I�"m an equal opportunity gamer. I�"ll play anything. Fairy-tale princess dress-up game. Why not? Racing simulator. Sure. RPG about two plumbers in a mushroom kingdom as time-traveling babies. Of course.

Even considering this fact, I approached Undercroft from Rake in Grass games with a wary eye. How could I not? It�"s a PocketPC port of an RPG. Playing it on a Windows Vista (I know, I know) machine with a 23” display, how was I to review the game? Like the old joke goes: very carefully.

Undercroft begins like many a noble tale: with you and your friends getting wasted in a bar and telling the patrons there that you�"re not afraid to venture into the haunted crypt of an old king and mix things up a bit and steal some gold to prove you did it. Next thing you know, you wake up with a hangover in the town jail, committed to your ludicrous task. The rest follows from there.

There�"s no real story to Undercroft beyond that. Designed to be a game for gamers on the go (hence the PocketPC native platform), Undercroft doesn�"t feature story evolution so much as it features quests. Indeed, the only reason to ever talk to anyone is to receive a quest. Things are pretty bone dry for anyone looking for depth. The quests are all basic ones: kill this person, bring me this item, solve this puzzle. This is, again, ideal for quick play on the go where you don�"t want to have to recall long, convoluted steps… but it�"s nothing special on a desktop PC.

Graphics and sound in the game are lackluster as well. Again, though, this is based on playing it on the PC. The resolution never gets above 640x480 and everything looks grainy as hell. The sound is pops and beeps and reminiscent of old school games in all the old school ways, but there�"s a lot of variety to it and from time to time the isolated effects used in the game can be amusing. On a PocketPC screen, I�"m sure it�"s pretty great, though.

What of gamplay? Well, that�"s a tricky spot as well. The game controls well enough, but is clearly not meant to be played on a PC. Movement is accomplished either by using the arrow keys or by clicking on their equivalents in the user interface. To make attacks or cast spells or do anything else in the game, there must be a click on-screen. This would be fine except that as the game progresses battles will devolve more and more to simply clicking the attack button over and over again. I got tired of hearing my own mouse click after awhile. In this regard, I doubt using a stylus to click over and over again is much more fun… but I also can�"t think of a great way to fix it.

Battles are turn-based. Your crew each gets their move to attack, and then the enemies that face you get their turn. At any point in combat you can stop and access your never-ending inventory to apply cures or buffs to your gang of four. You have a choice of five character classes, each with their benefits. Warriors are, well, warriors. Mages and priests practice attack magic and holy (healing) magic, respectively. Summoners use the power of animals in their fights and assassins depend on stealth, obscure weaponry and ranged attacks.

Some of the classes seem fairly weak overall. A team of four warriors is probably the optimal way to complete the game. High damage, high defense. The other classes don�"t seem effective enough to warrant being used. Sure, it�"s nice to have a healer, but due to the way the game hands out experience points, they�"ll never level very fast and as a result become less and less useful as time goes on. All in all, the classes are there as an RPG staple, but it feels like more work could have been put into balancing them.

The game does, however, have a TON of weapons and enemies, which really end up being the meat of any RPG, since the action will inevitably be repetitive. It�"s pretty critical that there be variety in what you get to look as you�"re clicking away on the screen.

All in all, Undercroft strikes me as a very solid outing for the PocketPC. At $19.95, it seems a reasonable price for a hand-held game, as well, as the gamer will get a good 15 hours of play out of it at a minimum. However, on the PC it�"s a very niche game for thirsty turn-based RPGers. I enjoyed the game, but was aware throughout of its shortcomings… and was very aware that you can get a much more polished product on your PC elsewhere for less than the asking price of Undercroft.

Graphics: /
The “+” here is for the PocketPC graphics. The sprites are very competent and varied in Undercroft and are no doubt impressive on a tiny screen. On my PC, though, the game is dated all around. Low resolution, highly pixilated. It�"s good as a homage to the old days

Sound:
I don�"t know what makes good sound on a PocketPC, really. So I can�"t speak to that here. I, however, was pleased with the variety of sounds you get in the game. There are teleporting sounds, various creature attack sounds, weapons sounds, and so on. It would have been easy to really skimp here… but they didn�"t.

Gameplay:
The game controls well enough, but I can�"t help but wish for more keyboard commands for the PC. I also can�"t imagine that clicking 30 times to defeat an enemy is fun with a stylus or with a mouse.

Concept:
Old school to the core. There�"s pretty much nothing new here. It�"s nice to see something with so much content make it�"s way to the tiny screens… but this is ground well covered.

Value: /
$20 is par for the course for a PocketPC game… but on a PC, this is almost a rip-off.

Fun:
The game is very playable, no matter what I say about it. It�"s simple and the goals are easy to accomplish. The fighting can get tedious, but enemies and items are varied enough to keep progress interesting. I�"d like more balanced character classes, but in the end, I clicked through the whole game.

Overall:
This is the kind of title that everyone should try the demo of before they even think of purchasing it. The hardcore RPG fans will be pleased, but probably not anyone else.