Kyle’s Quest 2 Review

Back a few years ago when I was carrying around a Palm Pilot (and even when I had a Treo phone) gaming wasn’t the best, but there were a few highlights. One of them was Kyle’s Quest. The game wasn’t much, but it was great on that device and there were so many variations of it that you had to look at the whole body of work and be amazed by what had grown from the simple game.

Now that I have an iPhone and mobile gaming has gone to a whole different level I was intrigued to see KQ make it’s way to the App Store. I was in no way surprised, unless you count wondering why it didn’t happen sooner, but I was intrigued. Could this little game that had such a following make that kind of impact on this device? Let’s see.

The game itself is a major throwback to the first role playing games on the NES, SNES and the Gameboy. It depends on how old you are as to whether or not you would call that “classic” or “a game with crap graphics”. I’m in the “classic” mold.

As Kyle you have to tackle different quests (and thus the name of the game comes clearly into view) and everything works like the old RPGs of that era. You move around, talk to people, buy stuff, find stuff, kills stuff. You know. It’s we’re talking the first Final Fantasy games.

And, in truth it does it all as well as it’s supposed to do it…

That means that graphically you’re not going to get blown away. The look of the game is good, but it’s nothing that will make it the first game to show your friends when they want to see your device. The exact same thing can be said about the music. It does its job.

The controls are where I had a bit of a problem. Back in the Palm days you would tap where you wanted to go… and, that’s what you do here. I was okay with it on the Palm, but it’s a bit of a bother here. The touch screen is so good why are they wasting are time with this? Just let us put are fingers down and move them around and make Kyle follow it? I hear that a dpad is coming so that will at least help that.

You also have to tap everyone you want to talk to in the game. Not a real deal breaker, but it does start to get a little annoying with all the tapping on the screen. Maybe when the other controls are fixed that won’t seem like so much of a bother.

Where the game makes it’s mark is in the quests, or stories. The game comes with 20 different ones and you can make it through them in about an hour or so each if you get lucky. That’s a lot of game play for a buck and there are more on the way. The game is also getting ready for people to design their own levels with a free tool that’s coming out. This will make the game exactly like it was on the Palm and soon you’ll have hundreds of different user created variations to play.

On one hand I’m really happy with the game. It’s exactly like I remember it from the old days. But on the other I’m a little sad that it wasn’t beefed up for its arrival to the App Store. While I can see that it’s going to have people talking and fan clubs springing up, I’m a little bothered that they didn’t aim higher right from the start.

But I guess that’s a poor attitude on my part. Many of you will be joining Kyle on his quests for the very first time and I know that you’ll have a good time with them. There’s a lot of talk about “old school” this and “retro” that… but Kyle’s Quest is the “OG” of retro gaming. Grab a sword and join the party.

The Good

Good Replay Value
Basic Old School Play
Coming Soon: Design Your Own Levels!

The Bad

Not the best controls (Though A DPad Is “Coming”)
Seems Like It’s Just A Start (Which Could Be Good)

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Tags: Kyle's Quest iPhone, Kyles Quest, Kyles Quest 2, Kyles Quest Levels, Review

Category: Games