Osiris Legends

Egyptian mythology is certainly a fresh theme for a role-playing game. We've beaten enough Greek gods and lived through enough Norse apocalypses and wielded enough swords with vaguely Japanese names.

Osiris Legends at least offers up something rather new, giving us a universe filled with sun gods, scarabs, Pharaoh dynasties, and tasty root-words like Isis. Even with its sci-fi twists and dark magic, this exclusively iPhone adventure provides a unique theme to explore.

It's a shame, then, when so much else about the game feels tired and outdated. This is a by-the-numbers RPG, with character archetypes we've seen a million times before, and storylines that we've breezed through many times in the past.

Yes, it's a coming-of-age story for a scrappy kid and his annoying troupe of prepubescent friends. Yes, it's a fight against corruption from your one-time allies. And, yes, it's down to you to collect a bunch of shiny objects (soul-crystals, in this case) before you can go head-to-head with the game's almighty baddy.

Cue miles upon miles of script, drenched in expository lore, tiresome melodrama, and childish humour. The endless dialogue between an unlikeable cookie-cutter cast got so tedious, bogging down the game's pace to a near standstill, that I ended up skipping entire chunks just to move the game along.

There isn't a whole lot to look forward to once the chatter stops. Osiris Legends features linear levels for you to stumble through, basic sidequests to fritter away your time and some of the worst controls to ever be committed to an app.

The story goes that this game was once in development for PSP and Wii, but that's still no excuse for lazily slapping a virtual D-pad on the screen. It's one of the worst fake-controllers I've ever used, too, requiring your thumb to be on that corner at all times and stopping our hero - Julian - dead if your meaty digit strays a pixel out of reach.

Obviously, much of the game takes place on the battlefield. As you run around the game's various ugly areas, touching skin with a nuisance baddy will send you and two computer-controlled team members of your choice into an arena.

This action-heavy combat system is fast and frenetic, though ultimately fiddly and brainless. The main move is to wail on a monster by bashing at the 'attack' button, and then darting away from danger by either side-stepping or somersaulting away. This gives you an opportunity to launch into a powerful counter attack.

Sounds exciting, but this handy one-two-punch is so frequently used that it quickly becomes tired and repetitive. Osiris soon turns into an endless procession of button-bashing, followed by a dodge and then another round of button-bashing.

In fact, you'll do it so often that it becomes almost automatic. As if running on muscle memory alone, your thumbs will automatically complete battles for you while your neglected brain decomposes into a thick mulch.

Every now and again you'll need to rely on some special attacks. As foes get tougher you'll want to consider long-range attacks like 'mana arrow', and HP leachers like 'health drinker'. Also, potions top up your health and magic levels. It adds a little more depth to what is otherwise an tiresome slog of a battle system.

Not that any of that really matters, because it's so often impossible to see what's going on in the first place. The fighters are so small, and the camera is so buggy. Junky pop-up detritus obscures your view, and between your three-man team and often a six-or-so strong crew of enemies the action chokes any chance of seeing what's going on.

It's not nice kicking a game when it's down, but it's worth noting that Osiris Legends suffers from glitchy graphics, a camera that often clips outside the arena (completely obscuring your view), unbalanced audio, horrendously repetitive sound clips, and pop-up save screens that take forever.

Osiris Legends is an ambitious game, and that should be commended. Making a fully-fledged RPG exclusively for mobiles and going up against the likes of Chrono Trigger, Ravensword, and Zenonia takes some serious guts. But it can't get a free ride just for being bold.

This is an unremarkable RPG, plagued by bugs and glitches and an inflated price tag. It's a game that's focused on fast combat - where the combat is repetitive and ultimately not engaging - and a gripping story - where the story is generic and plainly uninteresting.