Graphics are terrible. UI is unwieldy. Movement is marred by UI obstruction and slow responsiveness. Being free has nothing to do with it, since their obvious business model is to entice players to use IAP. But I don't see an IAP to fix the game.
K... just re-downloaded Ash... I'll try and get into it tonight... Thanx for pushing me back to the game, I think I played a whole 30 minutes, but then ended up deleting it to make some room for other games. =oP Had totally forgotten about it until now... funny... I don't usually forget about $5 games... =oP
Well, I'll give up trying to defend the game since I seem to be the only one around here that actually has enjoyed it from what I've played. Download at your own risk!
Deleted After playing Dawn of Magic for about an hour, I really tried to enjoy it, but it just doesn't have enough appeal to get me going. Maybe I will try again after an update or two. I tried Ash again and damn...How come the start of the game is so damn hard? I have to go to the inn to recover full HP after every battle! The potions cost a lot of gold too...am I doing something wrong?
If you find it too hard, go to the menu, and check the easier enemies setting. But yes, the beginning has been found to be a bit difficult by quite a few people in the main thread.
Yeah, I do need to re-download Ash and give it another shot. I got it when it first came out and was almost still in a beta stage so I didn't play it very long. I know it's been updated since then so I seriously should give it another shot. ...and I seriously need a bigger iPod Touch to hold all these games!
Played a little more last night and really do think there's a lot to like about the game - graphics, battle system. But started to get to the point where it felt like it was probably going to have to be a major grindfest to get very far. The gold given in battles is not enough to really get enough items, gems, etc. to advance without more grinding or IAP. As mentioned before, I don't mind an IAP or two, but the balance really goes off after you get your second party member. Battles after that consist of three enemies who have a lot more HP and do a lot more damage. You go through MP and potions quickly if you want to win. Decided to go back to Ash myself and am enjoying the writing. This may sound trivial, but I like the battlefield style turned based system ala FF more than the flat screen approach. Maybe it just feels more like a battle when you see your characters wacking the others and throwing spells. Tapping an enemy on a screen just doesn't give that same feeling. Only other concern I had was that it's difficult at first, as previously mentioned, but too easy if you put the EZ button on. Wish there was somewhere in between. I certainly agree that Ash is a better game all around as far as the witty dialogue and writing in general is concerned.
Agreed, was very put off at first due to the battle system. Got used to it, but the traditional system is definitely superior.
I liked it as well (particularly don't understand anyone complaining about the graphics, I think they're great). The UI/Gem and movement systems take a bit of getting used to, but the combat is fun and overall, it's enjoyable. However, I'm not sure how far into it you are, but the difficulty seemed to spike rather quickly and wouldn't mind getting an IAP to help out, but feel like it's going to be a constant struggle with grinding to get further.
Ash is the #1 JRPG on the App Store, no doubt about it. I look for JRPGs to beat that standard. FF3 isn't as good IMO. Gonna give this and Alphadia a try. I get bored of the Korean top-down perspective ones.
I booted up Ash last night, and saw again why I didn't give it a chance the first time through... The combat system is a little weird... I'm gonna try and force myself to get use to it though, because the story seems to be extremely good.
Game Impressions Got to level 17, beat the first Boss, then deleted. As far as I can tell there are no random drops. Some equipment is found in treasure chests. The stores have a"lvl 17 sword" and a "lvl 20" sword, so you're stuck buying equipment at predetermined levels. You'll grind as much for exp as you will for gold to buy equipment. And you can't grind weak enemies for gold, beating low level mobs net you 1gold. You'll have to grind equal level mobs. Equiping gear does not change your appearance. For a game called Dawn of Magic, you'll use very little of it as your mana pool is incredibly shallow compared to the cost of using your gem abilities. You'll mostly rely on basic attacks and AP special attacks. Your AP bar refills during a fight (max 100 AP) although very slowly compared, again, to the cost of using AP abilities. Before you say "but you only hit 17!" I'm also using level 1 gems, I can see the mana costs of higher level gems in the store. During the 17 level grind I fought a whopping 6 different mob types. Spider, wolf, bandit, ghost, worm, stone giant. Yawn. Each character is basically stuck in a predefined class. There's an illusion of choice as anyone can equip any gem. But your "cleric" has a big mana pool and hits like a wet rag while the main character can one shot mobs, wears heavy armor, and has a much smaller mana pool. Guess who's gonna heal? It's free, so try it out for yourself. I'm going back to SoE.
