Ash In-Depth Review

Genre vets are sure to find Ash‘s equipment system a bit non-traditional, in a good way. While Nicholas and his traveling companions clearly specialize in different functions judging from their skillsets, all draw from the same pool of equipment unless one or more members have Strength ratings too low to utilize a specific piece. Shopping is a fun prospect for lovers of mental number crunching because weapons are advertised as having a wide range of damage outcomes; one might find it more useful to judge a weapon’s average reliability rather than look at its maximum potential.

Ash‘s battle system mechanics are very easy to pick up, but figuring out how to best tackle a dungeon or overworld voyage presents an unforgiving learning curve that’s sure to irk a few players during the game’s opening hours. While jotting down early review notes I was prepared to call Ash “the Bullet Hell Shooter of JRPGs,” what with Nicholas being besieged by random battles every few steps. And I do mean every few steps — if random battles are a deal breaker for you, take heed! Thankfully the difficulty of Nicholas’ journey mellows out significantly once he’s joined by healing and offensive mage characters; ironically, while Nicholas and Damien fuel the story’s power, it’s the RPG staple characters the player will thank his or her lucky stars for when it comes to Ash‘s gameplay.

Luckily a few modern conveniences help things along even in the game’s early stages. If the fact that cash is tight doesn’t already suggest to the player that it’s impossible to stock up on enough restoratives to survive everything that comes at Nicholas & co. during a typical dungeon tour, the 100% success rate of escape from non-boss battles probably will. Since the player can pick and choose his or her battles, it’s best to wait for favorable sets of enemies to pop up – take on enemies that travel alone or wait for large groups to farm experience and cash as quickly as possible – and simply flee enemy groups likely to place the most strain on the player’s resources. With proper resource management and exploitation of each character’s skills during boss battles, being under-leveled is far less a concern than the sheer tedium of having to manually flee battles several times per minute.

While I’ve always frowned upon the Dragon Quest-esque first person viewpoint variant of JRPG battle systems, I must admit the absence of character animations here certainly speeds battles along. Enemy and player turn outcomes are reported in text messages that scroll just as fast as the player specifies in the options menu, so it’s quite possible for full encounters to finish in a few tens of seconds. Enemies are represented by static artwork and spell animations execute very quickly, so a sense of lightning-fast momentum underlies the battle system at all times.

Judging from screenshots alone, I predicted I would find Ash‘s aesthetic presentation incredibly underwhelming — and I couldn’t have been farther off the mark in my suspicions! Getting the negative out of the way first: the game’s environment design is cringeworthy, a fact enforced by squared-off graphical tiles that make transitions jarring. True, that’s exactly what players’ eyes had to absorb while they played the earliest JRPGs over a decade ago, but it’s especially disappointing here because the sprites – while squat and limited in animation – are crisp and packed with just as much detail as possible for such small characters. Fetching portraits accompany the text boxes of every character from the lowest NPC on up, lending all the game world’s inhabitants a certain weight and significance that was missing in the genre years ago.

By far the most impressive aspect of Ash‘s aesthetic presentation is Nathan Winder’s score, which can’t be described without using the words “simply gorgeous.” It’s loaded with memorable organ and piano tracks that inject a palpable sense of atmosphere into each environment and pump grand excitement into the battles. They’re a superb contrast to the space-saving jingle-length tunes that accompany many an Action RPG in the iOS library. It’s difficult to overstate how integral the score is in compensating for shortcomings the discerning player might sense on Ash‘s graphical side. Don’t take my word for it — check it out for yourself on SRRN Games’ website, where it’s available for free download!

iFanzine Verdict: It’s not that Ash scores brownie points merely for catering to the retro crowd; it shines because it captures something that’s been in scarily short supply in mobile RPGs, and that something is a healthy focus on quality narrative. While SRRN Games’ maiden voyage into the genre has broken little new ground on the gameplay side, the team has executed Ash‘s user interface and gameplay systems very competently – gamers looking for challenge will especially enjoy its battle system. It’s almost scary to think about what SRRN Games could accomplish with a little more graphical spit polish and a more adventurous attitude toward varying the player’s experience.

Enjoy the review? Find the game on iTunes! And if you’re reading this on Black Friday, pick it up for free!