iLook at Nameless: The Hackers RPG

I feel like there's a trend with iOS games that I'm unsure about. The trend of having subpar core mechanics but really great fluff, random loot, leveling systems, skill trees and collectibles are added to games with weak gameplay loops. Nameless: The Hackers RPG is one of these games, I love everything around it but the main thing you do in it - fighting in turn-based battles - is poor. Also the anime style is not what I'd like in that kind of game but that's not relevant, design-wise.

Stealing energy is vital if you want to use your abilities

Let's jump right into it, the battle system is confusing
You control up to four characters and they can have up to six skills each, some with clear uses (stealing energy, healing, stunning enemies) some with overlap (basic attack skills with comparable costs and no different effects) and some are just plain obviously better (big damage attacks), it's not clear whether the game wants you to fight different enemy types in a different way but basically you can win most fight by stealing energy and using the strongest attacks you have.

Tons of numbers pop out and you're not sure if you're doing the right thing, but most battles can be won by stockpiling healing items and going all-out. You have some stats but they barely matter when some moves are plainly better at dealing damage than other, making them de-facto choices.

I would fix this by either adding cooldowns to the strongest moves and removing the concept of energy, or implementing some kind of rock-paper-scissor system where some types of moves are stronger against certain defenses and weaker against others and vice-versa, that would give you reasons to use different attacks instead of spamming that one with the huge numbers.

I leveled everything, just because

Leveling all of these skills is a bit underwhelming too
You start with some skills and can unlock more in the store, then you need to pay ByteCoins and research points to level them up, they get stronger, have more chances to work and sometimes cost more energy, like I said about the combat system, it feels a little weird to level them all, even tho that's the thing you probably should do. Leveling one attack skill over another is a trivial choice - both of them are going to be equally useful.

Besides skills, you can buy healing items that will help you win most fights and bonuses that last a few real-life minutes, they're useful, but not essential.

Cities will give you item, quests and flavor text

Moving around is boring
The way the world map is set up isn't the best, moving around to pick random fights and buy items would've been done from a menu. A list of fights and cities, with a big button for the shop would've worked perfectly. Instead what you have is a map where you can scroll around and zoom in/out for some reason (why zoom in? There are no details anywhere).

A list would make much more sense, have one button be the next story mission, another button be random fights, another button for the shop and another one to visit cities, no need to move around a world map for the little flavor it adds to the game.

One luck, that's right.

I really love the card system
For winning fights, completing quests and story missions and plainly available in the store, you get cards that increase some of your stats. Each card has some flavor text on it and you can get 4 rarities of cards, the rarer the card, the more stats on it. You can reroll the stats on these cards by spending BC or RP, and have a chance to get a better version of that card, you can also upgrade them after fights, and these cards are the better way this game offers to make your characters stronger.

All and all, N:THRPG is a neat little game with a few good ideas and some so-so execution. It also goes pretty quickly, so if you're a fan of turn-based RPGs, you might wanna check it out.

Pick a card, any card.