Knights of the Pen and Paper [iOS, Android (PC/Mac coming soon)]

Knights of the Pen and Paper is a turn based RPG based on playing an actual game of Dungeons and Dragons or other such game. You have all the basics you would expect from the genre, the classes, loot, skills etc. plus they give the game a bit of a twist by partly putting you in the role of the Dungeon Master (DM) as well. It does all this from the perspective of an old school video game RPG with it's sound and graphics appearing as if they were from a Super Nintendo game.

Like I said this game is a bit different in that it gives you some DM like control over the gameplay. You get to choose which quest to do, and how many and what type of monsters you should fight. It does add a little bit of excitement to a game that otherwise uses very tried and true gameplay mechanics. There is a lot of  traditional RPG grind to be found in this game though the quests and loot help break this up a bit. The skills your characters have are fairly stock standard for their class type and you unlock them all fairly fast giving you little to look forward to later on in the game. Loot comes in a range of forms though and you get to power up everyone's armour, as well as load them up with bonus trinkets, and in the most interesting twist buy objects for your gaming room that effect everyone. But again I found that I had every piece I needed of this pretty fast. In it's current form the game offers two quests though only the first one is of any really note.

In it's current build the game has a host of problems. I am sure some of these things will be patched but unfortunately due to their nature many of them will still remain. Judging from their domain name Behold Studios are a Brazilian company and their translation into English is extremely poor. They didn't even manage to spell "yawn" correctly. I encountered a bug where an enemy would succumb to damage over time injuries but the battle wouldn't finish, to counter this I found if you hit defend, it would end properly, hitting anything else caused a crash. Game Centre would constantly reload all of the achievements I had received at the start of every new load.

Bugs and poor translation aside, the game really is a very standard sort of RPG grinder. There are many people who are fans of this genre though and it will appeal to them greatly but it doesn't reinvent the wheel. It is a good little title that will keep you playing for hours and there is a threat of bonus content to come later, though this may be paid DLC. For $2 you still get enough content to justify the purchase just steer clear of it if traditional RPGs aren't your thing 7.7/10.