Immortal Odyssey Review — Year of the Goat, baahhh your way to a different game

1) Game Experience: Low

2) Game Value: Medium

3) Quiche’s Recommendation: Year of the Goat, baahhh your way to a different game.

I dig old Chinese historical and mythical literature. Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Monkey King, and all the stuff with guys swinging big sticks and ladies with supernatural oomph. So a game like Immortal Odyssey comes around and I’m all over it. The art is a bit cartoony, but has its flavor, and there’s an interesting storyline (immortals and mortals and love and kingdoms in peril, etc). All good, but the gameplay left me saying, better bail out before I do something stupid, like spending money.

Gameloft’s Immortal Odyssey is a mobile F2P RPG. How is it different than other mobile F2P RPGs? Not a whole lot. Chinese folklore-ish, opera stuff. Yeah, that’s kinda interesting. Ghosts and souls. Cool. There are dragons, too, that look more like Chinese New Year than The Hobbit.

So, some cool stuff, but it’s otherwise your granny’s RPG. Characters level up. Form teams. Develop skills, equipment, and self-improve over and over again as you face tougher and tougher enemies. Normal RPG stuff.

Nothing unique about the classes, either: Knight, Mage, Fighter, and Ranger.

There’s a stamina meter that allows you to conduct missions. Run out, and you wait. Don’t want to wait? Pay real money.

The main disappointment is in the gameplay. You start at a hub and use portals to transport to dungeons and other areas where you battle and collect goodies and rewards. It’s point-click, side-scroll. No exploration, just move left to right where you’re sure to find a baddie to beat up.

The battles are weak and repetitive. It’s point and then click to attack. There’s a special power you can use, but since there’s no real strategy, you just use it when you can. It’s the same tapping-without-thinking action over and over again. In fact, there’s even an auto-fight button that does the fighting for you because there’s no real reason to battle turn by turn. And even more, there’s even a Raid button that allows you to fight without actually going to the dungeon itself. Push the button, and then you get the results of the battle. Then why even have the game at all?

I played a total of about two hours over a period of a couple days. I got bored. At some point, I’m sure you have to pay real money to get items to get past certain adversaries in the game. I’m not going to get there. And unfortunately, I’ll have to wait longer for someone to make a real Monkey King or Three Kingdoms video game.