Inotia 3: Children of Carnia Review
PROS
- Solid, simple Action-RPG style.
- Clean, easy to use interface.
- Decent 16-bit graphical style.
CONS
- Poor control responsiveness.
- Low character development; rudimentary storyline.
- Often no background music; possible bug.
VERDICT
Inotia 3 jumps ahead of its predecessors in scope and style, but it still lacks any sense of depth or lasting originality; a decent RPG if you're after something new, but an easy one to miss as well.
- Full Review
- App Store Info
The Inotia series of RPGs by Com2uS has never really been one to stand out from the crowd of Action-RPGs that have come to dominate the App Store scene, innovating in small ways, but remaining relatively generic in its approach. Inotia 3: Children of Carnia continues in the same vein as its predecessors and while it has improved compared to the last two releases, it fails to do anything truly exciting.
Where the previous title used a questionable touch-based system, Inotia 3 has returned to the tried and true d-pad for movement and a handful of quick-slots for items and skills. A large button plays the role of a universal 'interaction' button, locking on to monsters and auto-attacking if you hold it down or collecting items and talking to people as these situations arise. However one strange and irritating problem kept cropping up and instead of quickly being able to switch between moving and interacting with objects there had to be a clear separation in pressing the buttons, making combat feel extremely stiff and hard to react to.
Lucio, one of the main characters, has several classes to choose from and as he and his companions level up a variety of skills unlock and can be upgraded. The interaction of these skills can be very important as you play the game with party members that are AI controlled whenever you're not controlling them explicitly; optimizing the party for equal parts survival and damage will keep you prepared for just about any situation you're thrown in to.
However all of this feels safe and standard, with the storyline failing to do much more than to lead you to a handful of quests before pushing you on to the next town. One positive that should be applauded was the use of large and easy to navigate menus along with clear readable text, however the UI stops short of being truly useful as you constantly have to switch back and forth to see if an item is an upgrade and players must invest their gold in to additional back-packs to reduce the amount of trips back to town to sell junk.
Inotia 3 is a calm change of pace from the usual slew of arcade titles, but unless you're absolutely itching for a new RPG it fails to excite in a way that makes it easy to recommend.
Screenshots
$4.99
