Pathfinder Adventures

Some tabletop games work as digital adaptations and some don't; unfortunately, this one often falls into the latter category. It's not just that its single-player approach waters down the fun -- it's that the game literally doesn't work, due to game-stopping bugs and an inconsistent interface.

Things start strong, with a stable full of interesting and varied heroes to choose from and a decent tutorial that touches on the gameplay's main points. The tutorial ultimately fails, though, by not giving you a host of important information you need to win the scenarios. Worse still, the obscure interface makes things even fuzzier by lacking the sort of feedback you need to understand either the controls or the terminology. The result? Players new to Dungeons and Dragons-styled games will likely get stuck mere minutes after starting. And if the inconsistent controls and unresponsive menus don't make that happen, the game-freezing bugs will. Simple things like dragging cards can force you to close and restart the game -- not the kind of suspense you want from an adventure. On the upside, the artwork's not bad, the story intervals are fun, and you can pick from a handful of different looks for each of your heroes. Nice as that is, chances are you'll wish you'd saved your money and gone with the free version.