Fantasy Raid: Diablo-like RPG Review

Mediocre Mayhem

A name like Fantasy Raid: Diablo-like RPG does not inspire too much confidence. It’s overly wordy and reads like the developers were trying to game the algorithm. The studio also released it in time to take advantage of the hype around Diablo Immortal. Thus, quite ironic that Diablo Immortal became the more shameless cash grab. While Fantasy Raid, also called Polygon Fantasy, might not scratch everyone’s itch for a hardcore mobile dungeon-crawler, it’s still a fun and much less predatory action RPG.

Don’t misunderstand, Alda Games’ action RPG is about as generic as the name implies. Fantasy Raid opens with soldiers from the Northern Empire attacking the player’s home village of Sword Town. Players soon learn that the Empire is searching for three magical swords used to defeat an ancient evil long ago. An Empire Mage wants to release said evil, and the player character needs to stop her. It is not a complex or remarkably fresh story and mostly seems to be reconstructed from stock fantasy tropes. If you’ve played a fantasy RPG, you’ve seen more interesting and better-written versions of the same concepts.

Swords and Sorcery

After a brief introductory cutscene, players choose between the Warrior, Rogue and Witch classes. The Rogue is relatively balanced with decent health and damage but only mediocre area of effect abilities. The Warrior, meanwhile, has excellent health but relatively poor damage and no significant capacity for crowd control. Finally, the Witch is a glass cannon with poor health but tremendous damage and a variety of powerful AOE attacks. Players can unlock additional classes with a rare resource called Hero Essence or buy them with real money.

I ended up choosing the Witch for my first playthrough, which proved to be the right decision. Fantasy Raid loves filling the screen with enemies, and her elemental explosions are excellent for clearing a room or escaping sticky situations. It’s also very satisfying to send a squad of Imperial soldiers flying with a well-placed fireball. However, I did start up a second campaign with the Warrior and was pleased to see that the melee-focused character is perfectly viable. Still, the Witch cleared each stage much more quickly than her sword-swinging counterpart.

In addition to attacking with a weapon, each character has nine unlockable Skills divided into Basic, Advanced and Ultimate categories. Basic Skills are usually different kinds of attack and have the shortest cooldown periods. Advanced skills include buffs and debuffs affecting the Hero or their immediate surroundings. These include everything from shields and stun effects to short-range teleport. Finally, Ultimate abilities are large, often screen-filling attacks that deal heavy damage to multiple targets. These have the longest cooldown period of the three, with some Ultimate Skills needing up to a minute between uses. Each character has three Basic, three Advanced and three Ultimate Skills at their disposal but can only equip one of each.

Just Okay

Combat itself takes place on a series of self-contained isometric levels. Fantasy Raid displays the character’s equipped abilities and basic attack on the right side of the screen. Meanwhile, players move their characters with a virtual joystick on the left. It’s a simple setup but gets the job done and is fairly responsive. However, I felt like the movement controls were sometimes a little floaty. The combat can also wear on you after a while as you wade through level after level of mostly interchangeable trash mobs. While battles can be fun, they can also get repetitive, and the developers didn’t do enough to make each encounter unique. While there were a few memorable locations, the whole game just bleeds together after a few hours.

Ultimately, Fantasy Raid is not a game that leaves much of an impression. The combat is fun at first but outstays its welcome, and the story is not engaging enough to make me want to power through it. Playing Fantasy Raid is not a painful exercise and there are plenty of worse games on Google Play. However, there are also plenty of better action RPGs on Google Play, and you might be better off playing one of them instead.