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Cryptract isn’t a title that rolls off the tongue, but that hasn’t stopped the game finding a massive audience in its native Japan, where its full name is Genjuu Keiyaku Cryptract. After four long years, the mobile version of Cryptract has finally arrived in the West. Was it worth the wait?

For the most part, yes. But before we get into the whys and wherefores, here’s the backstory.

Cryptract sees you playing as the ruler of a fantasy kingdom that has been attacked by a mystical creature and its army of minions. You’re left with no choice but to take up arms and send this beast back to the underworld (or wherever it came from).

That means getting into an endless succession of turn-based battles with squads of monsters. There are campaign battles, side missions, a tower, beast battles, and much more, all of it conforming to the same tripartite format.

The combat itself is equally familiar. You can take up to four units into the field, plus a friend – a character borrowed from another player’s army to lend a bit of extra firepower. Each unit has a basic attack and a skill, which can be an attack or something more wholesome, like healing or discovery.

There’s also an auto button, and you’ll spend most of the game with this button activated, since the game’s AI can handle combat perfectly well for the most part.

Instead, you’ll concentrate on strategy – creating the strongest possible party using the best possible combination of units. You can have up to ten parties ready to deploy, all of them suited to different battlefield conditions.

Winning is not just a matter of stuffing your strongest, starriest, most levelled-up units into a party. Each unit also has an elemental attribute, such as wood, fire, and water, and these interact with each other in different ways. Fire beats wood, water beats fire, and so on.

To give yourself a tactical advantage you need to ensure that the party you send into battle has the right combination of elemental attributes to defeat your opponent. As the saying goes, never bring fire to a water fight.

The Good

While it’s not exactly groundbreaking on the gameplay front, Cryptract does what it does very well. The gacha system is fair, there’s always a battle you can win from the huge selection of missions available, and your progress through the campaign always feels steady.

But Cryptract’s undisputed ace card is its well-written and impeccably localized text. The campaign and side missions are all introduced by segments of an unfolding narrative in which characters have inner lives, anxieties, and motivations. You carry these with you into battle.

The side missions in particular add an extra layer to Cryptract, padding out the main story with neat little subplots that exist not to change the course of events by to add color and depth to the gameworld and place your actions in a larger context.

The presentation is in a storybook style, too, with entirely 2D graphics and fairly modest animation Cryptract is about words at least as much as pictures, which is refreshing.

The Bad

There’s relatively little in the way of innovation in the world of fantasy RPGs with gacha mechanics, and Cryptract is no exception to this rule. Over time the game can become grindy, with you having to watch battle after battle in order to earn orbs to summon new units.

Cryptract is better balanced than most, and there’s plenty of fun to be had in tweaking your parties to try and get through a particularly rough mission or beast battle, but grind will get you in the end.

And if you’re a fan of technically impressive 3D RPGs you may find yourself underwhelmed by Cryptract’s deliberately modest presentation.

The verdict

There are plenty of gacha-powered fantasy RPGs to choose from, and in gameplay terms it can be hard to tell them apart. Cryptract makes an effort with a strong sense of narrative and exceptional localization.

It’s a well-balanced RPG, too, thanks no doubt to its years of playtesting in Japan. If you’re on the lookout for a new gacha RPG, Cryptract is a solid prospect. It may look modest, but it’s polished in the right ways.

8.1

OVERALL

Replayability 8

Game Controls 8.2

Graphics 8.4

Sound/Music 8.1

Gameplay 8

FREE

Cryptract

lionsfilm

Source link: http://appadvice.com/reviews

If your New Year’s Resolution is to get your finances in shape, Mint will help you get the job done in spades.

It’s an incredibly useful personal finance tool that provides all the information about your money that you need to budget effectively and make smart money choices.

We’ve been using it for awhile and we’re quite impressed with its capabilities and polish.

Features:

The full name of Mint, by Mint.com, really says it all: Mint: Personal Finance & Money.

It’s actually under the Intuit umbrella so to get started you’ll need an Intuit account, which you may have from one of their other products TurboTax or QuickBooks. If not you’ll have to create one.

Unfortunately you’re forced to provide a phone number. In our opinion, you should be able to use the app with just email alerts. Yes, text alerts are faster, and arguably preferred, but giving out your mobile number should not be a requirement, it should be an option.

Once you’re up and running, however, the app is a treasure trove of insights into your financial health as well as personal money-saving tips known as MintSights™.

To use this app, you simply enter in your bank account information, credit cards, bills and investments, while also inputting data regarding your current spending trends in various categories as you see fit to mark them (food, gas, rent, etc.).

This process helps the app to know your financial health with respect to your income and budget.

It’s at this point that you can appreciate the polish of this app. With just a swipe you can quickly see that status of your accounts including account balances and individual transactions.

We also appreciate the ease with which you can track your credit score. This is an important barometer of your financial health and Mint puts it front and center. It also provides free credit monitoring along with fraud and identity alerts, a great perk.

Appearance and Layout:

“Simplistic” is probably the best way to describe Mint’s appearance. There are no frills to this app–just a very clean, basic, and very effective user interface.

The question, though, is not whether or not a personal finance app is flashy, but rather can it be designed to be simple to use so you can do what you have to do accurately and quickly and move on with your life.

The answer with Mint is a resounding YES!

The visual appeal of the app, and especially visualizing the data you’ve entered and the app’s summary of your health and net worth is just what you want.

Keeping a UI clean and simple when there’s lots of data behind it is not easy. It takes work and creativity and that’s just what was done.

Value:

As mentioned earlier, this app currently is free through the iTunes Store. It’s a full featured personal financial app that offers ease-of-use, interesting insights and a few tools not featured in some of the other more popular, budget-focused apps.

Overall, Mint: Personal Finance & Money is a job well done and gets an enthusiastic endorsement from us.

Mint requires iOS 10.0 or later. Compatible with iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and Apple Watch

TheiPhoneAppReview’s rating:

Source link:https://www.theiphoneappreview.com/2020/01/mint-iphone-app-review/