An Assassin In Orlandes Android Review

If you’ve ever experienced an RPG adventure book, you’ll know how excited we were to find out about An Assassin In Orlandes. Grab your earphones, turn the lights down and forget paper, pencils, dice and number crunching. An Assassin In Orlandes does it all for you!

An Assassin in Orlandes is the first true RPG adventure for your smartphone or ipad!

Developed by Tin Man Games, An Assassin In Orlandes introduces itself with impressive acoustic music, art and animation used for its front-end menu screen. Maps and back stories to the world of Orlandes can be read through at any time and you’ll also get to scroll through and look-up the games achievements. A great addition to any mobile game!

Once you start the adventure (oddly the very last menu option) you’ll get to choose your difficulty. Just like most RPG adventures, everything pretty much wants to kill, so instead of your usual health or enemy difficulty, it’s all down to your starting stats and bookmarks. Easy difficulties will enable you to start out with larger Vitality, (Health) Fitness, Offense and Defense skill counts, while harder difficulties hit you with pure luck (like the good old RPG adventures we know and love) as you roll dice to determine your starting skill counts. Bookmarks act as saves. So before you make that “no going back now” decision, you can slap a bookmark down on the page and if all goes pete-tong, you can simply restart at that exact point. Of course, the harder your difficulty, the fewer of these you’ll have.

If you're playing An Assassin in Orlandes using a tablet device (ipad etc.) you'll be presented with a double page view. Use those bookmarks wisely...

You’ll start your adventure as an unknown, (you can name the character anything you like) a depressed individual, who is currently drowning his sorrows in the local tavern. The slow, soothing acoustic music and art help set the scene and as you begin your adventure, you’ll appreciate how story progression and battle, all come together to form a very impressive debut for mobile RPG adventure gaming.

Impressive hand-drawn art helps to set the scene

Will you have another drink? Will you talk to the landlord? Simple decisions that you’ll make as your story begins. But once you leave your empty glass behind and stride on into the cold night, your decisions become more challenging as they will constantly test your common sense, skills and of course…your friendship with lady luck.

Battle is a very important part of the RPG adventure and An Assassin In Orlandes is packed with them. The music will change from the slow-paced and soothing acoustic score, to a more dramatic and intense one. Rolling a number of dice to beat your opponents score will determine whether you strike, defend or evade successfully. We were very impressed with the 3D dice which rolled across the very page we were reading, once battle took place. You and your enemies stats are constantly displayed throughout battle with a cleaver battle sheet that overlaps the current books page.

Although the music, 3D dice and mid-battle stats help to create a superb interactive RPG adventure game, it’s the cogs behind the scenes that really make An Assassin In Orlandes an addictive game. Gone are the pencil and paper. The game will keep track of EVERYTHING you choose, pick-up and use. Visit a market store and all items you can afford are automatically highlighted and selectable. Pick-up some strong armour and the game will automatically compare it to everything else you have and automatically equip it if necessary.

The inventory system is also a very strong point to  An Assassin In Orlandes. Need a potion mid-battle? Simply pull-up the menu during that tough fight (by tapping the screen) and use that vital potion to gain precious vitality. Using potions don’t use-up battle turns, giving the player a much needed strategic advantage in battle!

We know what you non-RPG book players may be thinking. “Yeah, but that’s easy for a game of today’s standards”. Well, yes but to see such systems packaged into an interactive RPG adventure is refreshing, exciting and even more engrossing!

An Assassin in Orlandes still plays perfectly on your smartphone! It will utilize a single page view, instead

An Assassin In Orlandes does incredibly well to play to the readers common sense. For example (this isn’t a spoiler, just an example) if you inspected a chest and then made the decision to open it, a chest monster would thrust outward and wrap it’s gator-like teeth around your neck. Game over. But instead, An Assassin In Orlandes takes that same chest and provides the player with vital clues in order to make their decision. If after close inspection growling was heard, followed by sudden movement…would you open the chest? It’s refreshing to see an RPG adventure book that gives the player a real sense of achievement and reward for assessing a situation.

An Assassin In Orlandes may be the best RPG adventure book we’ve played, but we had to question the Fitness Check system. Although this system can work to your advantage mid-battle (giving you an extra attack or defense point if you roll lower than your Fitness) it’s the systems use outside of it that unbalances things. For example, you cross a bridge but it breaks beneath you. Roll under your fitness level to survive…or plummet to your death! The player already has to take-on hordes of foes where luck is the referee. We feel unsuccessful Fitness Checks should only deduct vitality, not kill the player. This was due to the amount of Fitness Checks throughout the game.

D4Gameplay on An Assassin In Orlandes Android Review

We still can’t believe such an RPG adventure book is playable on a smartphone or tablet device! Music, inventory calculation, battle dice and battle sheet design make the move to a mobile platform, a triumphant one. The story is compelling and plays beautifully to an RPG adventure, offering a number of endings and one ultimate ending that the player really must work for.

Although the sudden Fitness Checks may unbalance the well written story decisions of An Assassin In Orlandes, you can simply look at Fitness Checks as a  ‘hardened’ edition to the game. If your starting Fitness skill is 10 or above, then you can focus purely on your decisions, scavenging, purchasing and battle. But if your starting Fitness hits below a 10…An Assassin In Orlandes just became Dark Souls!

An Assassin In Orlandes is not only a must-buy for any RPG adventure book fan, but any RPG games fan in general. With a very satisfying ‘ultimate ending’ and around 4 hours play time, (it’s hard to be exact due to the amount of attempts you’ll need) An Assassin In Orlandes is easily one of the best RPG games the Android Market has to offer.

Developer: Tin Man Games

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