__I, among many gamers, tend to pay little attention to mobile phone games, but reflecting on it now, I think that isn’t fair. Even if mobile phones have their inputs on the screen rather than on buttons, that doesn’t stop developers from making several great games that work around this inconvenience. Weave was no doubt made with mobile controls in mind, but being well built as a game for a touchscreen mobile device ends there. Weave is a one trick pony when you look at it from afar. Once you know what you’re getting into, there is nothing more to experience.
__To clarify, at the moment I imagine “Capt’n Crunch” cereal as a textbook definition of a turn-based JRPG. Weave would therefore be the “Oops! All Berries” variation if that cereal came with significantly less content inside the box and was no cost to you. If that’s your thing, then that’s great and you’ll get you’re fix here, but if not, I advise you move along. In one of the two game modes, the player has the addition of a story to experience with upgrades, but what both game modes boils down to is just an endless stream of simplistic turn-based RPG battling.
__The first thing you’ll notice is the art within the game. The artist, I’m told, has made comics before. Given the nice, consistent style of the art, it should come as no surprise that your eyes are in good hands. Some of the facial expressions and poses of the main character are a big highlight of the entire experience and that goes a long way. Likewise, there are many designs spread through that were a joy to discover and later see again. By contrast, there were two times when the size of an icon seemed very inconsistent with the rest, and some designs are noticeably lacking, such as the stinking zombies’ shared idol pose. In my experience, it’s these bad apple designs that matter most, as they can be coarse enough to make a player reconsider finishing the game, even the players with lower standards and who subscribe to the core gameplay. I mentioned the zombie idol pose specifically because that drawing is made even worse by two things. One, the stink clouds are coming from the rear end (whether intentionally or not) while the zombies look proud of themselves for what I infer to be crapping each of their pants, and two, because the stink gas that dissipates looks wildly unlike the rest the art in the game. Look, I'm no prune, and I think its possible to do a poop joke properly, but this was not a good time for one, and I think that's an understatement.
__The fact those gas effects weren’t replaced with little gas clouds drawn by the actual artist seems like an uncharacteristically lazy decision, a decision that reminds me there is only one song in the game, not counting the title theme that plays only with the intro screens. Weave is a 2-1/2 hour game in total (assuming the player fails a small handful of times), and at most 4 hours if the player gets invested into the Legend mode (in which you fight for as long as you can in an arcade way). The song that plays during gameplay is shorter than your average videogame track, so for it to repeat nonstop for even fifteen minutes is unthinkable! The main song does not loop well, but it doesn’t get obscenely annoying quickly and I think that’s the bottom line.
__Aside from the motion comic intro, which I adored, the entire story in the middle of the game is the most tact-on I’ve seen in years! Sure, there are some NES and Master System games that have worse stories, but at least those games have a story that relates even a little with the gameplay that follows it. Check this: in one part of the game, you’re asked to clear away the monsters (where is never specified) so that the mercenary character can escort the daughter of the richest person in town (and why she needs to be escorted is never explained). You then find yourself fighting a random collection of monsters in a random incoherent group of settings and then once the monsters are all killed, they say thanks and leave. There is no sense of escapism to be found in a scenario like that, and certainly no pay-off. It further goes to prove that if battling is not a means to itself for you, you have no incentive to play this game (aside from the unanimated art).
__It’s a shame that the experience is bogged down with so many hard-to-forgive flaws, because many people will likely miss out on some fairly novel battle gameplay ideas. Battling has a flow to it. Image rock, paper, scissors combined with a simple card game, with the addition of a fighting game special move to add a little more strategy and depth. I would say this a great bend on the typical streamlined RPG system, but there are two fundamental flaws with this system.
__Most importantly, the gameplay is reliant entirely on the luck of what the enemy will do. Having a system centered around luck is a hindrance on the player’s overall experience. You can still succeed in this game by clicking random options as fast as you can, as long as the overall luck isn’t completely against you, and as long as you pick a balanced deck, which is really easy to do. The game is no longer too easy by the first third, but by the time the game is truly challenging enough to require thinking, it’s too late and the player is unquestionably bored enough to find the next shiny game to catch their eye. Secondly, the special attack you are building up strategically, works against the main strategy of trying to pick the right attack in the moment. The player cannot see far enough ahead to know if focusing on the special weave attack would be a deadly mistake in the later game, so it becomes a dead weight rather than added depth.
__When seen from afar, I can also say with confidence that the repetition is almost unbearable, even if, to the game’s credit, this is a finished product in that it has all the parts required in anyone’s expectations (which I mention because of how much rarer that is these days). The only people that I could highly recommend this game to, is the type of people who want exactly what's offered in this game: lots of simple, family-friendly, turn-based fantasy battles in a format that can be experienced in short, but multiple, experiences. These same people would have to be looking for an experience that isn’t too long, and they would need to have mildly low standards. If you, reader, don’t see yourself as one of those few people, I suggest you look for a better free-to-play game, of which there must be hundreds by now; your time on this Earth is short, so choose your videogames wisely.