Shrouded Aspect, the first of what will probably be many games in The Pantheon Cycle by Gilligames, is a turn-based RPG for iOS devices. I happen to be a fan of RPG’s, and I do love a good turn-based game (especially Civilization), so I’m having a hard time as to pin-pointing why I couldn’t get into Shrouded Aspect.
The game starts off with an unbearably long story that is narrated by a woman with, what I believe is, a Scottish accent. While the story does provide a lot of backstory and history, it was immensely tedious having to sit there, listening to it all. There wasn’t even an option to manually scroll through it all (btw, if you’re curious as to just how long it was, click here to view the text that appears at the beginning of the game). I will say that there was a box in the corner that would’ve allowed me to skip the entire thing, but since I was reviewing the game, it was only proper that I read/listen through everything.
The story of the game is interesting, but still typical RPG fare. There is a center object, The Oak, which is the creator of all life, Man is there but ends up needing direction so The Oak brings forth Gods, after awhile the Gods get bored and act like Man is their ant farm, and there is a huge battle that results in the Gods being cast out and stripped of their powers but not their immortality. The six powers of the Gods are then available for any Man to harness, so that is how your characters have abilities.
As I said before, the game is turn-based, and it’s funny that I mentioned Civilization in the beginning because the sections you move on are exactly shaped like the hexagons in Civ V, so that made the game incredibly familiar for me. With each turn you can only move your characters so far, based on the amount of points you have, and each action eats away at the points, as well. Despite my genuine interest with turn-based games, there was nothing about the gameplay that kept me wanting to come back and continue to progress in the story, which is a shame because it’s obvious that the developers behind Shrouded Aspect put in a lot of time.
I disliked the way your character would move, the sounds they would make when performing an action, the attack animation, and many of the other gameplay aspects that should instead be making me want to play more and more. Instead, I was put off and didn’t want to finish the game at all.
As much as I’d like to say that, in terms of the graphics, you get what you get when you game on an iPhone, we’ve seen that games like Infinity Blade are possible. I will say that for an indie game, there were some things that did impress me, like how easy the UI was to navigate through, and the detail on the faces of the characters when you’re in the menu.
Even though the game is at least 30 hours long, and offers 32 different scenarios for you to explore which lends to immense replayability, the game started off for me on a sour note with the narration and it kept going downhill after that.
With the introductory price right now set to $4.99, it worries me what the full price of the game will be once the special is over. I feel that, based on the issues I listed and my distaste, the price the game is listed right now should be the maximum. Not everybody will be able to get into this game to warrant the price, and I question whether or not people should plunk down the money and gamble on that fact… so, I leave that up to you readers.
The Pantheon Cycle: Shrouded Aspect is available now for the introductory price of $4.99 on the iTunes App Store. For more information on the game and Gilligames, check out their official website.
