Inotia 3: Children of Carnia is the third installment in the hit RPG series The Chronicles of Inotia. It is available both for the iOS and for Android. The app itself is completely free and can be finished without paying a single dime despite the existence of the in-app store. Choose from six different classes, each with their own distinct skills, and journey across hundreds of different regions. Battle monsters along the way and gather items to complete quests. Protect your loved ones and your country and seek revenge as you play Lucio, a young boy struggling to accept his destiny and figuring out how to confess to the love of his life.
Amusingly enough, I played the next installment Inotia 4 before I played this one so this review will include a comparison of the two games.
Minimap: One noticeable difference between Inotia 3 and Inotia 4 is the minimap. While it is located in the top left corner in Inotia 4, the minimap was originally in the top right corner. You will see a map icon there and tapping it will reveal the minimap. Whenever you move to a new scene, the minimap will once more hide itself. The minimap is also transparent so you can see behind it. Tapping on the map icon again will give you the world map, which can be quite handy when you have absolutely no clue as to the location of your next destination.
Stats: The stats of each character class differ from each other by a great amount. Some have better physical stats while others mental ones. Stats will be automatically updated every time your characters level up so you won't have to rack your brains to figure out the best way to distribute your stat points. Each class also has different types of skills (essentially magic spells in other games). These skills can be learned using Skill Points. You gain one Skill Point every time you level up. However, if you recently added a party member you'll have a whole pocket of unused Skill Points as none of them have learned skills. If you're ever unsatisfied with your Stats, you can pick up some Dice from monster drops. Rolling a pair of dice will randomize your stats, for better or for worse. Thank goodness that each roll is not permanent as you have the option of choosing to reject the new stats if they're worse than your current ones.
Inventory: The inventory in Inotia 4 follows the same mechanics as those in Inotia 3. You are limited to 16 items at first until you find or purchase more bags to increase your inventory space. However, I have noticed that it is considerably much more difficult to find more bags from monster drop offs in Inotia 3 than it is in Inotia 4. You could, of course, always purchase more, but the bags are very expensive. Also, the largest bag you could purchase will grant you eight slots will this number is increased in Inotia 4.
Another very noticeable difference is how items are picked up in the game. In Inotia 4, you simply needed to walk over the object in order to pick it up. However, in Inotia 3, you must press the Action button in order to pick up the item. If your inventory is full, you always have the option of dropping your old items in order to obtain the new one. Personally, I like this method better than the one in Inotia 4, although it is slightly annoying. Since the new item you pick up could be an inferior version or it's something you later realize you don't want, you can always pick up the item you previously dropped. Of course, this only works if you remain in the same scene. In Inotia 4, you had no choice but to destroy the item you wanted to "drop", and I often find myself regretting my choice.
Mercenaries: While Inotia 4 relied more on mercenaries (It was also much easier to find Emblems to summon them), Inotia 3 has less mercenaries for you to obtain. In Inotia 3, your party's power relies more on NPC characters that will join you during your quest. Mercenaries can still be obtained, though it is much harder to find Mercenary Emblems. Also, one very annoying thing I've noticed is that the other unused mercenaries in your team do not get any experience points. This can cause many problems due to unbalance in levels if you haven't used a mercenary in awhile. So make sure you constantly switch your party members around to avoid such problems. Inotia 4 fixes this problem by granting everyone in your party, both active and inactive, experience points. So thumbs up for Inotia 4.
Awakening Emblems: When new members join your party, none of them will have a complete set of skills. One way of getting new skills is to find Awakening Emblems. Using one of these emblems will unlock a new skill for the party member. However, they don't seem to always work. Too many times I have been told that the emblem failed to unlock a new skill. I don't know how these things work, whether it's completely random or not, but either way it can be frustrating knowing that you wasted an emblem. To make matters worse, these emblems are extremely rare and can only be found from monster drops. You can't even purchase them in the various shops in town. The other way is to use Skill Books. These books are even rarer than the emblems and are only geared to a specific character class. Also, you can only use them when that character has at least 15 Skill Points in a particular skill.
Equipping: Not every single character can equip all the items you have for him or her, and this is because of the character's class. For example, you can't equip plate or leather armor to mages. As a result, you really need to know which types of characters can equip what types of equipment in order to avoid wasting your money on equipment. In Inotia 4, you cannot unequip any items from NPC characters that join your party. However, in Inotia 3, this is absent. You're able to unequip items all you want. Even if the character leaves your party, you'll still be able to take away their items. So no more need to cry because you equipped a rare item to a NPC character only to realize that you can't get it back when they leave.
Unidentified Items: Along the way, you'll mostly pick up a number of Unidentified Items. These are items that you are not sure exactly what it is. For example, if you pick up a Helmet that is Unidentified, you don't know if it's a Leather Helmet or a Metal Helmet. You don't know any of the item's stats except for the level required to use it. In order to figure out just what it is, you'll need to Appraise the item. Appraising the item will reveal to you just what the item is and it's stats. You can perform appraisals in two ways: 1) Doing it in a shop or 2) Using an Item Appraisal Scroll on it. The first option will cost you 50 coins. The second option is more convenient in the wild, provided that you have scrolls, but such scrolls are hard to obtain. Unidentified items also cannot be equipped to a character. This can be a rather annoying and inconvenient process that heavily hinders gameplay and occupies inventory space. Thankfully, Inotia 4 gets rid of this mechanic.
