Frustrating and mediocre tactical game.
There isn't much to this game, as after completing tutorial the player is given two choices - fight against AI using the same 3 bots or play versus real players in the arena. Battles consist of moving your heroes on a 7x7 board. Most map designs I've seen are unimaginative - just some obstacle in the middle that splits the map into 2 lanes, aboutFrustrating and mediocre tactical game.
There isn't much to this game, as after completing tutorial the player is given two choices - fight against AI using the same 3 bots or play versus real players in the arena. Battles consist of moving your heroes on a 7x7 board. Most map designs I've seen are unimaginative - just some obstacle in the middle that splits the map into 2 lanes, about 3 tiles each. Heroes can move 2-3 cells, have a certain pattern of attack (1-2 cells away), have fairly similar damage and health. There's a small number of champions (like 8) and maps (like 5).
This game does look pretty, and it's fun to play until the Pay 2 Win model kicks in. A player starts with 3 good, beginner friendly champions who are available for 10 games or so. After this, the player is given random champions up to 3 total. It is possible to end up with a really gimpy deck. Here the game starts to stink and becomes a super-repetitive grind. Unlike other games, you HAVE to play the same map for several games in a row.
The game's lack of balance becomes evident very quickly. Knockback is godlike, while everything else, like teleport, self-sacrifice just plain sucks. It seems that a combination of Rouge,Crank and Butcher will dominate games for the next foreseeable future.
A player earns less than 100 credits per victory, with champions priced at 7200 credits. An average game is 8 minutes or so, that's close to 10 hours of grinding to buy another champion. That's 30 hours of grinding to get champions you want. The game isn't very fun at this point, and I don't see myself grinding for this long. Checking the in-game store, it seems that champions are priced at about 10$, while ships are at 20$. Once again, I don't see enough potential in this game to spend money on it.
After about 5 hours of being stomped in the ground by OP combinations, I gave up. There's only so little tactics I can pull off with a painfully underpowered deck..
The only reason this game deserves a 5 is because I like the tactical RPG genre. Maybe future updates will add more content, but in the current state the game has a couple hours of fun before becoming a tedious grind.… Expand
Aerena: Clash of ChampionsYour Score0 out of 10User Score
