I have it as part of the bundle, as I use more of those services than not, which makes the price of the full subscription worthwhile. Have downloaded a few games but not really found anything truly monumental…
FANTASIAN by Hironobi Sakaguchi (FF I-IX, Chrono Trigger, FF X and X-2, FF XI and XII, Super Mario RPG, FF Tactics, Xenogears, Vagrant Story, Blue Dragon, Lost Odyssey, The Last Story).
excerpt from Wiki: “On 27 March 2019, Sakaguchi announced Fantasian, a Japanese role-play-game, exclusively for Apple Arcade. The game will be released in two parts. The first part was released on 2 April 2021.
Fantasian’s soundtrack was composed entirely by Nobou Uematsu (best known for his work on the Final Fantasy series’ soundtracks, while some of the in-game dioramas were created by Dragon Ball series creator Akira Toriyama.
Sakaguchi has stated that he was inspired by playing Final Fantasy VI with some old colleagues, saying “It really reminded me how much I love this classic RPG game genre”.
The game’s graphics are distinctive for their extensive use of more than 150 handcrafted miniature dioramas which were 3D scanned in order to create the game’s environments.”
should appeal to everyone who liked the classic FF and LOST ODYSSEY on XBox, one of my favorite games.
I finally caved and bought in to Apple Arcade, mainly for my kids. There are a handful of games that I am interested in trying but every time I go to the Arcade tab I see Star Trek: Legends.
“Don’t do it!” screams the Angel on my left shoulder. “You hate those kinds of games and have sworn to never play one again in your life.”
“What harm can it do?” says the devil on my right. “There are no iaps so surely it is a bit different.”
Spoiler alert: the Devil lies.
Now, I will admit that without premium currencies bought for real money the game seems ever so very slightly different in that I’m not fearing the iap paywall and feel like I can play as much or as little as I want without feeling the need to cough up money.
Other than that, this is the exact same game as every other gatcha”RPG” in that there is barely a “story,” which is told through static text boxes that is only a vehicle to advance you from one fight to another. The fights are what you’ve seen a thousand times before where 4 characters in one side of the screen use basic abilities against 4 similar characters on the other side of the screen. You obtain more characters through story missions or through loot boxes, characters level up as they fight or can be boosted with an item. Gear levels up with another item, abilities with yet another.
What this game proves more than anything is that without the slot machine mechanics to drive these hatch’s games, there is barely any game there.
Characters look good, if cartoonish, but this is the EXACT same game as the Star Wars one. And the Marvel one.
Darn me if I don’t just want to play to get a Picard, though. I’ve got a Riker and he even has an ability called The Riker Maneuver!
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Thanks for taking one for the team, but you really didn’t need to. I think we all knew exactly what that game was about at one glance.
Good luck on your quest for Picard though, I’m sure the game won’t needlessly string out the random attempts to collect that character
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When it was first released in Apple Arcade I played it for a few days, and then got bored.
The surprise game that I think works much better without the IAP is Simon’s Cat. I have been really enjoying it. I play like one level a day and that kind of just works.
But…if you have not shown your kids Taiko Pop Tap yet…please do! So much fun.
FWIW, Grindstone is one of the best things I’ve found on AArcade. It’s hard to explain exactly why it’s addictive, but it’s a nice tactical-ish puzzle game. If you like, say, Hoplite, it will scratch that same kind of itch.
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We have a road trip followed by a plane trip mid-July so I am giving them the good games slowly. The drum game (not going to try and spell it off the top of my head) has been sitting at the top of the list for that. One of my kids loves music and rhythm and the other is a bit like Steve Martin in The Jerk, so he could use the practice.
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Clap Hanz golf is excellent. It is a shame it is tied to a subscription because I would easily pay premium for it.
I’ve been playing a lot of Roundguard, which is quite fun. It is basically Peggle (a pachinko game, if you don’t remember it) coupled with a Roguelike dungeon crawl. Pretty fun, though more arcadey than strategic.
Lego Star Wars Battles is a Clash Royale type game just added today. Seems fun so far.
Does it rely on that completely obnoxious gameplay mechanism where you can spend currencies to upgrade units? I despise the games where I can have an army of ABC and the other army is also ABC but every unit is far superior because they’ve played/spent more. I know the IAP issue doesn’t exist on Arcade but that hasn’t stopped some games cough Star Trek cough still feel exactly like an IAP-driven game without the IAP…
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Yeah, it does and you won’t like it in that case probably. I hate paying for IAP acceleration, but quite like the mechanic in a true FTP. I stopped playing the Star Trek game after a while, but that is just because I found the combat boring. I liked the collecting part.
Of course, I have played Marvel Strike Force as mostly FTP for 1,267 consecutive* days.
*I was unconscious in a hospital for one of those days and am not actually sure if I missed a day or not.