Crescent Moon Games, developer of role playing games such as Pocket RPG and Siegecraft, has teamed up with Red Zebra to release their newest strategy RPG into the arsenal, Raid Leader ($0.99 App Store link). Raid Leader is a strategy RPG where you take the role of none other than a knight, priest, and a hunter as you fight your way through a wide array of enemies and bosses.
The story behind Raid Leader is that you must save a princess from King Belfanor, who has taken over Eldentir. The land of evil the characters have to fight through (and which you must cleanse) is plagued by monsters and evil demons. Each character you fight with in RaidLeader has a different set of abilities or weapons. The knight starts off with a sword, the hunter with a bow and arrow, and the priest, who has healing abilities.
From the very beginning you have to choose wisely how, and on which character you want to spend your loot on in order to make the most of the game. You can use your money to gain power ups, more experience, or perks, and money is gained by defeating each enemy you come across.
One thing that sticks out about RaidLeader over other strategy games are the bosses. For example, the first few bosses have certain powers they can use to damage you even further. One of the bosses, a worm or centipede of sorts has leeches that surt out from the ground and they continue to attack you until you tap on them continuously to get rid of them. Another boss is a yeti-type monster that freezes your characters, so you have to continuously tap on the screen to unfreeze one of your characters. This is fun in the fact that, like other strategy games, you don’t just sit there idle until combat is over.
For a strategy RPG, the graphics of Raid Leader are pretty well done. The presentation and cutscenes of the game, of what little there are, have a cartoonish or animated look to them. The in-game graphics look pretty good as well. There is some clipping within the characters and enemies from time to time, but it’s not all that noticeable and it doesn’t effect the gameplay in any way.
The animations and characteristics are very well done. They stand out far apart from one another. The characters don’t have a cookie cutter feel to them as if they all have the same mannerisms. The bosses are animated just as well as the rest of the game. Since they all have their own unique ability, no two bosses are alike. The environments look good as well, although they could have added a little more texture or detail to them.
The controls of Raid Leader are as simple as they come. You choose and drag whichever character you want to select and move them around the level to strategize against different attacks from your enemies and choose how you want to attack your enemy with a certain character. In the iPad version of Raid Leader, you can play with 3 people and have each person control a character, although with everyone’s hands on the screen, things might get a little constrained. It would have been nice to see a separate app you can use as a controller on the iPhone and just use that to control your character if you’re playing with 2 other people on the iPad.
Nonetheless, Raid Leader is still fun to play with 3 players. With the addition of enemy which require you to tap continuously to overcome, you’ll be doing a lot of multitasking, which keeps the game moving freely. The two perks that each character has recharge every 15 seconds or so. This is something to keep in mind when strategizing where you want to place each character. The UI itself is pretty easy to navigate. It’s user friendly and has a simple tutorial to follow before the first level.
Raid Leader is a solid strategy rpg with a lot to offer. It can get pretty challenging at times if you’re more of a casual gamer and aren’t too familiar with RPGs. I would have like to see a more in-depth story to Raid Leader or actual cutscenes instead of just text between stages.
With more than 30 unique abilities for all 3 characters, it would have also been nice to have at least one or two more at a time that each character can hold. Even though the game can be difficult at times, it’s still fun to play, and gives a great senser of accomplishment when you finally defeat a certain boss.
Price: ($0.99 App Store Link)
Pros:
Cons: