG.

Thanks for mentioning the FAQ in the support page. I really think it would be helpful to have that posted in the game as well. Also, are you planning to add more skirmish maps? I noticed there is space available to list more.

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Last edited by Marcus70; 04-19-2011 at 10:56 PM.