Emberfall Saga

Emberfall Saga is the kind of RPG that respects your time while still giving you a long adventure. Battles are turn-based and you can queue up party moves in advance, so it works on a bus or in a waiting room. The whole story campaign downloads once and runs offline afterward.

The writing carried it for me. Your four characters bicker, grow and occasionally make bad decisions, and the branching dialogue actually changes small things later. Combat leans on elemental weaknesses and positioning, so mindless tapping falls apart quickly on the harder fights.

It's not perfect, the menus could be tidier and grinding for rare gear drags near the end. But for a phone RPG that never asks you to be connected, it's one of the best we've played this year.

What we liked

• Deep turn-based combat
• Story that sticks with you
• No connection needed after install