Wizards 2

The first reaction upon booting up Wizards 2 is to look around the room for the time portal you must have slipped through to end up back in the 1980s.

With its total lack of animation, endless fetch quests, and cast of bizarre characters, Alderan Gaming’s Wizards 2 has stacks of old skool appeal and user-friendly controls but, sadly, little of the magic that powered its PC forbears like A Bard’s Tale.

In this tap-controlled, menu-driven port of a Palm Pre RPG (it shows), you start the game with a choice of whether to be a Melee, Ranged, or Magic expert and spawn at the one-inn-town of Ashendale.

Quests are initially doled out by shady characters (literally - one is called Shady Jim) in the local warehouse. Once you’ve picked out a basic weapon, it’s off to explore the local wooded or grassy areas for enemies to scrap and loot to collect.

Completing missions and defeating monsters across the world’s four towns earns you gold to splash out on sharper weapons and XP to level-up your player stats.

Reaching a new level also gives you a chance to master more powerful attacks by defeating your Mentor, but this excitement is tempered by the deeply repetitive gameplay.

There’s an overarching plot about a Wizard’s Council trying to track down lost treasure, but you’ll have to complete so many spurious fetch or ’kill ten of monster Y’ quests to get to it (170-plus missions are included) that it’s unlikely to be recovered any time soon.

All actions are handled via menus and icons, and turn-based random battles with an assortment of foes (rabid wolves, packs of diseased rats and, oddly, angry farmers) occur regularly when you're exploring open areas.

You repeatedly tap ‘Attack’ while gazing at a static image of your enemy, fire off occasional special abilities whenever you’ve earned Action Points, and ‘Flee’ when you’re being outclassed by a Sweaty Warthog.

Wizards 2’s main concession to modernity, along with online leaderboards to show off your stats, is mid-battle Quick Time Events.

Icons regularly pop-up telling you to ‘Dodge’, and you need to tap these quickly to avoid attacks, and to help you stay awake during prolonged encounters.

QTEs are also used to find items while exploring. These involve tapping magnifying glass icons that pop-up occasionally, and they spice things up a tad.

Worth a loot?

While the drawings of enemies and locations here are a step-up from the crayon jabs of the original Wizards, this is still a game that's unlikely to stir the blood with its visuals or audio (there’s none whatsoever - not even a lute sting to brighten the mood).

Yet, we quite enjoyed comparing our monster-slaying stats via the leaderboards, the mobile-friendly controls work a treat, and it’s easy to sink into the familiar, mildly satisfying grind of a seriously old skool RPG.

Wizards 2 certainly holds a limited amount of charm here for those grey-haired enough to remember ancient titles like Dungeon Master, although the steep price and tedious missions will likely deter all but the most bearded role-player.