Ravensword: The Fallen King Preview

When it comes to role-playing games on any gaming consoles, a few heroic figures stand strong and usually gain a mention. Games like Oblivion and Mass Effect are enjoyed on the next-gen consoles, but so far we've lacked an expansive role-playing game on the iDevice besides The Quest, which still left us wanting more. Well, very soon we'll have a potential contender for top RPG on the App Store, called Ravensword: The Fallen King.

When we talked to Josh Presseisen of Crescent Moon Games, he compared elements of the game to Oblivion and Zelda, calling the game a “cross between an adventure game and an RPG”. The game will feature a 3-6 hour long main quest, with an undisclosed number of side quests. As in Oblivion, there will be something of a sandbox-world in which you will be free to explore and fight numerous enemies, but Josh specified that some of these areas will be restricted until “you have the key to that area”, so we’ll have to wait and see how restrictive, and expansive, the world really is.

While exploring, the main thing you do is something familiar to frequent RPG players: hacking and slashing. Games like Oblivion utilized this type of combat, and it seems as though Ravensword is following suit. However, Ravensword has a more limited range of weaponry, just swords and bows, with “magic items that work independently and in combination”.

There are also a few ways that Ravensword isn’t following in the same tracks as major RPGs, such as character customization and moral decisions. Apparently, Ravensword will not offer character creation, but will instead start you out as an unknown personality who needs to discover who you are and why you’re there.

Josh assures us that a great deal more will be included in the Ravensword Expansion, with complex behaviors like dialogue choices and the ability to “choose between a few different characters” at the start. Unfortunately, it will be a 4-6 month wait for this expansion, though it may come with an online version of the game, which was hinted at and intrigues us mightily.

All together, Ravensword could be an enjoyable and graphically impressive game, though it may not be as heavy on the role-playing elements as a more outright RPG. As you can see from these screenshots, three to six hours of this on our iDevice would be very much welcome indeed. We've been told that Ravensword should be submitted to the App Store next week, so keep a look out for this one.