In Inotia [2], from Com2US, you choose from one of five classes - Priest, Mage, Thief, Knight and Templar then begin your journey. Along the way you’ll have to do classic things like go kill 10 wolves for the villagers, find lost items, run fairly useless sounding errands and generally keep yourself busy so you can make money, hire mercenaries and get to other areas in the game.

While it seems like there are some game balancing issues in both single (Scenario) and multiplayer (Match up), the game is still fairly enjoyable. There’s plenty to do and see and if you’re a fan of games like Zelda and various other older RPG series, you’ll certainly find this to your liking.

The graphics in the game have a certain old-made-new feel to them. That means they’re certainly not winning any awards for innovation but they fit quite well with the rest of the game and help keep that nostalgic feeling alive. They are fairly detailed and visually-appealing and can draw you in rather quickly.

The same goes with the sounds. The same old-made-new approach was taken with sound as with graphics and while the combat sounds are a bit lacking they again bring back the old days of sitting for hours on the SNES playing Final Fantasy.

For controls you’ve got two choices, an on-screen D-pad or direct touch. Both are easy enough to use and it’s just a matter of personal taste. I switched between them from time to time and while direct touch is faster at times, it can be hard to tap a moving target. Really this generally won’t get you killed so it’s no major problem. With the D-pad controls you have a button to tap which will highlight on-screen enemies and, if you’re within range, will begin attacking them. The thing I don’t like is that it won’t move you into an attack position. With direct touch, you just touch the enemy or NPC and it will move you there and interact with them (or attack if necessary). Also, if you have ranged combat capabilities it won’t walk you right up to them but will begin attacking as soon as you’re in range. I also like the auto-attack nature of the game so you don’t have to repetitively tap an enemy to attack.

However, it’s not all perfect. The AI is terrible in that if you begin attacking an enemy they won’t always react and often you can kill them prior to their arriving next to you to fight (if they are without ranged attack). Also, if you set the phone down and are attacked your character will not automatically attack. Minor flaws (just don’t set the phone down). Also, if an enemy leaves and then re-enters your attack range, even though you have them targeted, it won’t continue to attack them.

In the game you can have a party of up to three and there are some minor AI controls in regards to the use of skill frequency and auto respond. But the main character will not generally auto attack something.

A major facet of RPG games is missing here, guided leveling. Instead they take an old school "you’ll get what you get and that’s that" approach in regards to statistics. But you can take an active hand in your skill set as you are awarded skill points when you level up and can choose which skills to learn or level.

The online portion of the game is simply arena-style combat and held no interest for me whatsoever. If you enter the arena and are unprepared you’ll die within moments as there is no acceptance of combat etc. There are world rankings and all that but I just found it unappealing and lacking overall. Now some form of co-op story mode would have been interesting.

Overall it’s a pretty good attempt at a retro-style RPG for the iPhone. The controls could use a multi-touch zoom function (tapping one gold piece on the ground is challenging at times) and some better AI but really, it’s quite a good game for the money.

Now I did just run into a frustrating bit of game mechanics. I finished a quest and went to collect the reward. I then got stuck because my inventory was full and I could not back out to clear inventory to finish the quest. So I had to reset the game losing unsaved progress. I believe I have the final beta version of the game and hopefully they have, or will soon, fix that (I notified Com2US about the problem). Oh and Gold takes up an inventory spot? Cheap! Also there’s no autosave which one would hope for when changing locations, so be sure to save often.