Wayward Souls is too difficult for being on iOS. The quick, almost twitchy-like type of control you need for something like this action RPG is impossible to achieve with touch controls and to make matters worse, the upgrades and systems don’t really work in any way that helped me get better after each successive try.
You start the game in a zone where enemies are already pretty dangerous. Teleporting skeletons, miners chucking dynamite, golems that charge around, bats that dash in your face, you need to have quick reflexes to navigate around enemies and hit them with your attacks, which is pretty poor on a touch screen. This game continues my long list of iOS games that should’ve been on consoles instead, any other input devices would work better than moving an invisible joystick around.Some characters need to charge up their attacks, some can dash through enemies and deal bonus backstab damage, nice ideas, but almost impossible to execute with such a control system.
The items are terrible, you find one-use “spells” that might help you for a few seconds or deal some damage to enemies, but then you’re off on your own, this game is difficult enough and you fight enough enemies (without finding tons of these one-use spells) that they should either come more often, be more useful (last longer, give you some passive bonus for X time, etc.) or not exist and be replaced by some gear that you could find. Each class has two moves, one offensive and one defensive, and you execute them by swiping your right finger up or down, they all consume ammo. These skills are weird, the wizard’s defensive move by default is some… miniature puff of smoke that bounces enemies around if you’re exactly next to them? What gives? These attacks should replenish themselves, or be more impactful. It’s fun to throw axes except when you have a limited number of them and you just miss anyways.
After finishing a round and dying, you get to spend your gold when you start a new game. You spend that gold on some pretty weird skills, I was expecting increases in health, damage, defense, maybe some health regeneration, larger energy pools, finding more money, moving faster, things like that, but nope, besides critical hits and some energy renegeration, everything is weird, like odds to recover energy when you use special attack ammo, or more health from health potions - that I never found So I just never spent my gold on anything, because nothing ever looked remotely useful.
The way you upgrade your gear is interesting, you find these forges where you select between two things to transform one of your four pieces of equipment. It really changes the way some attacks work, altough not as much on others. Two things bother me about this otherwise neat system; First, these upgrades don’t carry over between rounds. Why not have my mage keep her better robe? Maybe I’ll make it further next time if I at least can slowly upgrade my gear to better stuff. Also, you can’t view what’s the effect of the items you’re currently wearing, they’re in an inventory of sorts, but there’s no way to see their effects. Same thing with hats, you can find some and equip them, but do they do anything?
I didn’t enjoy Wayward Souls, too difficult, not enough compelling systems to make me want to try again, clumsy controls, not much here to say
