Emberfall Saga

Emberfall Saga is the kind of RPG that respects the fact you're playing on a phone. Battles are turn-based, so nothing punishes you for pausing mid-fight when your stop comes up. The party system lets you swap between five characters, each with a distinct feel, and the skill trees are readable without a wiki open on a second screen.

The writing carried me further than I expected. It's not Shakespeare, but the characters have jokes and grudges that pay off over the twenty-something hours of the main story. Combat gets genuinely tactical in the back half, where enemy weaknesses force you to actually build a team instead of spamming your strongest attack.

It's heavier on the battery than most games here, so plan for that. On a full charge I got roughly ninety minutes before I felt the warning creep up. Worth it, though — this is a proper RPG that happens to fit in your pocket.

What we liked

• Pausable turn-based combat
• Characters with real personality
• Deep but readable skill trees