I have to admit that I didn’t know quite what to expect when I loaded Vanquish: The Oath of Brothers on my iPhone and opened it up for the first time.  For some odd reason I was expecting it to be a classic RPG but soon discovered that I couldn’t be further from the truth.

Instead it reminded me of an arcade game that more closely falls into the action-adventure category.  Set in China during the era of the Tree Kingdoms, Vanquish is a side-scrolling hack & slash game where not only the plot but more importantly the graphics of the game are reminiscent of the artwork of that period. The game is almost totally done with black and white artwork that reminds me of hand painted art from that era. The exception to the B&W environment is the special effects that are shown in color. While the color is used sparingly the effect is to make it more visible and the result is surprisingly beautiful.

The character you control, one of the three brothers, is on horseback and as you scroll from left to right you control the height of the character on the screen (moving left and right from his perspective) as well as limited forward and backward movement using a virtual joystick on the left of the screen.  You also can chose one of two different types of attack. As you defend a coach from hoards of enemies and accumulate kills you receive gems that can then be used to trade for other items or redeem for a new life if you are killed.

While I haven’t spent a great deal of time with the game (being in a hurry to share it with the rest of you), I have to admit that, while I don’t typically play games of this genre, I am sufficiently drawn to the graphics of this game that I want to spend more time just so that I can experience more of it.  Vanquish is due to be released later this month. While I typically don’t play and therefore would be hesitant in recommending 2D side scrolling action adventure / arcade games such as this, the artists at Gamevil did such an excellent job on the artwork that this game definitely deserves a second look.  If I were asked to rate the game I would give it 3 stars out of 5 – but the artwork alone generated one of those stars all my itself.