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When I first heard of Infinity Blade, I instantly thought it was some cookie cutter C-Grade JRPG that would be a game only JRPG fans in denial would enjoy, I mistook it for Xenoblade that was to be released on the Wii, but then would blame me? “Infinity Blade” already sounds as goofy and farfetched as Infinite Undiscovery. To my surprise, Infinite Undis… errr, I mean Infinity Blade was the game Epic Citadel was showing off a while back.
Epic Citadel however was completely different, at a glance one would think something a bit more similar to an Elder Scrolls game, since the demo was in first person view and gave you a fairly open environment for you to explore. Infinity Blade is none of that, it’s a lot more linear, even though it uses some of the environments that were in Epic Citadel, and plays nothing like an Elder Scrolls game. From the get go, you might think I’m fairly disappointed, I thought I would be, I love Elder Scrolls, but Infinity Blade still turned out really good, a very pleasant surprise.
You start the game as a knight off to kill “The God King”, who happens to be the final boss of the game, but you get killed by him quickly. 20 or so years later, you take on the role of that knight’s son, off to seek revenge. You fight your way through God King’s castle to fight him in the end, and through your way you will duel countless knights, monster and swordsmen. Once you reach God King, you either lose to him or kill him (killing him will give you a ridiculous amount of gold and experience points) and start over as the lineal descendant of the last playable knight that died, usually I would pass this as a lazy way to elongate the game, but that game stays fun even after 10 bloodlines.
The way you play the game is played is that you walk a branched path through castle to reach God King’s throne room at the top, on the way you look for treasure, gold and potions to aid you on your quest. All paths to the end are blocked by enemies for you to fight, the fighting sequences are a good blend of Punchout!! and Demon’s Souls. Going all offense will not work as your opponents will block your moves, you will have to dodge and parry to attack them off guard, if the opponent slashed vertically or horizontally, you follow suite by swiping your finger the opposite direction of the opponent’s slash, as you level up opponents will become a lot more tricky with their attacks, sometimes parrying will not work and you will be forced to dodge or block.
When you win a duel, you gain experience points to level you up and your experience with your equipment, you get 2 ability point to use on your character to improve his stats, and an extra ability point for every piece of equipment mastered. However, if you master a weapon or a piece of armor, you will not be able to gain any experience from that piece of equipment, and therefore be forced to use a new one if you want to gain experience from it.
What makes this game fun is that you have loot, either you pick it up from treasure, opponents you beat or simply buying from the ingame store. Each item has special abilities that help you in you quest, and the ChAIR team did a pretty good job updating the amount of loot as they will keep on updating by adding more weapons and armor (some of them being jokes like the Santa Claus helmet that gives you more loot drops and the round Captain America shield with the star in the middle called “The Patriot”) and new opponents to the game to keep it fun even for those who have gone far in the game.
The game however does have a few kinks here and there, I do think the game is better played on an iPhone than an iPad mainly because of the controls, you do need one hand holding the iPad and the other swiping slashes and be able access the super attack, shield block, dodge and casting magic. Touch controls aren’t very precise either way, sometimes it won’t register a slash and some times you will swipe the wrong direction. Besides the controls being an issue, since the same game works on both the iphone and ipad, the game upscales the resolution and makes it easier to spot the compression on the models textures, Epic Citadel was very impressive in the graphics department, but the developers had to take it a step back for the game to work, and it really shows.
Though Epic Citadel gave much different expectations, Infinity Blade is still a triple A title to look for on iOS, I would definitely rebuy it if they port it for Android so I can play it on my phone, or on the PS3 where I think it will benefit from the Sony Move controls.
What We Think: Not exactly the RPG we were expecting, but the game definitely is very good and is worth the price they’re asking for, lots of replay value and due to the nature of the game, this game is great for the mobile platform as you can have a fight for a few minutes then go ahead with whatever you need to do with your daily life.
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