Emberfall Saga

Emberfall Saga is the kind of mobile RPG that clearly wants to be a console game and mostly gets away with it. The combat is turn-based, but positioning matters more than you'd expect — I lost a boss fight twice before I understood that where you stood changed which enemies could reach your healer.

The party building is the real hook. There are six classes, and the way skills chain together means two players can beat the same dungeon with completely different setups. I spent a full evening just respeccing and testing combos, which for me is the mark of a good system.

The writing is decent, the voice acting is patchy, and the map is bigger than it needs to be. But the core loop of fight, level, tweak your party, fight harder is deeply satisfying, and it never leaned on me to grind mindlessly.

What we liked

• Deep, flexible party building
• Combat where thinking beats grinding
• A campaign long enough to justify the download