Waaaaaaaargh! Can a decades old board game make the transition to iPad — and is it worth more than five bucks of your money, plus in-app purchases?
Warhammer Quest: On the plus side
Warhammer Quest plays out like the boardgame did, minus all that fiddly dice rolling. If you’ve played the original (or, for that matter, any of the Heroquest games), you’ll know what that means; turn by turn strategy and combat within dungeon settings that feature plenty of Orks, Snotlings, Goblins, Trolls and other bitey surprises. It’s well animated, reasonably well explained for newbies and quite good fun to bash away at, with different strategies open to each of the character classes so that you clear the most ground with the fewest casualties possible.
Although in some case, the spoils may not be worth it.
One aspect that did concern me going into Warhammer Quest was the use of in-app purchases.
I’ve got nothing against in-app purchases as long as they make sense for both the developer and the gamer, which was why I was so particularly appalled by Tetris Blitz, for example. It’s totally fine if your game is free with revenue coming in via IAP, within moderation. Equally, it’s totally fine if your game isn’t free, and IAP opens up new content, as long as the already paid for part is substantial enough. Thankfully, this is the route that Warhammer Quest takes. The mighty adventurers of Team Sidrat (those who know why, know why) have put in more than half a dozen hours of playtime, and not once have I felt my progress stymied by lack of funds. Indeed, you could buy more gold if you were really time-crunched, but it’d only do you so much good, and I actually look forward to playing around with the other IAP characters.
Warhammer Quest: On the minus side
One of the game’s strengths is that the dungeons are randomly generated, but this is also something of a drawback, as you can sometimes end up in situations where you’re just constantly under random attack with no time to regroup or renew. That plays into the strategy aspect to a certain extent, but when you’ve been hit with your fifth wave of attackers without respite and fail a dungeon because of it, it can become irksome.
The developers have made one really weird choice when it comes to inventory management. You can access your inventory at any time, except when it combat, but you don’t do so via any kind of menu button. Instead, you do so by tilting your iOS device into a vertical orientation. That’s not that much of an issue for iPod Touch/iPhone users, but for the iPad, where Warhammer Quest otherwise shines in high definition, it’s quite irritating. Even just having a menu choice button would be a plus here.
There are still a few bugs to be ironed out. There’s a chance for random encounters as you move between dungeons, and in one case, my party was hit by a random rockslide. One character failed to evade, and ended up with a concussion. Except it wasn’t a concussion… it was, as per the screenshot below, a TALENT_CONCUSSION_NAME, something he had until I’d cleared the next dungeon.
Alex’s Verdict
Warhammer Quest’s asking price is $5.49. That’s not a heck of a lot of money overall, but it does stretch it towards the upper tier of game prices for mobile platforms, and that can be an issue for some, especially as the In App Purchases can swiftly send it north of ten bucks. If you’re a general strategy fan, or a Warhammer junkie, I’d say dive in and enjoy. If you’re just after a bit of fantasy ork-bashing action, there are plenty of other titles that pop up at cheaper price points that could well entice you more. That’s not to say that Warhammer Quest isn’t worth the money — I genuinely feel it is — but its asking price is comparatively high, and it’s not as though it’s got the only take on fantasy strategy for mobile devices.
Hi Alex,
What would you recommend ahead of this?
Depends what you’re after. My point in the conclusion is that those going in looking for, say, heavy RPG action might find it a little slow, while the random nature of the dungeons means that the strategy isn’t incredibly deep.
Plenty of good RPG/action titles for iPad; I’m still a big fan of Square’s output (but it, likewise, isn’t cheap), so Secret Of Mana is a good pick there. Gameloft’s Dungeon Hunter titles seem to go on sale every other week if you’re after a Diablo-style experience.
Hi ajm,
Knights of the Old Republic was just released on iPad, and though it’s twice the cost of Warhammer Quest upfront, it doesn’t feature in-app purchases and is one of the greatest games ever made.
Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition is another good choice if you’re looking for RPGs on your iPad.
If instead you’re looking for board games, then the iPad has dozens of good ones there that you might prefer to this as well. Ticket To Ride and Puerto Rico are both classics, and Catan is a safe one that just about everyone can enjoy.
I would also suggest you look into Fortune Street Smart. It’s a Square Enix game, and while it’s not optimised for iPad (it’s an iPhone game), it is hugely entertaining. Think Monopoly with a stock market.
Thanks guys, I grabbed KOTOR a couple of days ago – big fan of the original. Finding the movement controls pretty awkward but otherwise a solid port so far.
I guess what I’m looking for is a Baldurs Gate Lite – so maybe that would make it a sort of Diablo clone? Preferably something designed for touch screens.
I’ll check out the ones suggested so far.
Cheers
ajm
What Matt said — but I’d add Carcassonne to the board games list and perhaps Fargoal to the more strategy/RPG side of things.