Misty Continent: Cursed Island

It's not often that a game comes along that looks so good you forget it's running on a mobile device. Misty Continent: Cursed Island is one of those games. From the moment you start the game, it's a visual treat. After the opening cinematic sets the stage for the story, you can't help but take in the sights. Character portraits in dialogue windows look almost alive down to hair that blows in the wind. And even at its small scale, the world packs in intricate details that almost leaps off the screen, from the shipwrecked ruins floating in the sea and shining strongholds that are the centerpiece of your outposts all the way to the different colors and sizes of plant life and the ripples of the ocean wave. Simply put, the game looks amazing.

Of course, eye candy can only take you so far. Beneath all of that, there has to be a game worth playing as well. For the most part, Misty Continent: Cursed Island succeeds in this regard. It's a pretty standard strategy game, rarely deviating from the genre's established formula of gathering resources, upgrading buildings, and training units before moving to the next unexplored section and starting the cycle all over again. Unfortunately, the game does still fall into some of the trappings of its free-to-play foundation too. After the opening chapters get you acquainted with the basics of gameplay, you quickly hit a wall of waiting for tasks to finish without spending precious in-game currency to speed things along. Unless you start to shell out a substantial amount of real world cash, you're held back by the in-game clock. And even though the game encourages you to set out beyond the boundaries of your own outpost to interact with other player around the globe, there's really not much to do socially outside of battling. None of this is to say that the game isn't worth playing. On the contrary, it's a lot of fun. But if you're not willing to keep paying a premium price, it's fun that has to be measured in bite-sized chunks.