Battle Slots

To be honest, the term "slot-machine/RPG" was one I never imagined I'd see. As a sucker for the "anything/RPG" ♣ hybrid, I was incredibly curious if this particular combination title would work. As it turns out, Phantom EFX's Battle Slots ♣ does an admirable job of mashing these seemingly-disparate genres together. While it lacks some of the polish and addictiveness of ♣ the best RPG hybrids, Battle Slots nonetheless hits more often than it misses.The premise is forgivably absurd, even by fantasy ♣ standards, as the writers work to shoe-horn an all-powerful magical Battle Slot Machine into a more familiar tale of demon ♣ invasion and all-around monster infestation. It seems that the main character has stumbled upon the mysterious artifact about the same ♣ time that an upsurge in monster attacks begin. Driven by Fate, and armed with the powerful Slot Machine, players set ♣ across the world to track down and defeat the Ultimate Evil befalling the land.What follows is quite typical fare for ♣ these hybrid-type games--players traverse a main-world map, stopping occasionally to do one-on-one battle with the local fauna and flora. As ♣ expected, these slot-machine battles are the heart of the game. The slot machine itself consists of a 3x5 set of ♣ reels, with about two-dozen pay lines. Various symbols determine the pay-outs. Red symbols generate physical attack points, while blue symbols ♣ generate magical ones. Players build up pools of these red and blue points, and spend them on various attacks and ♣ abilities. In addition, players can also earn experience and money from the green and gold symbols, respectively.As the game progresses, ♣ players earn bigger and better symbols to install into their slot machines. Additionally, players also earn increasingly-powerful spells and abilities, ♣ and soon must tailor their skill selection to fit into the limited skillbook that can be brought into battle. The ♣ slot machine is also quite customizable--as players determine their style of play, they can set sliders to change the relative ♣ proportion of symbols appearing. Players can choose all blue symbols focusing only on magical attacks and abilities, all red symbols ♣ focused on all physical moves, or some mix of the two. Also, a similar slider balances the experience/gold symbol ratio, ♣ requiring players to decide whether they'd like faster advancement or additional money for goodies.Besides direct-damage attacks, spells and skills can ♣ also manipulate the slot machine itself. Mostly this involves extra spins, tying up enemy spins, adding wild symbols, or stealing ♣ symbols from the opponents. Finding the right balance between damage and manipulation effects is quite enjoyable, but once that "perfect" ♣ setup is discovered, the game almost becomes too easy. Toward the end of the game, I found a build that ♣ netted me more than 9 wins out of every 10 battles. Unless I happened to hit an extremely harsh string ♣ of luck on the spins, I was crushing enemies with almost laughable ease.This customizability is surprisingly deep, and players can ♣ change focus easily in a single playthrough. This is both a blessing and curse--while players won't regret less-than-optimal character layouts ♣ in a given game, there is less drive to start a new game to try out a different character design. ♣ A large part of what I like most about RPGs of this sort is the character development, and the ability ♣ to change everything on the fly detracts from that.Battle Slots isn't the most impressive-looking game, but it's on par with ♣ many of the casual-style titles. Likewise, the music and sound effects are unobtrusive and forgettable. The writing is very tongue-in-cheek, ♣ and hits more often than it misses, often being mildly amusing and worth a pause before clicking through. I did ♣ grow quickly tired with the battle banter, but since it was only text I could easily ignore it.The gameplay itself ♣ was quite smooth and simple. All the various town, store, and customization screens were easily navigable, and changing out a ♣ slot machine layout was a breeze. Battle itself was simply a matter of hitting "spin" until enough mana/attack points had ♣ been earned, then clicking one of the available spells. As a slightly-more-than-casual RPG, Battle Slots hits the right note in ♣ ease of play.For those looking for a casual game with an unusual premise, Battle Slots certainly fits that bill. While ♣ it neither wowed me with its style, nor sucked me in with a "one more spin" addiction, I did enjoy ♣ much of my time spent at the reels. This is one of the more unusual titles I've found lately, and ♣ is worth a peek at the demo at the very least.