The good: Nice graphics with bright colors and buildings that pop out at you. Basic crafting system, not overly complicated. Plenty of quests. Open world.The bad: Would be much better on an iPad, the buttons are so tiny that they’re hard to hit. Combat feels over simple without many strategic elements. Text trees almost all seem to lead to the same result, regardless of what’s said. Overt political bias of developers in storyline. Minimal differences in three character classes. The status and menu bars block the screen enough to significantly detract from the pretty graphics. The characters look small as little ants, if you zoom in, it remains fixed on your main character so it’s tough to zoom in and just focus on things unless he’s near them. The main character seems empty, hollow, unrelatable, boring, even in his picture. I did win the game, but never felt a huge amount of satisfaction. It would have been better with a little bit more freedom to change the outcome of quests, more text trees with varying outcomes, more strategy in combat, more variety of the classes, and an interface that better suited iPhones without teeny buttons. Just to name a few things. Probably an option for less experienced RPG fans who are looking for a simpler experience and have an iPad.

Let's be honest here: most mobile games are terrible, as they are either shabbily veiled money-grabs or a repetitive game mechanic with pretty graphics. And, while Ember is neither of these (thankfully), it fails to deliver on its potential and fairly high reviews from legitimate gaming sites. The issue is this: the game is generic. While I have no qualms with developers leaning on literary tropes, archetypes, tried and true gaming mechanics, and familiar art styles, Ember regularly draws from those fantasy and gaming wells, but ends up only being adequate. The story fails to be compelling and the fighting mechanics are, at best, good enough. Its claim of being an RPG is accurate only in the sense that it cannot be cleanly labeled as a game within other genres, as it does lip service to characterization, consequential choices, gear and equipment, and skill progression. Perhaps the best way to describe Ember is to compare it to a lukewarm drink; it neither satisfies on a hot summer day nor on a cold winter night. With that said, because of the dearth of games that can even be casually categorized as RPG on the mobile platform, Ember might be worth your while. It does scratch the surface of RPG elements, is somewhat lengthy (15+ hours depending on play style), and is reasonably priced without micro transactions. Still, regardless of the platform, an OK game is still an OK game. I'd recommend other mobile RPG games to you; sadly, however, other than BG 1 & 2 and some classic Bio games, there might not be any.

To start I must give kudos to developers who poured their hearts into this passion project. As a gamer I can immerse myself into their world and feel the meticulous details. Great character design, landscape, music, voice recording, and effects. Thank you for a wonderful game. Now comes the "BUT", and this bit of irate is magnified by the perfection in every other aspect so far I have experienced. The blemish lies in the dialogues and literature of the world. If only the developers hired writers with higher proficiencies the game would be complete. The writing style is of a modern teenager's attempt being a bard or historian which breaks the immersion. And the protagonist sounds less like a legendary warrior and more of a pleading child. I only point it out because this would otherwise have been a standard bearer for iOS isometric RPGs. Hope to see more from developers in the future, and a writing quality on par with Baldur's Gate.

For those of us who love to complain that it's all freemium garbage on the app store (which I'm exceedingly guilty of myself), THIS is the type of game to stay our whining for a good little while. Baldurs gate type interface and combat, yet much, MUCH more noob-friendly - without feeling "dumbed down." We got spoiled in the early days of ios with decent games for a dollar... those days are long gone. But even then, we didn't have quality like this. 10 bucks is still a STEAL for this caliber of program, as it's easily a 30 dollar game on any other platform.If we don't buy these kinds of games and support these devs, eventually no one will make them at all (even if it's a pc port). Show em there's a market and let's get more great stuff like this on the app store.