Masquerade: The Faceless - First impressions

During my first hour spent in Gamevil's Masquerade: The Faceless, I haven't had to play the game once. It's very happy to do everything for me, like all of the other auto-RPGs.

That's not to say it's just a carbon copy of what came before it though. For a start, it's a sidescrolling hack 'n slash rather than a turn-based RPG, which this mobile genre pretty much builds its foundations on.

The combat animations and overall presentation is super slick as well. Your character dashes about the screen with panache, activating skills, juggling enemies, and generally being the human equivalent of a wrecking ball - at least with Reaper, the skillful, scythe-wielding warrior I chose to play as.

You can also choose to play as Lambast, a fantasy version of the Hulk, and Phaedra, a dual-sword wielding ninja. There's a disappointingly low amount of character customisation here. You pretty much just pick your character and that's that - aside from equipping new gear which offers an alternative look.

And they're gender-locked which is a bit too archaic for my tastes.

Now, you can switch between these characters at any moment - though your level, equipment, and stamina (the energy system) don't transfer over. This means you essentially have to start the game over with each character - or at least pick up where you left off - but it gives you way more to do. Particularly when you run out of stamina on your main character.

So what do you do? Well, it pretty much boils down to a bunch of different variants of the same thing - hacky, slashy violence. You can fight against the AI in Adventure (the story mode), Legion Battles (a race against time to get the most kills), Daily Dungeon (as it sounds), and World Boss mode (in which you fight alongside other genuine players who don't appear visually).

Then there's PvP in the Arena, which is either laughably easy or impossibly hard. You're not winning or losing based on skill, it's purely based on your gear, skills, and level.

It's not really a problem that the gameplay is pretty much just endless combat - particularly when it's as flashy and entertaining as this. But when the optimal way to play is on autopilot, you begin to question what the point in it all is.

Tune in tomorrow for further impressions.