Surprised you made it to level 17. Also was surprised at the generally positive front page review by TA. I liked just about every aspect of the game except the IAP / grind system. Despite the developer's claims that testers were able to complete the game without IAP, it just didn't seem reasonable to me. After just the first character addition, I was getting hammered in the battles. Prior to that I was easily winning the battles. But to go back and grind to get maybe 9-16 gold pieces, it would have taken forever to get the kind of money need to really beef up your characters. I know most people in this thread didn't even get that far before deleting it just because they weren't enjoying the game. But did anyone else get far enough where they also were hitting a wall? An IAP or two is fine with me, but I feared it wouldn't end there with this. Wish this had just gone the paid route and had been better balanced. I've been playing Alphadia and enjoying it (although so far it has been a little too easy battle wise). Thought I might give this another go at some point if maybe I was missing something.
Game Impressions Personally, I find the game quite enjoyable. It does have its flaws though: 1)Graphics aren't that good 2)Difficulty spikes right after the 2nd character is added, but the game gets easier again after you finish the first boss. 3)Killing bosses requires you to use alot of potions (they are really hard and can take more than 40 - or even more- turns). 4) If you want to play for free, you will always have to search the whole map for treasure chests and grind a bit (but not a crazy amount) 5)Ap regenerates much too slow and hp&mp only regenerate when using potions, being healed by the team healers in town or by wearing special equipement. 6)when you get a new characer, you have to grins till it is close to the lvl of your main character or they are completely useless. It has good parts too though: 1) It's free 2)With a bit of grind, you can play without having to use IAP ( my main character is lvl.30+, so i have tested enough to conclude this i think) 3)You can choose which character has which skills. 4)4 characters I can't really judge the story yet, since i haven't finished the game yet. I guess i'm in the middle of the game though, and so far the story isn't too bad, but don't expect a thrilling storyline.
Thanks for the impressions. When I finish with Alphadia (which will probably be a while at my speed), maybe I'll give this another shot. It just seemed like a rather large difficulty spike after the 2nd character and maybe I just needed to find some more chests instead of relying on the paltry amounts of gold I was getting from the battles.
I have to admit that after you get the 2nd charcter , there is indeed a difficulty spike, with the boss being relly ,really strong. But as i have posted before,this counts for all the bosses that i have encountered so far. After the first boss, the amounts of gold you earn steadily increase, but you will have to grind a bit (and get all the boxes since some give you like 500-700 gold and valuable equipement,e.g. You can find a sword for the main character in the first temple) Hope this helped
Later on there is equipment that restores mana after each round, and you can pretty much go for broke and fire unlimited spells. However I agree on the AP abilities - you only ever have 100 points, they reload really slowly - and the higher level AP abilities are really costly. As such, the spellcaster seems to really outdo the fighter later in the game.
The hardest part is definitely around level 15-25, just after you get your second team member. Once you get HP/MP restore gears, the game is a walk in the park. By end game your tanky starter guy becomes horribly useless compared to the spellcasters, only because he has no MP restore. The combat is lacking depth though. Enemies do only one of few things: a) regular single target attack b) single target attack with status c) attack the party d) attack the party with status e) Heal. No buffs. No debuffs. The bosses all have very high HP, but that only makes the fights long rather than challenging. Every area has 3 types of enemies only, so battles become repetitive quite fast. There are 4 elements in the game, but they all do the same damage for me all the time. There are several side quests, but they are all too time-consuming and not worth the reward. I only did the challenger ones. I said plenty of bad things about it. But overall I think the game is decent for free (or less than 2.99).
