Rimelands brings dice-based combat, fun leveling, and great loot to the iphone. It's not deep, but it's solid.
Dice-Roll Based Combat is Solid: with abilities to improve with additional dice and re-rolls
Loot system allows for steady, and not-infrequent, Upgrades: And the few Dealers keep worthwhile inventory
Leveling Trees for Barbarian, Assassin, and Shaman are interesting and large enough to prevent easy mastery: Leveling happens frequently too
Crafting system is too expensive and too redundant to be worth utilizing
Dungeons involve too many "recycled" areas: Minimizes sense of discovery and atmosphere
The story feels too convoluted and isn't that compelling: Despite interesting mythology, too little is done to flush it out
- - - - -
Rimelands: Hammer of Thor is a recently released RPG for mobile devices (like the iphone) and figures to make great headway in a genre that is still uncluttered on mobile systems. While Rimelands is certainly an enjoyable game, due to its fun combat system and interesting character-trees, it does feel like Diceworks missed some golden opportunities that would've made Rimelands a clear choice for the iphone. Despite it's mis-steps, however, Rimelands has enough to offer the RPG fan to make it a worthy place to spend 10-20 hours of your time.
The world of Rimelands is a fascinating one. One-thousand years have passed since the great war and environmental disaster left the world covered in ice. As a result, humans hid underground for a millenium, surfacing recently only to find the "Fair Folk" had taken the humans' place. As an elf-like magical race, you can imagine the humans weren't overly pleased, and the years since then have been tumultuous between the races.
As Rose Cristo, you'll dungeon-crawl your way through a moderately-long adventure, traveling across the continent for various reasons, ultimately in connection with the legendary Hammer of Thor. Despite some compelling moments, which are far too long inbetween, however, not enough is done to make you care about Rose and her narrative. The interesting backstory stays firmly in the background, and far too many of the quests you'll partake in are disconnected from a meaningful purpose. Not to say that a story isn't being woven - it is, albeit slowly - but the locations, the sparse dialog, and your mission even up through the end feels very thin. It's unfortunate seeing how there ought to be a grand story to tell here, but it never really pans out.
Which is exactly why you'll play Rimelands for it's combat and character development instead. Combat takes place whenever you are near an enemy, and both offense and defense are determined by dice rolls. Each dice has an X (blank), a few Shields (Defense), a few Skulls (Attack), and a 2 Dot side (Double Attack). When attacking and attacked, you roll die to determine attack values and piercing damage, as well as blocking: roughly, one skull is equal to one shield for these purposes. Sine you have melee, ranged, and magic skills at your (and their) disposal, the number of dice you roll will depend on your skill in the area. So if you are being attacked by a ranged attack, and have specialized in ranged abilities, you will fare much better than vs a melee attack. At any time, you can use a mana point to re-roll during any turn (one offensive-defensive cycle), which will re-roll only the dice that aren't benefiting you. It's a great system that works quite well, is easy to play with, and always keeps chance within the gameplay (allowing you opportunities to take on tough opponents, and sometimes to get beat-down by weaklings).
As intimated, the leveling trees are also quite interesting. Each skill-****has 13 or more skills to unlock, in trees which are not strictly linear. Leveling also grants you bonus dice rolls for specific ****s, and other perks as well. Rimelands is also set up well such that you'll level often enough to keep you moving forward, especially as you'll constantly be faced with tough fight after tough fight. By the end of the game, while it's useful to have a few levels in each skill-**** piling levels into your chosen profession will pay off handsomely, with massive attack bonuses dealing incredible damage. It all pays off very well.
To boot, the loot system is great too. You'll constantly find new equipment (some great for your character, some not) like weapons, armor, and accessories at a rate that'll keep you hunting for every chest in the game. New loot frequently grants much stronger toys to play with. This is especially the case as you can switch any inventory item in the midst of combat with ease, such that if you're a magic user but out of mana, you can equip a set that will boost your ranged attacks and scrape by that way. If only Diceworks just allowed you to set up a few outfits in advance so switching on the fly took a quarter of the time! While there is a crafting system in place, you'll hardly use it. Sure, some of the schematics you'll find are certainly interesting, but given the great loot you can find just looking around, you'll do better just to skip that part.
Aesthetically, Rimelands does present some intriguing locations and does a lot with a little, but unfortunately it's usually just not enough. Environments are recycled endlessly, and dungeon layouts tend to be on the simplistic side. Despite a nice score (that could use some variation), Rimelands gives the player virtually no sense of discovery - a sad fact given the interesting mythos behind it all, but none too surprising given the pale narrative.
On the whole, however, Rimelands: Hammer of Thor is an enjoyable game. It's dice-rolling based combat and skill trees could certainly warrant a second play through, even if it feels like the same dungeon over and over (finding that amazing sword, when you're a magic-user, will certainly tempt you to anyway). Certainly worth a playthrough, and perhaps even more, Rimelands isn't a perfect game, but it's a fun and playable RPG on a system which still lacks for the genre.
7.9/10