“iOS games are not true games! How can they be? They’re a disgrace. It’s not hardcore.” Yeah, you hear people saying all sorts of things like this, but that’s not true, is it? When you look at an iOS game like Infinity Blade, you see visuals that were never before seen in a smartphone. When Chair Entertainment made that game, it wasn’t expecting it to take off, since we all know, “Only $1 games’ sell on the platform.” But no! It worked. People bought it in droves; people praised it in droves, and here we are, the sequel has landed and takes this innovative form of gaming to another level.

Let’s talk about the issues that plagued the first game before; linearity, lack of content, repetitiveness, and “The last boss is so hard, this is unfair!” sort of things. So is it the same case with Infinity Blade 2? Hell no. Chair Entertainment delivered here big time, and how. This is one of the most ambitious sequels I have ever seen, and this is also the reason why Apple supports it so much. It’s one of the defining titles for the platform.

The core gameplay is simple though, and Chair has added a nice but convoluted story here. You really won’t care about the story, let’s be honest. Terrible voice overs doesn’t do the game any favours as well. “Worker, I will free you” says the main protagonist when you are going to storm the castle. And after the you die, you can start again keeping all the experience and weapons and repeating this cycle till you defeat all the main bosses in the game. As I mentioned earlier, there is a story, but I didn’t pay much attention to it, because in these games, it’s better if you get straight to the action.

It’s a marvelous feeling when you go on a swiping frenzy and take out an enemy who is twice your size. The combat has been made slightly dynamic here, as you have plenty of options. You can dodge, cast magic, and execute power attacks and a lot more. Customization options are plenty, as you have a gigantic amount of weapons and armour to choose from. And rings! Who can forget that? Oh and gems. You know to boost your weapon and armour stats. The game starts of slowly as usual, after the events of the previous game, but I’ll let you figure out that part for yourself.

So the premise here is that, you have to clear a castle filled with a lot of enemies. It’s much bigger than Infinity Blade and a lot tougher as well. You can grab bags of gold by touching it, and even the treasures can be gained the same way. You get gold by defeating enemies and finding treasures, which you can use to buy weapons and other things. It’s sort of like an RPG, mixed with a classic action game. And you know what? I love them both.

The swiping part is extremely responsive on the iPad, as you would expect, and really enhances the gameplay. I found it an issue to dodge properly on the iPad, because of its size, but once I got the hang of it, it worked pretty well. But for the tougher enemies, I found it better to just blindly swipe the hell out of them. Patience, I have none. Some of the enemies require a lot of skill to beat though, so it’s better if you learn their attack patterns.

Visually, this is one of the best games on the iOS. Was there any doubt in the first place? Considering the download size was 900MB, I kind of knew why the enemies looked so great, especially when it comes to texture quality. It’s also amazing that these devices are becoming more like a computer in a small package. It remains to be seen how far developers will be able to push such devices, as the technology is improving at a rapid rate.

When it comes to replayablity, Infinity Blade 2 offers a lot of depth, and is one of the most content rich iOS games ever. When it comes to technical competency, again, it’s one of the best iOS games ever. In spite of all these accomplishments, the only thing that lets it down is that, it will remind you of Infinity Blade a lot. Now, that’s not a bad thing obviously, but it really doesn’t give the game an identity of its own. Make no mistake about it, if you own an iOS device, you should buy the hell out of this game.

This game was reviewed on the iPad.