Gamer reviews for S.O.L : Stone of Life EX

Stone of Life: The Journey of a Hero

The Stone of Life, a magical and powerful piece yielding ancient force that can change the fate of the world. As it possesses tremendous strength, there are many who wish to take it and abuse its power while there are those, like Ignis the defender, who long to keep the Stone away from the hands of evil-doers. And so, your path as a hero begins with aiding Ignis in his journey to protect the Stone of Life.

Released by Oddy Arts, S.O.L.: Stone of Life EX is an Action RPG that can be downloaded for free on both Android and iOS platforms. The game doesn't have an actual competitive scene like PvP but only have leaderboards. In-app purchases are present and are quite plenty and they come in the form of purchasing a special currency called gems. These gems are used for various stuff like purchasing equipment sets, items for upgrading gear, more inventory space, etc. You can gain these gems in three hour intervals from the main menu and that translates to eight gems every day provided you don’t miss the opportunity to grab them. When you compute the number of gems you get, you’d think they’re quite a few considering the most expensive item to buy in the game is an equipment set that costs 499 gems. The cheapest however, is only five gems which could buy you an arena ticket. There also seems to be no ads present in the game so that’s good.

Stone of Life is an action RPG that has most of the things players who are into similar game genres look for like hunting for loot, upgrading equipment, upgrading skills, dungeon crawling (although not a huge dungeon), and a servicable story.

You start by selecting between two characters—Eric or Ashley. Their description is a bit vague or maybe the developers just got lazy and input a description to cover both characters. But choosing either won't make much of a difference. It is just a choice of playing a male of female character. Afterwards, you will get to select what style you use for fighting. You may use a Dual Blades style to dish out quick damage, or the Knight to have a balance of offense and defense, the Berserker that dishes out great damage on multiple enemies, or perhaps an Arch Mage who uses magic to take out multiple enemies from a safe distance. Picking any one of these will affect what skills your character has. Although picking one class doesn't mean you can't equip other weapons. You can still equip most of the gears but lose the bonus you get (from passive skills) from using a weapon meant for your class. You can also pick up skill books to give you new skills like fire, ice, wind, and earth bolts. Buffs like Energy Shield and Iron Skin. There are a lot more skills to obtain and these books drop randomly from enemies. Aside from skill books, you can obtain runes which go into weapons and / or armor and give an offensive or defensive boost depending on where you slot it in. These runes can be combined to give a greater quality rune. You can also go to the Arena wherein you will fight increasingly difficult battles. If you win, you are given a choice to open one of five chests. These chests increase in quality after winning each round and each with random prizes inside.

The graphics of the game comprises of interesting two dimensional sprites, complete with background and effects. But upon closer look, the animated characters look like they have been made in Adobe Flash or something—meaning their joints are made individually and just made to move. That kind of simulation results in sometimes odd movement and animation. Aside from those animations, it isn't really clear where some of your attacks may land since sometimes the animation being produced is bigger than the actual hitboxes. But despite that, the art style is nice though. The character portraits look pretty although sometimes it won't match your character. An example is the male (Eric) character having a dual blades style because he is wielding dual blades. But if you choose another style like a berserker, he is still using Dual Blades for his portrait. The same goes with the female (Ashley) character and her portrait being an Arch Mage despite the different style you chose for her.

In conclusion, Stone of Life is a good RPG that can occupy your time but yet it does not beg for your money like most apps do. It has good mechanics that could get you hooked and leave you wanting to upgrade your character just a little bit more each day. Although it has some flaws, I personally think these minor setbacks won’t get in the way of your fun.