Ravensword: Shadowlands Review

Bare-bones role-playing 

Porting a game to a different platform is difficult – something that works on one platform may need to be heavily adapted for another. But there are also conceptual difficulties, namely, that what may seem fresh and unique on one platform is generic to the point of coming off as uninspired on another. Such is the case with Ravensword: Shadowlands, a mobile role-playing game whose PC port recently landed on Steam. It feels like a game that attempted to bring as much of games like Skyrim or Kingdoms Of Amalur: Reckoning to tablets or phones, but now that it's actually on the same platform, Shadowlands feels redundant at best.

The core issue with Shadowlands is that it feels less like a complete RPG and more like the idea of an RPG. Most of the components expected in a role-playing
game are included, but they're all superficial, like they're there just to be there. The most obvious example is the plot, which goes through the motions of heroic fantasy: you play a heroic king's descendant with special powers and a destiny, sent on a quest to find a magic sword to stop a demon, etc, etc, etc. There's no dynamism or characterization to speak of; the bulk of the main quest is literally a wizard telling you which direction to travel in order to find the next piece of a magic artifact.

Combat is no more creative, though it is more competent. Ravensword: Shadowlands is a single-character action-RPG, playable from either first- or third-person perspective. Fighting is accomplished as simply as possible: left-click to attack, hold right-click to block, and press R to cast a spell or do a special attack. That's the rough extent of its depth, but happily, Shadowlands usually gets the rhythm of battle right. It becomes almost soothing to fight, recharge, and fight again... going through the motions of playing an RPG as it goes through the motions of being an RPG.

It helps a great deal that controls are responsive, and the animations fast and surprisingly robust. Swing a sword, kill a goblin, and it satisfyingly collapses in whichever direction the sword was swung. Though there is an element of damning with faint praise here: yes, the combat animations seem good, but that's primarily because non-player characters look and move like zombies. Occasionally it will show you an apparently gorgeous vista of castles, cliffs, and lakes, but that's largely because everything is sparse and bare when viewed up close. Of course, everything technical about Ravensword: Shadowlands seems better when you realize it was originally made for a phone or tablet. And yes, combat feels impressively competent and responsive for an indie RPG, but that's largely because recent similar games have been so poor.

The best-case scenario for Ravensword: Shadowlands might be to consider it as a budget RPG suitable primarily for people who cannot play better RPGs, because of… I don’t know, allergies? A really really old computer? But even there it falls short. While combat itself works on a moment-to-moment level most of the time, it falls apart too often because the progression system is too haphazard. There are huge random difficulty spikes, in large part because all the components that make up progression feel randomly added, like they're there just because they're supposed to be there, as opposed to actually making things more fun or complex or interesting.
For example, skill in using weapons or magic increases based on use, a typical RPG mechanic. But skills are so weak at lower levels as to make them essentially useless unless you go and fight the easiest enemies for a while; the epitome of the grind. Likewise, enemy difficulty seems to veer randomly between just right and virtually impossible, making it hard to tell if you need to go do some side quests to level up, or get new equipment. If it's the latter, well, it's off to go grind once again on easy enemies who drop the best items to sell. Worse, it's hard to tell because items have statistics publicized, but not in any context that makes them useful. What does defense rating actually do? Why is “weapon damage range” the only stat on a weapon, when time to attack varies so wildly between weapons? How much energy does a spell even cost?

Those systemic annoyances are backed up by a host of other small issues, like escape not closing menus, short enemies being difficult to target, or male-only character creation for no discernible reason. Combined with the lack of an interesting plot or RPG systems, it makes Ravensword: Shadowlands difficult to recommend. It may have been an amazing technical feat to adapt as much of an epic RPG as possible to mobile devices, but when ported to PC, that still leaves just half of a role-playing game.