Game Reviews

Ark of the Ages

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Ark of the Ages

Thanks to the likes of Secret of Mana and Chaos Rings, we know that there's a healthy market for truly hardcore RPGs on mobile devices.

Ark of the Ages is another entry from the Far East that attempts to fuse old skool Japanese game design with a micro-transaction model more akin to freemium than premium. The combination falls predictably flat.

Ark of the Ages revolves around a tower in the small village of Emile. Packed with monsters and loot, this structure provides a tempting challenge for your knightly character. You move around its multiple floors using a twin-stick configuration, avoiding booby traps, opening treasure chests, and engaging in combat with monsters.

Flash of the blade

During the third-person exploration phase of the game, enemies are represented as glowing orbs of light that you can avoid if necessary, but once they touch your warrior the combat phase is triggered.

Fighting occurs in real time and from a first-person perspective. You can deal damage by swiping your finger over your foe, but this depletes your 'action' gauge, which takes a short amount of time to recharge. Holding two fingers on the screen activates your shield, which will protect you from incoming blows but must be timed to perfection to be totally effective.

Ark of the Ages therefore shares a lot with your typical Japanese RPG: you build experience, purchase new equipment, and fight endless ranks of similar-looking monsters.

It's more fun than it should be, but what bogs the experience down is the irksome reliance on in-app purchases. Given that the game costs money to begin with, it's quite a cheeky arrangement - there are times when the need to pay out real cash to proceed is almost unavoidable.

Know your role

This annoying system - along with a pretty useless "multiplayer" mode where fellow GREE players can contribute special "spark" attacks for you to use in battle - leads Ark of the Ages too far away from the well-worn path of the traditional JRPG.

Sure, the visuals are impressive and the music is catchy, but pleasing presentation can't mend what is essentially a broken and shamelessly mercenary micro-transaction setup.

Ark of the Ages should represent a new dawn for Android-based role-playing games, but all it does it serve to highlight how awkward it when you try to combine old skool ideas with in-app purchases.

Ark of the Ages

Ark of the Ages looks and sounds beautiful, but the focus on micro-transations stifles whatever enjoyment you might have got from its RPG gameplay
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Damien  McFerran
Damien McFerran
Damien's mum hoped he would grow out of playing silly video games and gain respectable employment. Perhaps become a teacher or a scientist, that kind of thing. Needless to say she now weeps openly whenever anyone asks how her son's getting on these days.