Facebook is full of role-playing games, but deep, turn-based, console-style RPGs are still pretty rare. Deep Realms manages to take virtually everything that makes the genre great—including an engaging story, lots of character customization, and a beautiful fantasy world to explore—and crams it on to a social network, with only a few minor caveats. It's not only one of the best role playing experiences on Facebook, but Deep Realms is also one of the best games overall.
MinoMonsters is another attempt at creating a clone of Nintendo's super-popular Pokemon series for Facebook. This stab at social monster collecting dispenses with social mechanics almost completely and zeroes in on the monster battling and collecting aspect of the game. The game makes a lot of the right calls with regard to not making you pay for monsters, but makes a lot of bad calls when it comes to balancing the combat-oriented gameplay and implementing the game.
Even if it's over twenty years old, a game can still be a ton of fun to play so long as it's well-made. Case in point: Square-Enix's Final Fantasy III. It was one of those titles that helped revolutionize the RPG genre when it first was released in Japan on the original NES console. Now an updated version of the game has just come out for the iPhone, and it's still a blast to play.
WildTangent has released a new teaser trailer for FATE: The Cursed King, the fourth game in the fantasy RPG hack n' slash series, that shows off a sneak peek of the new gameplay. Check it out behind the cut.
You'd think that there's only so much a young girl can take in at once, yet it would appear that Legend of Fae's heroine Claudia is ready to open her mind to anything. Left on her own and surrounded by bizarre creatures that only she can see, it's no wonder that she's going out of her way to find some answers.
Electronic Arts' EA2D studios recently asked why no one's really ever made a decent turn-based RPG for Facebook. And, finding no suitable answer, set out to make just that. The offspring of this wild endeavor is Dragon Age: Legends, which could be dismissed as mere promotional tripe were it not for the game's obvious complexity. Within moments, Legends reveals itself as a rich and sprawling game—full of surprises and tiny innovations—and EA2D's so taken with this little project that the studio has taken to calling it "the first real game on Facebook."
Galaxy Online II has a lot in common with Infinite Realms. Both games are space-themed sci-fi strategy games that use variants on the familiar Travian formula. Most new attempts at strategy RPGs on Facebook attempt to find ways to make the game simpler and more streamlined, but Galaxy Online II runs in the opposite direction. If anything, it's far more complex than your average Facebook strategy game. This means it can offer more depth and ultimately more satisfying gameplay, though its learning curve is steeper as a result.
Gunshine.net is a free-to-play online RPG with a strong social element that, while not actually a Facebook game, features well-integrated support for the world's most popular social network. Currently in closed beta, it's a little different than what you usually see in social games; instead of the family-friendly fun of planting crops or digging for treasure, you'll be killing enemy gang members, blowing up buildings, and rebelling against an authoritarian overlord who maintains control of a downtrodden population through a viciously addictive drug known as "W.U.Z.Z."