Welcome to my first review of both Apple Arcade and Oceanhorn 2.
A Grand Adventure:
Oceanhorn 2: Knights of the Lost Realm, set a thousand years before the events of the first chapter, takes you on a magical journey across the vast world of Gaia, brimming with mythology and lore. A young Knight faces an impossible challenge, as Warlock Mesmeroth has returned with a formidable Dark Army. Will our hero be able to unite the Owrus, Gillfolk, and men in a fight for the fate of the world?
This time, you’re not alone
You will not be taking this journey alone. Trin, the granddaughter of Arcadia’s leader Archimedes, and Gen, a mysterious robot wielding an old samurai weapon, will join forces with you, and fight at your side against Mesmeroth’s Dark Army. Contextual commands will allow you to direct these allies into battle, or have them help you with the solution of the game’s most clever puzzles!
Fight, Solve, and explore
Bigger, better and packed with new features – Oceanhorn 2 is not only the best-looking adventure games on iOS, but it also builds a whole new experience on the shoulder of classic video games. Collect powerful items, wield the Caster Gun, solve the mysterious puzzles of the ancients and discover all that Arcadia and its neighboring kingdoms have to offer! Accept the challenge and become a true Hero.
Oceanhorn 2: Knights of the Lost Realm will release in September 2019 on Apple Arcade (iPhone, iPad, Apple TV and Mac), We played the iPhone version right after release with the Nimbus steelseries controller. As I wanted to play on a bigger screen than my iPhone 8, I used the good old trick of connecting my iPhone to the macbook Air and use the capture function of quicktime player, so I was able to play it on my 13 inch screen instead.
What I tried out, is quite the game. It looks fantastic and it plays great, but first I will give some information on what it is like to play on Apple Arcade. I purposely quit the game often and I was never forced to really replay parts of the game as it had frequent save points and even loading times were not disturbing. The game booted from scratch in around 15 seconds, which is quite nice considering how cool it looks.
Its size is 2,3 gigabytes which is on the larger side for a mobile game, supporting 14 languages and intended for 9+ as age requirement. It clearly supports the Nimbus controller and that makes it play very nicely. (controller obviously is no obligation!)
In true Apple style, we got frequent achievements displayed like the time I used a boulder to kill an enemy by rolling it off a downward pathway or when I hit the rolling attack. Sadly as this is also played on my iPhone, I was constantly getting notifications on my cats’ instagram. The non stop notifications that my @nevazhenya posts had been liked right after publishing a new pic, it was actually quite disturbing. Maybe there should be an option to disable notifications while playing an arcade game?
Now about Oceanhorn itself, this is such a great game. I have seen comparisons to Zelda windwaker and even Breath of the Wild, but personally I would not go that far. In itself, Oceanhorn is a great game that does come close to the aforementioned games’ gameplay, but it is its own entity on the game market.
The game reacts quite fine on iPhone and I was pleased with the way my Nimbus was able to control the game. Swinging my sword was fun though my biggest concern was the camera point of view. I thought that part reacted a little too slow for my liking though it was not that much of a bother.
Another thing I really disliked, the iPhone has a tiny screen for gaming and when I tried handheld mode, I was stuck with such a tiny little map of my surroundings and even on my macs screen, it was just a little bigger and not clear enough in my humble opinion. It also took me some time to get used to the item wheel and in my first few fights with that giant squid, I had potions but just ignored nipping one to reheal. Once I got past my dislike of the item wheel, I did easily beat the squid and moved on.
Now there are also some very fun sides to the game, I just decided to go negative first as I want to end this review on a positive note. The game looks damn impressive for a mobile game and with that free Apple Arcade month, everyone on IOS can basically try it out for free. Including many of the other games currently on offer. I wonder how many games will be offered eventually for Arcade as it offers a very low price point for the services you get.
Oceanhorn 2 is a game about exploration and fighting enemies and solving puzzles. It was fun to play and I look forward to play it natively on my mac instead of the iphone, sure my workaround does the trick for now, but I’d like to play it without any feeling of delays. Not that I noticed any real delays, but during one fight, I was unsure if that one missed swing of my blade was a little glitch or a delay.
In conclusion, Oceanhorn 2 did not fail to impress gamewise, just the small screen size of my iPhone did exactly do so. Playing it on the bigger screen was way more fun and once I got a hang of things, I was enjoying the game like I’d enjoy it on any other console. Oceanhorn 2 deserves all praise mechanically.
