Warspear Online

Everything's retro nowadays. Pretty soon we'll all have to start wearing top hats and monocles and refrain from eating potatoes on Fridays.

Leading this charge into the past is the smartphone, the pinnacle of modern technology, where you'll find huge numbers of old-fashioned games.

Even the most modern of genres, the MMO, is getting a full bodied shove into the past thanks to to the distinctly mid-'90s stylings of Warspear Online, a new online RPG from the ominously named AIGrind.

But can Warspear succeed where so many other pocket ensconced MMOs have failed, or is this going to be the latest in an increasingly long line of dull, unimaginative titles looking to cash in on the big MMO bucks?

Warspear Online follows the now obligatory trope of having 'sides'. You choose your faction at the start of the game, and remain part of it for the rest of that character's span online.

You can, of course, choose a different faction on a different server, but there aren't that many servers, so choosing wisely is paramount.

On the one hand you have the hill people, who are thuggish, uncultured, and quite endearing. On the other you have the elves, who are aloof, feminine, and exactly like all the other elves you've encountered from all the hundreds of other 'fantasy' worlds.

Once you've chosen a banner, you get to choose a class. There are three on offer for each side: Barbarian, Rogue, and Shaman, for the hill tribes; Druid, Bladedancer, and Ranger for the Elves.

The game at least manages to have a reasonably unique style. Instead of going for the glitz and glamour of a full 3D experience, Warspear is presented in almost top-down 2D, reminiscent of SNES era JRPGs.

Controlling your hero is as simple as tapping on the screen. You tap where you want to go, and off your bobble-headed warrior waddles. Tapping NPCs talks to them, and tapping creatures starts a fight.

As soon as that fight has started, you can pop off and make a brew, because the game doesn't really need you for a bit. You automatically perform your standard attack, and if you want there's a bar of skills along the bottom of the screen that you can tap to use as well.

You'll fight in caves, you'll fight in fields, you'll fight near pools of slime, and you'll never feel like you're important or necessary. All you're really there for is to poke your character in the right direction.

It's not surprising that a developer called AIGrind has made an MMO that's so heavy on monotony that it borders on the soporific. This is a game made almost entirely of grinding. Kill these, get their skin, bring it here, rinse, repeat. Even PvP arenas fail to save it from the doldrums.

Warspear Online may look retro, but it's fallen foul of all of the modern pitfalls that blight the MMO genre, and no amount of twee nostalgia can save it from them.