This review is to hopefully better balance out/inform others interested in this game from the currently 6 very short positive ads from "critics" I am playing it shortly after its release (July 25th) and the issues I talk about may be fixed/modified in future patches. I also want to be clear I am rating it a 7/10 and not 7 out 100. After playing this for 3 days I realized this game isThis review is to hopefully better balance out/inform others interested in this game from the currently 6 very short positive ads from "critics" I am playing it shortly after its release (July 25th) and the issues I talk about may be fixed/modified in future patches. I also want to be clear I am rating it a 7/10 and not 7 out 100. After playing this for 3 days I realized this game is 99% a pay PvP game. It clearly says its mainly for PvP if you read about it on the Apple Store and several of the review mention it (one actually says so in the 2nd paragraph…which I missed). Frankly there is no real false advertising here, some of the critics here failing to mention the huge emphasis on PvP. With so much emphasis on PvP with online games it appears I incorrectly assumed this game would be different.
If you don't want to PvP you are limited to about 20-25 contracts you can complete during every 7 days in real life (about 3/day which take 15-20 minutes each) or the odds become nearly impossible. With each win the enemies hit points are boosted by 3%. Do the math. The non-PvP part of the game will quickly be unbeatable during a given week, no matter what you do. Its just about impossible for your troops to survive with quite similar stats when the pretty solid and aggressive AI has 60-75% more hit points than you do. Especially since the units are pretty evenly matched stat wise (at least at 1st few levels.) Also, you are not just dealing with just one set of units. The game starts with 4 brigades. So you need to split those 20-25 wins between them and you can guess how slowly leveling will be. Months and months!
The $4.99 pay to play model is focused on either getting the very annoying (to me) ads which occur every 2 rounds in a battle removed (yes you just have to click them off). You probably get the elite units/brigades which do not come with the free to play game so expect to be owned by the people who paid in PvP. So again why 7/10? I am an optimist they might improve the non-PvP to make this more widely playable. Because the game is new, though its technically a sequel to Ravenmark: Scourge of Estellion which allowed those players to transfer their units over. I am an optimist and I see this could be an enjoyable game with a great deal of effort already. I hoping it all will be improved and worth paying the $4.99 to remove the annoying ads.
From my current experience with exposing these issues they may just be able to pull off a great non-PvP game/version in the future. Its just not here for anyone but a very casual player with this game right now… Expand
Ravenmark: MercenariesYour Score0 out of 10User Score
