Pocket Kingdom
You're reading Mikko Saari's blog Life and opinions. This entry was written 01/ 5/2005, at 11:48.
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Pocket Kingdom is a weird game. The first time I tried it, I instantly agreed with most of the reviews I've read: the user interface is very bad. Most of the time is spent clicking through various menus. The flaws are very simple and it is obvious how to fix them.
First, stuff in the inventory needs to stack. It's bloody annoying to wade through several copies of each item when you need to fetch the last item on the list (which doesn't wrap around). Stacking items would make browsing the lists easier.
Second, buying and selling stuff should be made faster. For each item you buy or sell, you need to click twice. Nice, but not so when you need to buy, say, 10 copies. How about a possibility to buy or sell several copies at once?
Third, menu shortcuts would be sweet. N-Gage has lots of buttons, why use just two? If an interface could work on a four-button GameBoy, it's less than optimal on N-Gage. Placing shortcuts to different menus on the unused buttons would make playing the game faster.
Despite these grumbles, I've found Pocket Kingdom quite addictive. It's the default game in my N-Gage, the one I keep in when I'm not playing something else. The gameplay is designed well for mobile use: it is possible to spend just few minutes with the game, fiddling some aspect of one's kingdom or perhaps fighting a single battle. For longer sessions one can go on extended raids or perhaps try the human opponents on Arena. It works well and I've already spent a significant amount of time with the game, even if it's been just ten minutes or so at the time.
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