Fighting Fantasy, The Warlock of Firetop Mountain is a little DS game brought to us by Aspyr. This game boasts meticulous graphical detail and stunning gameplay. It’s also unique in that it is a first-person RPG for a handheld system. I’m no expert on that, but I don’t believe there’s many of those in existence right now. There are a lot of problems with this that I’ve seen, some which made it almost impossible for me to play for more than 15 minutes at a time, no matter how curious I was.
The first thing that really threw me off was, in fact, the fact that it is in first-person view. Normally this isn’t a problem because I love my first-person shooters, and Borderlands was amazing to me. The reason this is a problem is because that you need both hands just to move the camera around. The d-pad is used for movement and you can either use the XYAB buttons or the stylus and touchscreen to change where you’re looking. If you aren’t very coordinated and/or have limited skills using the stylus, you will most likely get really confused.
The next thing is the graphics. Okay, yes, there’s a lot of detail, but from the moment I loaded up the game, it seemed like a lot less than what I might expect. When I went up to people in the opening town, they were two-dimensional. You could not see a back to them, and if you stood in the right place, you’d see that they are completely flat. Now I know that games don’t always want you to focus so much on the NPCs as you do with the story, but just making them flat seems a little…weak to me.
The environment is nice enough, though. You can really tell that there’s a lot of detail. It’s a little distracting in some dungeons when you’re trying to figure out where you’re going. The monsters in these dungeons aren’t animated that great, either. It looks a little choppy and not really fun to watch. Not that you want to watch yourself get beaten up by some random monster, but still. I was also bothered by the fact that you’re running around with your weapon out. It distracted me because all I could watch was this little piece of metal lead my way.
Personally, I’d rather have a game that features good characters and not overdone environment. This game really disappointed me on the graphics front, and not just because I was playing through Final Fantasy XIII before I really spent some time with this game.
The menus left something to be desired, too. They were pretty clean and easy to navigate. The normal screen on the touchscreen had your set spells and items on it with your active weapon at the top. You can just tap the space and use whatever item is in that bubble. When you look at something, there will be a little place in the center that you have to touch in order to interact with it. Unfortunately, that’s the only way you can interact with your environment, may it be a door, a save point, a store, or whatever.
Occasionally you will find a locked treasure chest that will tempt you. Be warned, however, that these lock picking mini games makes Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion look like a cakewalk. They’re possible, but you have to work quickly if you want to try and get through it.
All in all, I’m going to be honest and say not to bother with this game. That’s my opinion, and someone with a little bit of patience might find this more entertaining. The story was interesting, but I really couldn’t look past the graphics, the difficulty of some simple things, and the other faults to dive into it as much as I would have liked. The game is rated T for Teen, so don’t give this to a child no matter how much you think they might like it. The likelihood is that they’ll get bored of it within a few hours anyway.
This morning, Ubisoft sent out a press release detailing a few financial details for this quarter.
