Alliance Alive HD Remastered

Easily 5 star rating. The story and characters are good, the open world is great

[I’ll update my review with a proper one once I finish the game, or this gets fixed.] This game is really only playable on iPhones. It does NOT support controllers, but I mostly like their approach to cloning Romancing SaGa’s touch controls because it does feel kinda clunky on the right side, though I would suggest doing a bit of a UI overhaul. The game shouldn’t have a third letterbox on the bottom, which I understand they did to avoid overlapping the iOS home bar, though the porting team could’ve at least placed the bottom row of buttons above the home bar. Another thing I really dislike is how micro the buttons are, but are practically the perfect size on iPads. Here’s the catch: The controls are absolutely MASSIVE on iPads. Remember: There’s no controller support. There’s no option to change up the scaling of the joysticks at all, and it feels a bit too much like a lazy port for mobile. Another missing item are cloud saves. The porting team made the same mistake of a decision that Spike Chunsoft made with their almost impeccable ports of Danganronpa of not including any sort of iCloud integration. Pick one or the other. There’s no graphical or performance differences playing on a mid-range iPad or a high end iPhone, but I would at least prefer improvements on the surface for this port. I would ask for graphical and audio quality options, but I’ll take what’s here for now.

The game uses a cheap onscreen controller that doesn’t work well. Add real touchscreen support or controller support. I don’t recommend buying this version.

The actual game itself is 5/5 stars, but the touch screen controls and odd screen windowing make this version kind of weird to play. If you can adapt to this version’s jank controls as well as the weird non-full screen picture mode, having Alliance Alive on your phone is quite convenient. No need to shove a 3DS in another pocket, no need to carry around your switch in a switch case, just have the game on your phone. I managed to beat the game this way with few complaints, so it’s definitely playable. The sheer quality of the game itself definitely outshines what otherwise feels like a lazy port. If the idea of non-full screen and jank touch screen controls don’t appeal to you, maybe play another version of the game.

For a review of the actual game, see any number of reviews of the originals or previous ports. As for the iOS version, it is extremely frustrating. First, physical control options have been unnecessarily removed. Forget playing this with a Backbone controller or something similar. This alone ruins the game as far as I am concerned. The touch controls are basically serviceable, but why remove control options? It just makes no sense. Second, the pictures in the description here are accurate. Very accurate. That lopsided brownish border is exactly what you will get (at least on an iPhone 14 Plus—on iPad it is just letterboxed), and there are no options to change it as far as I can tell. Third, no cloud saving so forget playing it across devices. As it is, the game basically works but it just seems like the developers really didn’t care much about making it a truly good port. I am (probably naively) hoping for some updates which sort out the ugly screen windowing and add controller support, but based on past experiences, that hope is likely in vain. My recommendation: Pass if you have any other way of playing this game.

The OK/cancel ring could be made good if cancel was infinitely big around OK, but it’s too small to reliably hit with normal speed. Also, the d-pad needs swipes to push arrows, instead of individual taps. Navigating the menu is cumbersome. Played this game on DS and Switch, and it was awesome there. Hopefully they’ll adjust this here too.