iOS App-Aholics Anonymous: [Ravensword Shadowlands]

App Name: Ravensword Shadowlands
Developer: Crescent Moon Games
Launch Date: 12-19-12
Price: $6.99 / €5.31
App-Aholic Rating: 5/5

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Crescent Moon games, fronted by Josh Presseisen, has had an incredibly productive (and undoubtedly successful) year. At the rate and quality of titles they’ve released since last January, coupled with the launch of a second publishing name, Forest Moon Games, I’ve been forced to reconsider my favorite iOS developer. Not to say CM has completely won me over, but with a few more RPGs like Ravensword Shadowlands, I could definitely be swayed.

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Sooo…Ravensword Shadowlands is an immense improvement on the original rendition, The Fallen King. Everything from the visual engine to the physical character motions have been reconsidered and fine-tuned. This is good, since I found The Fallen King to feel a bit static. Other than the brief debacle with the giant troll, both games begin with you waking up unsure of where you are. From there, the world is your unbeaten oyster.

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Versatility: From the get-go, there’s a set of options you can select when piloting your character. First of all, the way you experience the game is critical to how you enjoy it; in order to compensate for multiple types of gamers, the camera view can be adjusted to a third person point of view (my preferred option) or a first person view. The second critical component to feeling connected to a game revolves around the way you move around; you can choose to utilize the virtual stick, or there is a tap-to-run feature, which consists of your character running around while you swipe on the screen to steer.

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The Price of Console Quality: Such as the case with my first favorite iOS developer, a game packed with high-caliber graphics and intuitive gameplay usually occupies a dense portion of memory on your device. Surprisingly, for the size of the landscape Ravensword has been boasting, the file size of the game is fairly compact and easy to download. Shadowlands also utilizes iCloud as a means of saving, allowing you to play the game on all of your iOS devices instead of only one.

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iOSA3 Rating: 5/5; Speaking of console quality, Crescent Moon has certainly raised the bar for what developers can do with a mobile adventure. After years of effort, Shadowlands has been carefully constructed until the result was virtually as spotless as the game disks you’d buy off a shelf. A vast world chalked full of endless quests lies at your disposal. Only time will tell if this RPG has enough persistence to keep you intrigued or if it will become too monotonous that it bores you to a coma. Luckily, based on CM’s record, I’m betting on the former of the two.

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Sound Off: Now, folks, it’s your turn! Do you have any thoughts, opinions, or general comments about Ravensword Shadowlands, and/or its developer, Crescent Moon Games? I personally reply to every comment, and I’d love to hear what you have to say! Just take your cranial debris and throw it down in the box below!

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