It feels like it’s been forever since iDevice users were wowed by the seemingly impossible Epic Citadel. When it first came onto the scene users were blown away by the console-quality visuals magically crammed into their tiny hand-held devices. Then came the screen shots of Infinity Blade. With no idea of what the game was about, save looking amazing, iGamers waited as patiently as they could for the big day to arrive. And arrive it finally did.

So Infinity Blade is finally a thing that exists. It looks spectacular and plays really well, but exactly what kind of game is it?

First off, don’t jump into Infinity Blade thinking it’s going to be the next Elder Scrolls on your iDevice. This is not that game. You won’t be picking herbs for potions, exploring a vast open world, riding horses through expansive environments, crafting your own gear or any of that fancy stuff. What you will be doing is watching your character walk through a highly detailed castle as he makes his way to the God King in an attempt to destroy him. And you’ll be doing that a lot. Over and over again. To infinity basically.

The setup is a simple one: your father was killed trying to defeat the God King. Now it’s up to you to pick up where he left off. You’ll have to fight your way through several of the tyrant’s guards before your final showdown. And then you’ll die. It’s not a testament to the game’s difficulty or anyone’s lack of skill, it’s just that the first few times you face off against the God King he’s going to murder you hardcore. But fear not, for once you die, your own son will take up your quest after roughly twenty years time. Then it’s up to him to fight his way through slightly varied and tougher minions before meeting his own end at the hands of the God King. It’s a cyclical design through and through, but fortunately there are plenty of reasons why you’ll enjoy yourself as you lead several generations to their demise and eventually, victory. Then demise again.

Infinity Blade features a fairly robust amount of gear for you to loot or purchase, each with its own look and special abilities, such as life-leeching or extra experience gains. Swords, shields, helmets, armor and magic rings are all plentiful and each can be mastered through use to give you extra skill points to divvy up between your health, attacking, blocking and magic stats. Obviously some choices are better for different situations than others (i.e. using fire magic or a fire sword on an ice knight), but you’ll still want to master everything in order to grab those points. Which will lead to some surprisingly strategic decisions about what gear you’ll use in a given fight. You may want to bring that low-level crap sword into a level 45 fight, but unless you’re supremely confident in your abilities or can nail your opponent with high powered magic you might be biting off more than you can chew. On the other hand, you’ll probably master that crappy weapon in a couple of fights since it’s so low-tier.

However, none of that tells you what it’s like to play the actual game. Again, this is not the Elder Scrolls. If Infinity Blade can be accurately compared to anything, it would be Punch-Out!! I know that sounds weird, and possibly a little off-putting, but it’s actually incredibly fun and addicting. Each fight is a one-on-one affair, and just like the iconic boxing game, randomly attacking won’t get you anywhere, other than dead. You’ll have to decide how to tackle each situation, each swing of your enemy’s weapon, on the fly. Should you dodge left or right? Can you parry this one? What about blocking with your shield? Whatever your strategy the goal is to break your opponent’s guard which will render them helpless for a few moments, allowing you to unleash you mighty blows upon their hulking form.

Of course, it’s not as easy as “dodge, dodge, block, swing.” Each the three different general enemy types (each with a few variants, although the core moves remain the same) has their own style of combat. Learning each one’s tells is important, however they don’t always use the same combos, as they’ll often string different moves together. This means no blow-by-blow memorization, but rather some pretty frantic split-second decision making on the part of the player. Some attacks will break your guard, while others can’t be dodged or parried. It’s a surprisingly deep combat system, and one that never fails to entertain, even after extensive hours of play.

Navigating through the castle is about as simple as it gets. There are no virtual gamepads to use. Instead it’s handled much like a point-and-click adventure: each scene lets the player look around by swiping the screen, allowing them to take in the scenery, find hidden sacks of gold or health potions and the occasional branching path. When you want to move to another area, you just tap on an unobtrusive glowing blue ring and watch the brief cutscene of your character walking to the next room or squaring off against the next baddie. It does feel rather simplistic and underwhelming, but really the game’s all about the fights anyway. Plus it’s actually kind of fun to try and spot extra hidden items you can nab with a tap in the environment, even during cutscenes. But if you don’t care about any of that and just want to get on to the next bout you can always hold the tiny arrows on the bottom right corner of the screen and watch everything unfold at lightspeed.

There are, however, a few issues that may bother picky players. In a some instances the touch controls don’t feel as responsive as they should be, leading to your character getting wailed on because a dodge or block didn’t register. Another problem is that the castle is the only environment to “explore” at the moment. A new area has been promised in a future update, but as of right now players may get sick of wandering through the exact same locations over and over again. One last problem is that, extensive as the equipment list may be, it still won’t take most players very long to master everything. However, more items have also been promised in a future update, so assuming the developers stick to their word (and really, why wouldn’t they?) this won’t really be an issue.

Would I recommend Infinity Blade to an iDevice user? Absolutely. It’s beautiful (duh), engrossing, addictive and a hell of a lot of fun to play. Provided that players remember this is a portable game designed for speedy pick up and play sessions and not an eighty-hour open world RPG, there’s no reason to think that they won’t enjoy themselves. Even the multiplayer-centric gamers will have cause to rejoice when the game receives its own multiplayer mode in a coming update. And the ending you receive upon finally besting the God King gives me immense hope for the future of the game, as well as the possible franchise.

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Things We Liked: Gorgeous visuals on par with some current console offerings… on a PHONE. Lots of nifty gear to level up. A fairly complex and rewarding combat system. Very difficult to put down.

Things We Disliked: The overall campaign is short, technically. Only a handful of enemies to battle with, although there should be more variety available in the future. With no emphasis on a scoring system (which exists but is hidden and seems largely pointless) players might run out of stuff to do. What the hell is up with the iron armor?

Target Audience: People who enjoy more deliberately paced, strategic one-on-one fighting games. iDevice users looking for something to shock and amaze their non-iFriends.

(Infinity Blade – Developers: Chair Entertainment, Epic Games. Available for iOS Devices via the iTunes App Store. Unfamiliar with CFD!’s review system? Read our newly revised explanation here.)