Arenas, Trial of Valor

Strategy role-playing games can be complicated. Having to wade through screens and screens of stats, explanations, and inventories comes with the territory.

The best SRPGs, however, are the ones that provide a little give and take. I'm willing to sit down and learn the ropes of a game if it offers a helping hand, with useful tutorials, room for experimentation, and a well-designed interface.

Unfortunately, thanks to a poor interface and lots of confusing explanations riddled with spelling mistakes, Arenas, Trial of Valor never manages to hit the mark.

The underlying premise is promising. First. you create a character, with tons of different stats to play with and streams of magic and weapons to try out.

Then you connect to an online server and battle people online, earning cash for your efforts and using that to build your character up even further.

The sheer number of options is staggering, with screens and screens of items to combine. Finding the exact mix that works best for your fighting style could potentially keep you entertained for hours.

On the battlefield, the action is turn-based, with players dodging around and striking blows against their opponents. With the right amount of commitment, it's possible to have some great battles.

You most likely won't manage to get that far, however, since Arenas is so hideously designed and horribly presented.

From the very beginning you have text thrown at you with no explanation as to what you're doing. For example, while creating a character you're asked to assign lots of numbers, but the game doesn't explain what all of these actually signify.

You're then presented with streams of dull text on every screen you visit. Hold down your finger on an option for two seconds and even more text will fill your lungs.

Even if you're able to memorise and make sense of all this, the game has no method for teaching your the ropes properly, and instead throws you straight into battle. You'll spend a good portion of time simply hitting options and hoping they do something, as if the whole game is in Japanese.

It's incredibly confusing, and it doesn't help that the text is littered with spelling mistakes, making it even more difficult to comprehend.

To top it all off, Arenas is presented very bizarrely.

Characters appear to be standing in Subbuteo stands, text is bog-standard MS-DOS font, and animations are kept to a minimum. Overall, it's not exactly a looker.

If you can stand how poorly designed Arenas, Trial of Valor is, you may well break through and discover a deep and challenging title.

There are, however, other SRPGs on the iPhone that do a far better job.