Easy to play and not bad fun...
After the first level, the entrance hall, you’ll come across Gaiya, a benevolent dragon living at the top of the mountain who offers to help you out in return for precious gems stolen from her by the invading army. Her lair also acts as a central hub to the levels though progression through these is still linear. On completing a level you activate a fire portal which allows you to jump back to Gaiya’s lair and from there jump to any completed level.Your friendly dragon is also your trading point where you can upgrade your weaponry, armour and potions by using the cash you find in the dungeons. You’ll also find a mass of extra bits and bobs that, other than being utterly useless, seem to have no bearing on the game and, seeing as you can’t sell to Gaiya, are of bugger all use. Luckily, there’s no encumbrance limit so you can carry as much stuff as you like.
The actually dungeoneering is dead easy, the shoulder buttons strafe left and right, the d-pad moves you back and forth and rotates you and the a,b,x,y buttons handle the combat and inventory options. Of course, you can just do what I did which is to use the stupidly easy interface on the touchscreen to handle these and then just mash the x button into oblivion during a fight.
To help you on your stroll around each level there’s a very handy auto-map which, in the early levels and some of the later levels, is sort of counterproductive as it often gives away the location of hidden and secret areas. I don’t want to sound like an RPG purist here but showing the start of a corridor off the main room when there’s clearly a wall there is something of a give-away, yes? That said, even though I’ve completed Orcs and Elves I’ve still yet to find all the secret areas on every level… bugger.
Combat is similarly simple in pretty much boiling down to picking the right weapon to deal with the enemy at hand. You can go for a ranged shot using the wand, or later on the crossbow, to whittle down your enemy’s health and then opt for something a bit meatier once they’re close up. Though the selection of weapons is limited there is an element of tactics needed as some weapons cause more damage to certain monsters than others.
