Doesn't really deserve a 10 but a 9.5, but 10 will do because this game gave me too much fun to not give it the best note.
Clash of Heroes is a puzzle game whose complexity and strategy potential is just immense.
5 races, 8 units in each race, each unit with their own charge time, strength, defense, type of attack, type of defense, special effect such as poison, stealing mana,Doesn't really deserve a 10 but a 9.5, but 10 will do because this game gave me too much fun to not give it the best note.
Clash of Heroes is a puzzle game whose complexity and strategy potential is just immense.
5 races, 8 units in each race, each unit with their own charge time, strength, defense, type of attack, type of defense, special effect such as poison, stealing mana, stealing health, one-hit-killing the foe, stealing enemy's charge, destroying walls, attacking stronger depending on your hero's mana, jumping over walls, creating defensive magical walls, strengthening your Charge power(which is attack power) by eating idle enemies, having +50% defense, healing your hero while it charges, being +100% stronger when you attack your last enemy, etc etc: this game's diversity is nothing short of awesome.
The incredibly numerous and varied strategies you can create with basic units(3 per race), Hero Units(2 or 3 per race) and Champion units(2 or 3 per race) is just amazing.
Add to that that the game has an incredible amount of Hero powers such as using your walls as massive fireball attacks, throwing extra strong arrows to the enemy, launching random lightning strikes, strengthening your attack, your defense, your charge time, getting your units to their last charging turn...
Add to THAT the numerous artifacts and options they give such as an extra move per turn, added offensive for weakened HP, faster attacks, more HP, more strength or defense or base charge...
The potential for strategy and tactics in this game is truly, truly awesome. As games go this is the most playable game I've played in years. It looks simple but reveals an immense complexity that never stops being fun.
I could say even more good things about the incredibly good gameplay but I have to leave some room for the bad things.
First off unlike some, I like the anime art style in this. It doesn't dissapoint for most Good characters and units. When it comes to Evil ones though, it's pretty disastrous. Undead look like plushies and Demons look like they were drawn by a 5 year old. Nothing ugly about them, but that's the issue: they should be ugly. And they're not even a little bit. I guess that is a target market to make this game for young kids, but I wonder how many young kids will enjoy a puzzle game like this.
No big issues with the art style apart from the villains and evil creatures.
Music-wise, there's just one thing to say, this is absolute cr*p. There are 3 songs out of the entire game I can bear after finishing the game once, that's one of the eight battle themes, the final boss theme and the victory theme(which lasts like 10 seconds). The rest is very poor ambients, no music of any kind, the forests of Irollan don't sound very different to the fires of Sheogh, no place has any musical identity, seven out of eight battle themes are ripped off from the M&M franchise and have nothing good about them. It's clearly the worst part of the game.
The story is pretty lame too, though. Nothing inherently wrong with its writing but nothing good either. I didn't care about any of the characters and the ending didn't make me change my mind. It's a story you read once to know the whys and hows, and then never care again. There is one line I like out of all the game, it's the demon that gets killed during Mt Neberzyias' eruption. The rest is just there so that the game has a story.
Admitedly, I used to speedrun this game, and the fact that the story's worth is near null has been a great argument to play this while skipping the story.
Lastly, the game plays with a seemingly basic method of stacking units of the same colour: stack 3 units vertically to make an attack, 3 horizontally to make a wall layer. To charge up a Hero unit(2 tiles) or Champion(4 tiles), you add base units of their colour behind them, 2 for Heroes and 4 for Champions.
This seemingly simplistic system reveals its incredible efficiency when you add links and fusions. The battlefield is 6x8 tiles, with 6 vertical. To fuse two groups or hero/champion units, you need to take exactly 6 vertical tiles. Which means that you can only fuse if you have no defenses. These kind of "minor" details show how well-thought this game is. Your immense potential for destructive power depends almost entirely on your choices for attack, defense, setting walls, destroying the right units to create attacks or walls at the right moment, preparing and launching attacks simultaneously to create links that add attack power to all units in the link(see a Pit Fiend go from 110 attack alone to 170 thanks to being in a link of 4 simultaneous attacks!), fusing, using your Hero's power at the right time...
This masterpiece's strategic/puzzle value is tremendous. So it's a 10, despite its numerous flaws. I noticed a lot of people complained about the luck factor, but trust me: the more you play, the more it becomes tactical, as luck slowly loses its grip on you when you truly master the game.… Expand
Might & Magic: Clash of HeroesYour Score0 out of 10User Score
