Cardinal Quest

Title: Cardinal Quest
Platform Played On: iPad
Release Date: June 8, 2012
Date Played: June/July 2012
Time Played: 2 hours
Completed (Y/N): N/A
Score: 4/5

Opinion:
Roguelike.... it is one of the oldest video game genres. It is the precursor to a lot of modern RGSs such as Diablo and Torchlight.

Lets first establish what a roguelike is. In a typical roguelike you make your way through randomly generated floors of a dungeon, making your way as deep as you can. Once you die you are dead, it is perma-death. Seeing as each floor is randomly generated you never know what you will encounter, which makes each playthrough unique. You never know what items you will get or creatures you will run into. The first game to utilize these mechanics was named "Rogue," hence the name "Rogue-Like."

You start Cardinal Quest by picking a class (Fighter, Thief, Wizard). From that point forth it is you exploring the floors looting treasures, fighting creatures and looking for the way down, to find more loot and kill more creatures. The deeper you go the more powerful you get by discovering new spells, potions and items. Seeing how this is a roguelike, everything is randomly generated each time and therefore the experience is unique to each playthrough.

Cardinal Quest does a good job inventory management. Anytime you pick up a piece of armor that is better than what you are wearing it gets auto equipped, same thing goes for the weapons. This lets you enjoy the exploration aspects without the need to sift through menus comparing weapons and armor. You are still going to equip what is best, why waste time comparing stats?

Cardinal Quest has a very cool pixelated art style. The animations are smooth and the graphics overall are very charming. It gives a sense of playing an old school RPG from the early 90's with all of the benefits of the modern video game conventions on a device in the palm of your hand.

Overall I think Cardinal Quest is the best roguelike I have ever played. It creates a great balance between management and adventuring. The difficulty seems to be not as frustrating as other roguelikes and it is all presented with great looking visuals. Roguelikes never end and are always unique experiences, and therefore are a good genre to have in everyone's library. I definitelly recommend Cardinal Quest to all dungeon crawler lovers.