BattleForge

A naturally divisive game, a few will succumb to its slightly wonky charms. Most, however, will find that the gimmicks have only limited appeal.

The missions themselves repeat the same formula again and again, which severely undercuts the point of having such variety and flexibility in the card system. When you add in the awkward auction interface and the additional cash required to collect the cards you really want, it makes it that much harder to see the value in the few things that BattleForge gets right.

Microtransactions all but ruin this unusual real-time strategy and its flawed collectible card game.

BattleForge is a combination of strange mechanics and bad design. Units are diverse – and yet none of them are terribly interesting. Missions have a ton of variety on the surface, but in practice they’re variations on the same few objectives.

There's fun to be had, but only if you're playing the game with friends, since playing with strangers more often than not results in a similar feeling of frustration experienced in pick up groups in MMORPGs.

Whether or not you enjoy BattleForge depends largely on how much of a purist you are. It has the cunning and diverse combos of a CCG, but not the pacing for patient maneuvers. It has the tactics and resource-management of RTS, but not the stability in foes to plan for every possibility.

It's a vivid, rapid, entertaining strategy game, shot through with strikingly smart design decisions... It's problems are, inevitably, of balance. Developer EA Phenomic has accepted an impossible task - weighing all possible combinations of 200 units against one another. [May 2009, p.96]

It might seem that Battleforge is a terrible game, but just to make it clear: when you hear the term 'card based MMORTS' you instantly get sparkling eyes out of curiosity. It's then somewhat of disappointment when you find out that it's just a simple RTS in which you can needlessly fiddle around with cards that don't differ much from each other.

Mix Warcraft with Magic the Gathering and you'll get BattleForge. It's not a bad mix, but you'll have to get used to it. The learning curve is pretty steep and rookies will get their asses kicked within seconds. But, the game rewards the one that keeps trying with some tasteful gameplay and a delicious fantasy topping.

In an attempt to find as much fan favour as possible, Electronic Arts have managed to spread this title a bit too thinly over both the RPG and card playing genres. There is an entertaining game here, but you might struggle to find it.

Quotation forthcoming.