INOTIA 2 ARTWORK SERIES

At first, the only skill that my templar had access to was a basic healing spell, but with a broadsword and careful attention to the health bars of my party members, I was able to make it through most situations with ease. I controlled the templar and led the way into battle, creating a safe environment for my mage to attack from a distance behind me. This sounds rather brutish and indelicate, but strategy comes into play when you take advantage of your (up to) four special attacks on your quick menu and the combined skills of your unique party members.įor the first part of the game, I controlled a mage (my main character) and a templar, the latter of whom served as both my healer and frontline.

INOTIA 2 ARTWORK SERIES

There is a large attack button on the right-hand side of the screen, and tapping this button once while in attacking distance of an enemy will simultaneously auto-turn your character in the right direction and initiate a series of constant attacks until either your character or the enemy is dead. Movement is controlled either by touch or virtual D-pad, the latter of which I found to be much more responsive. The actual battles in Inotia 2 are extremely well-designed, and there's a lot of fun and satisfaction to be had by taking part in them, especially later in the game, when you'll be managing three characters at once, each with their own complete skill sets. Touch navigation of the menus makes accessing all of the options, information, and character customization methods easy to get to. While the game does limit the number of items that players can carry along with them on the field, it also offers plenty of room for expansion, potentially to quadruple the number of inventory slots available at the start of the game. This is not the case in Inotia 2 NPCs are so still that they could sometimes be mistaken as parts of the environment.Īddressing a common problem with both its predecessor and other games in its genre (I'm looking at you, Zenonia), Inotia 2 has a fantastic menu/inventory system. Since the NES era, NPCs have always had small movement animations, just to make it clear to the player that they're alive. Non-Player Characters (NPCs) are scattered about environments and towns with quests to give and generic lines to spew, as is par for the course in games of this genre, but they all seem dead due to their complete lack of animation. It does not matter if you choose to play as a male or female character in this game, because everyone in the game will refer to you as though you are male, regardless of actual gender. This is all probably due to the fact that the developers, Com2uS, are from Korea and it seems like quite a bit may have been lost in translation. The story is cliche-filled and poorly written, with bad dialogue making the already uninteresting conversations between characters only bearable because of the ability to quickly tap your way through them. If plot is your main concern when delving into action-RPGs, Inotia 2 is going to disappoint you. Item customization is another feature that adds to the depth of Inotia 2, as it allows players to attach enchantments (or upgrades) to their weapons and equipment via scrolls found through various methods in the game. This allows for experimentation with each of the five character classes in a single playthrough, regardless of which character you chose at the beginning of the game to be your main. Over the course of the game, players will be able to hire up to two mercenaries, which they can then take with them on all their quests, level up and customize as they grow, and actually manually control while in battle.

All of the regular trimmings like a skill tree that you can use to customize your character as he/she levels or collectible loot is there, but it's the mercenaries system that really sets Inotia 2 apart. Progress is made through the completion of main-story quests and the leveling up of your character, a concept that should be familiar to many gamers.

Games like Dungeon Hunter and (more similarly) Zenonia have already pioneered the action-RPG genre on the platform, but Inotia 2 makes up for that by being more polished, more accessible, and arguably deeper than any that came before it. Inotia 2 isn't really bringing anything new to the table, even in terms of the app store. The first game in the franchise was plagued with a terrible menu/inventory system, boring battles, and extremely limited RPG elements, so is Inotia 2 (pronounced 'In-oh-tee-ya,' for those curious) even worth taking a glance at? After spending some considerable time in the world of this sequel, I can confidently say that it's a completely different game than its predecessor in all of the best ways. With the slightly bad taste of The Chronicles of Inotia still fresh in the minds of some gamers, the announcement of Inotia 2: A Wanderer of Luone was met with some understandable concerns.

Inotia 2 artwork