Fearless Fantasy is Fantastic for the iFone (it was worth a shot)

I actually had my first look at Fearless Fantasy last year at E3, but it was on a PC so there wasn't much for me to talk about. But now that I've been able to play with a pre-release version of the iOS build, there's quite a bit for me to talk about.

The story so far has been every bit as weird and it seems on the surface, thanks almost entirely to the oddball characters. What's impressive is that it all works. It's not just silly for the sake of silliness. Okay, well, it might be but it's actually pretty funny, and not in a "so awful it's good" sort of way, either.

The incredibly weird visuals struck me as a little off-putting at first, but once I got to see everything in motion it became very endearing. A lot of these enemies behave in extremely strage ways that you might not expect, and many of the combat animations are a combination of cool and surreal.

Combat mechanics and overall sructure are what really make Fearless Fantasy stand out on iOS, though. The story is broken up into several individuals levels, which are themselves made up of a set number of encounters. These encounters can be played (and replayed) on one of three different difficulties, and as you'd expect the rewards go up as the challenge increases. It's not just that enemies absorb and deal more damage, though - as you move from Casual through Normal and eventually on to Veteran the combat itself will get harder, with more complicated inputs required for both attacking and defending.

But oh, the combat. It's easily my favorite part of Fearless Fantasy so far and almost as easily my favorite approach to combat out of any iOS RPG I've played. When an enemy attacks, you'll have to perform a sort of mini-game where you'll be tapping on circles as the rings surrounding them close in or swiping through arrows in a specific pattern. The thing is, the harder the difficulty the more mobile these symbols are - to the point where you'll need to start familirizing yourself with the types of attacks most enemies like to use if you want to avoid failing to block.

Attacking works much the same way as defending, only if you mess up you deal less (or no) damage. What's great is that as each of the three characters gains more powerful abilities, they'll be able to string together longer chains of attacks for even greater potential damage. It also means that the mini-games get more complex, creating a cool synergy between a character's actions on-screen and your actions... on-screen. Whatever, it works really well and it's cool.

Fearless Fantasy hasn't graced the App Store with its presence yet, but you can be certain we'll let you know when it does. This is definitely a mobile RPG to keep an eye on.