Super Glyph Quest is one of the best iOS games I've played in a long time, it's not perfect, but it's simply a game. It's not a marketplace, it's not an opportunity, it's not a best deal, it's a game. You match glyphs on a grid to cast spells on your enemies, you get experience, materials and items to allow yourself to survive tougher challenges. Rinse and repeat for a good chunk of time. With glyphs to mix and match to create various spells and a bunch of enemies, it's a really cool little game.
This game is a bit cheap in term of information, though. You can't view what your items do when you're in battle, you have to use them and hope for the best - although I like that you can get items while fighting if you match item glyphs - and some of them are a bit obscure, like reset stones and anti-backfire protection. Enemies have elemental strengths and weaknesses - so do you if you equip the right gear - but you'll never clearly see that information, nor will you see the elemental type of attacks enemies do to you. At least you see 'CRITICAL' when it happens. There also are a few status ailments which aren't really explained. Everything is more-or-less self-explanatory but I wish they would surface more stuff.
You have a book with all your spells and all the enemies you've fought, but it's pretty empty of actual content too, they use it for flavor, flavor text about enemies and spells, not for actual hard numbers. Which spell is the best between this and that one? How many hit points do these monsters have? It's not that much of a deal. You also have a character sheet with all the upgrades you've chosen as you level-up. Experience comes quite slowly as you get in the higher levels and there are no ways to respec, so choose carefully. You also pick up a class at the beginning and it influences if you get either nature/weapon or light/dark runes, which you still get later on.
It's fun to try multiple spell combos - although some of them lack power for some reason, like Landslide - but most of them feel like direct-damage spells with no other effects. Once you get to match elements, it changes a bit, but it would have been fun that each element had their own thing instead of a fireball being the same as a rock ball, only of another element. Status ailments are also annoying because they hit like trucks, poison and bleed take huge chunks of your health every turn, being stunned is also annoying since there's not much you can do about it. You can carry a bunch of health potions to tip the scales in your favor, so I didn't have too many problems with the tougher fights. Healing spells also help a bit, but you need the matching glyphs and it's not guaranteed you're going to get them.
With a fun little story and good RPG/Puzzle mechanics without the burden of the usual energy system or insanely unbalanced difficulty curve suited to make you spend money, SGQ is a really cool game.