Shops: Of course, no RPG is complete with shops, but the shops I'm talking about are not the ones that require you to spend real money. Inotia 3 has one to help you get some rare items to help your party, but purchasing them is completely optional. It is entirely possible to complete the game without spending a single dime. Anyhow, Grocery, Weapon, and Armor shops can be found in every single town. One somewhat annoying thing is that the shop will not tell you the maximum number of items that you can buy with your current amount of gold. If you end up purchasing too much, the game will simply tell you that you have insufficient funds and you'll be forced to recalculate how much you can actually purchase. Along the way though, you might find some Street Vendors in the wild. These vendors will appear randomly throughout different regions and will quickly disappear if you leave the region. Most of the items they carry are Unidentified and many don't have very good stats either. Think of these vendors as the black market. While I haven't found many items useful to purchase from them, they are a great way to earn some money and unload your inventory when you're not near a town.
Monsters: General monsters that roam the fields are slightly harder to defeat in Inotia 3 than they are in Inotia 4. This is mainly due to the fact that a large amount of your party members are Priests that rely mostly on supporting spells. In Inotia 4, your party is usually filled more with warriors and knights, those strong in offense. However, it is also because of the supporting Priest characters that it is harder for your party to die. No longer do you need to rely on potions as much to heal yourself.
Boss Monsters: Unlike in Inotia 4, miniature bosses are not marked on the minimap, so you'll have to go find them yourself. Most of the time they're hidden in a little alcove off the beaten path so if you're trying to complete a quest, look for those little nooks in the map. Also, the difficulty of major boss monsters are more suited to your level. They are not ridiculously hard as in Inotia 4 and it is unlikely that you will need to replay a level over and over again except near the end. Most of the bosses I was able to take out without using any potions and needing only very few resurrection spells. So certainly Inotia 3 is much easier to play than Inotia 4.
Resurrection: Let's be honest here. Your character or party will be defeated at some point in the game. At which point you have only two options: Resurrect the character or restart from a previous save point. In Inotia 3, you can use Resurrection Spells to bring back your dead characters. Do note that these spells will not grant your revived character full health so make sure to heal them fast in order not to waste another spell. In Inotia 4, you'll have the option of purchasing two different types of resurrection spells: the basic or improved one. The Improved Resurrection Spell will completely recharge your character's health and mana. However, if your entire party is annihilated, you will have the choice of either admitting Game Over or using a Resurrection Prayer. The Resurrection Prayer will revive everyone in your active party with fully recharged health and mana and you will be at the same spot in the game. This means that if you were battling a boss and have already whittled away its health to halfway, the boss will continued to have only half its health left after the Prayer is used. Handy if you don't want to try battling a boss again from the start. You're given two Resurrection Prayers at the start of the game and you can purchase more using Gems (the in-app store currency that require real money).
Fusion: In the game you will be able to pick up various items that are in the Combination Material class. These items serve no purpose except as recipe ingredients. You'll be able to find a Fusion machine in a town and combine said combination items to create a number of different items such as potions and crystals. You'll only be able to fuse items together if you have the recipe. These recipes can either be found from monster drops or purchased from a street vendor. You can then add these recipes to your Recipe Book. Duplicated recipes will not be added. As a result, what you're able to make is limited to what you can find. This in turn can be somewhat troublesome if you really need a recipe to make potions to save up on gold but can't find one.
Technical Issues: When I first started playing this game, I had absolutely no technical issues. The game installed fine and the gameplay was smooth. However, about halfway through the game, I noticed that the game had started to have a tendency of "freezing". I placed quotation marks around freezing because the game doesn't entirely freeze. All the monsters in the region are still moving and your party members are still counter-attacking. However, your leading character will not move or cast any spells, thus being completely unresponsive to the buttons. This can be very frustrating as you must push the Action button in order to attack a monster. If you're being attacked and can't counter-attack, it can quickly spell death for your character. You can only hope then that the rest of your party will be able to quickly deal with the menace. Sometimes, the usually long cutscenes will freeze and you have to give it a moment before it'll respond to your touch and continue. If not careful, your multiple taps might cause the cutscene to skip through the rest of the dialogue, leaving you somewhat clueless. At other times, I'm unable to read the words written near the end of the dialog boxes that pop up to give you more details about a quest because there are several layers to the words.
Conclusion: In the end, Inotia 3 is a must have addition for your digital game library for any RPG fans. For a free game, Inotia 3 does an excellent job. Plus you won't be constantly reminded to purchase items from the in-app store. Aside from some minor technical issues, the gameplay itself is very delightful and exciting. The game is addicting and you'll most likely end up spending hours and hours playing. While Inotia 4 did update and improve some things, there are still some things that Inotia 3 is better. The weaker bosses, for one thing, certainly make life much easier. This game features beautiful character graphics with excellent characterization. So go get Inotia 3 today! I rate this app
4 stars out of 5.
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