When you see Undecember up and running on a PC monitor in all its graphical glory, it’s hard to believe that the same version is also playable on mobile.
But the evidence is there. In fact, despite its staggering good looks Undecember plays more like a free-to-play mobile RPG than a PC game.
Even the controls are optimized for touchscreen, which is why you move your character around with mouse and cursor rather than the more conventional WASD. It’s also why there are bizarre prompts to touch the screen.
Undecember first broke cover last year with a jaw-droppingly beautiful trailer. Ever since then, good looks have kept LINE Games’s RPG on “most anticipated” lists across the internet.
But it supposedly has more to offer than mere beauty, including an innovative classless growth system and a clever approach to equipping runes.
We’ll get to those later. Let’s start with the basics.
Undecember will be familiar to anybody who has ever played a Diablo game, or indeed any fantasy hack-and-slash RPG.
Presenting the action from a lofted perspective, it sees you running around an embattled landscape cutting down hordes of enemies and monsters, picking up the loot they leave behind, and upgrading your character and equipment.
You move with the mouse cursor, and you attack with the right mouse button. In addition there are several skills, mostly attacks, bound to Q, W, E, and R. Or you can use a controller, whether you’re playing on PC or mobile.
We should mention at this point, in case it’s not already clear, that Undecember is fully cross-platform.
The campaign in Undecember begins with a gratifying prologue in which your character is massively powerful. Then you come back down to earth – or Traum – with a section that takes place on the back of a giant creature called a Sand Walker.
At this point you’ve lost your powers and you’re working your way back up from a poorly equipped level 1.
Fortunately, it doesn’t take you long to get back to kicking ass. Within minutes you’re armed with both a sword and a bow, which you’re free to equip as you see fit.
Undecember’s classless growth system gives you a completely free hand when it comes to the weapons and gear you can use, the Skill Runes you can equip, and the upgrades you can apply.
The only restrictions on the skills you can wield relate to the weapon you’re holding. For example, if a skill increases the power of your bow, you can only use it if you have your bow equipped.
To equip a Skill Rune you need to place it on a hex grid. Each rune has six sides, and these sides come in different colors.
If you place a color-matching Link Rune in an adjoining cell, you can boost a Skill Rune. In fact, it’s possible to boost multiple Skill Runes at the same time with a single Link Rune, as long as you place it tactically.
In effect, this turns the process of equipping runes into a little puzzle game in itself.
And there are still more ways to customize your character. The Zodiac system lets you assign Trait Points to your Intelligence, Dexterity, and Strength in whatever proportions you like, guaranteeing that your character is uniquely built around your playing style.
Back to the campaign. After a little while your Sand Walker ride comes to a dramatic halt and you find yourself at the Malo Front. This is the game’s central hub, containing amenities like the Blacksmith, the Mailbox, the Peddler, the Storage Chest, and so on.
There are also NPCs milling around, and it’s from the Malo Front that you’ll strike out on campaign missions in other parts of the map.
Those missions entail exactly what you’d expect from a hack-and-slash RPG: lots of gratifying combat against swarms of spiders, Dimps, dragons, and bosses, followed by lots of looting-gathering.
Undecember also features a pet system that allows you to summon a cute, waddling creature to follow you around and collect loot on your behalf, which is a neat touch.
Undecember celebrates Halloween from October 26th until November 23rd. This would be a great time to jump into the world of Undecember as there will be some valuable loot given out. More information can be found on the official Discord or Website.
At first glance, Undecember seems to have it all: terrific visuals, satisfying gameplay, and a few neat character progression innovations to keep things fresh.
The real test of a free-to-play RPG is whether it stays fun and fair over the long haul, or jams you up with pay-to-win nonsense.
We can’t tell you how it’s likely to fare over the weeks and months, but right now it looks like a solid competitor in the cross-platform RPG space.
Download Link
