Mediocre game play mares the polished look and feel

(Update)

An update was released with the intent of adjusting the difficulty (what I assumed was the spawn mechanic)... So I decided to give it whirl.

First, clicking the New Game button did nothing. Quiting and relaunching didnt fix it, but the new game button worked... I thought, "Fine, I wasnt attached to my progress".

After being forced to redo the training sequel, I made it to the tower (map) and... The game is rendered unplayable. I quit the app, relaunched it to find the continue button again, not functioning.

Sorry guys, Im not one to hand out one stars often but....

Original review: (2 star)

I bought the game after playing the first few levels, hoping the gameplay would expand. Making your own combos is promising but actually is more an exercise in futility.

The game quickly devolves a double tap fury, double tapping the move buttons to enact a dodge roll, as it quickly becomes the only reasonable way to travel.

Enemies spawn infinitely, so fighting hardly matters, the monotony only to be held up by a level scroll lock. Literally, the game prevents the player from traveling further right. To allow the player to travel further right, he must then defeat an enemy or two (regardless of how many are on screen) then proceed to travel right until he is held up on the edge of the screen again, repeating this agonizing process. This is done mostly by rolling, as the player cannot outrun his opponents. Rolling dodges attacks and goes around pesky enemies in the way. Rolling requires double tapping the direction arrows, making the player furiously tap the screen, which works 90% of the time but due to the limitations of the iPhone,
the other 10% of the time means tapping more furiously, hoping to trigger the roll.

The challenge becomes rolling (dodging) around waiting for a chance to strike increasingly well armed opponents which can strike from greater ranges and inflict more damage. Soon even basic attacks are gambles so combos become less useful. It devolves to a cat and mouse game of jump kick enemy groups until you can continue rolling right.

To make a mockery of the combo system, the player feasible can string together roughly 5 hits on any single enemy, (at least using the moves unlocked from stages 1 and 2). Occasionally, combos can extend when other hapless enemies charge head first into your flurry of fist and feat, but it doesnt benefit the player in any meaningful way.

The only time game play is broken up is by boss battles or completing challenges. Its not fun. Without much standard beat em up mechanics like different moves, ability to string punches and kicks at will together to trigger combos, grabs, use weapons (think double dragon), the ability to block, perform special moves etc, the game feels even more dated than the NES game, Kung Fu.

Sadly its not even worth the very meager $.99, even though the "pay once" model is appreciated.

Slickninja about KungFu Quest - The Jade Tower