Now that I'm Level 5, I can see that Energy is a big issue. My maximum Energy is 24, and it now costs 6 Energy to play a match. By going up a level, my maximum Energy increased by only 1. The Energy system is lame. It should be a 2:1 ratio.
I like it so far. I've seen a couple comparisons to Hero Emblems, but it's much closer to Puzzle and Dragons than Hero Emblems, both in the gameplay and monetization aspects.
Graphically this game has a charm and plays smoothly, the interface is at least good and the music fits the theme of the aesthetics. The gameplay is good in itself, i like the matching formular and the combos you can build. Collecting heroes is nice, even thought it seems incredibly Expensive and time consuming to get rare ones. But! The energy system is one of the worst I have ever seen unfortunately.... After about an hour you run out. Recharging for a battle costs you 25-30 minutes. You can watch an ad for 5 energy by clicking on the energy and they are endless es far as I know. So at first I thought: "hey it's not tooooo bad!" Well. I was wrong: after you three star a level where you can get hero tokens you can collect the reward instantly by clicking on the heroes tokens in the hero screen once every 8 hours... for as much energy as this level costs... So for me at level 4 after about an hour play I can collect those tokens in 6 levels. Therefore I need 30 energy. I have 21 max. So in order to just collect those tokens I need to watch three ads before I can even play the game. Once. So this very quickly becomes a game where you need to watch a tremendous amount of ads to just play/grind... horrible design choice. What this token gain method also means is that you are starved for gold, as you will have a high amount of tokens (especially if you watch ads and collect those every 8 hours) but no gold to upgrade heroes. This gets worse, as I have now hit chapter 4 where prigression in terms of gold gain gets slow, as completing the levels takes more and more time... which is just not worth the amount of gold you gain. Gen acquisition rate feels very slow, too. At the end of chapter 3 they give you one magic chest for free with 5k gold. Even with that very high amount of gold I still spend it instantly and still have tokens left (!!) and this is just with one 8 hour token acquisition.... So overall you just don't have enough energy to collect all tokens at once and play the game. You do not get nearly enough gold to upgrade heroes and you do not do enough damage to acquire gold in a way that makes playing the game feel rewarding.... This is not to mention the monotonous enemy variety and gameplay with almost no change of pace or "cool" twist at all, as well as minor things like an interface that looks nice but takes more time navigating than should be necessary, AI that ignores one hit enemies that are about to attach or hit already dead enemies in a multi attack special abilitie.... etc. Highly recommend to stay away from this game unless energy and especially gold acquisition rate changes dramatically (!). Could have been a very cool game but as it is now it's pretty much a huge time waster with minimal progression... sadly.
Serious question to devs out there, why can't you release two SKUs, one freemium, the other premium. There are ALWAYS going to be people on one side of the fence or the other, so this way you reward both parties with a minimum of development time.
I forgot this was made by a very cool Dev. Swap Heroes and the sequels were so much fun. Happy to see his talent really shines here. A stunning looking game.
Oh please. Similar to Hero Emblems? We all wish. HE was such a gem because of two things : first of all premium, and second, side scrolling fully animated battles. This combination put it in a league all its own. This belongs to Puzzle&Dragons, where you have F2P simple pew pew out of character portraits. If you like that style, Match Land offers retro, Puzzle&Dragons crazy J-collabs, Tower of Saviors the fairer game mechanics(for a F2P) and Legendary:Game of Heroes the best graphics. Personally, i like fully animated battles HE style, so i stay clear from all of those.
I was just saying it *could* have been another HE, but sadly is not. I don't think anyone made a direct comparison?
I was just explaining why it couldn't be, because of monetisation but -most importantly-gameplay aspect, animated battles versus not. Like how Legend of Grimrock can't be a Final Fantasy, both RPGs but different gameplay aspects. Moreover, i apologise if my tone was taken as agressive, as i value your posts(Appunwrapper). I was expressing frustration-how we all wish we had another game like HE.
No worries! Just wanted to make sure my own words were clear when I brought up HE. It's funny because HE wastes a bit of time walking around the map and I kind of wouldn't mind that getting cut out. But at least once you're in a dungeon, you're *playing* through a long and gruesome dungeon. And failing is part of the fun because you can just try again. I already gave up on this one because I was spending more time outside of battles than inside. It feels like a match-three for those who rather be playing a clicker instead?
That used to be the norm, but it failed. It is too difficult for small studios to try and maintain and balance two separate apps, and splitting your audience in two like that basically eliminates your ability to chart well, which is suicide. On top of all that, Apple does not like that approach and discourages it. Glad to see you agree.
Having played it a little more, I still WANT to like it, but I can't. The energy timer is tied to harvesting, so you either choose harvesting or playing. I tried to do harvesting for a bit, because I got to a really difficult board and wanted to level up my heroes. But harvesting uses up the same energy you'd use to play. I have literally been TRYING to play this game, and in 16 hours have played not a single board. Argh! Please, please, disconnect harvesting energy from playing energy. If playing was free, but harvesting still cost energy, the game would be fine. Still freemium, but at least playable. As it is, for me, 1 star. Fix this and it would be 4 stars. Add a doubler (energy/coins/crystals) IAP, and it'd be 5 stars for me.
Does this game have a way to save the game progress? Is it linked to anything? Facebook or game center?
Has anybody here tried opening a Mystic Chest and obtained a figurine? Or did you simply end up with just spread out figurine pieces? I figure it's the latter and the chances of getting an actual figurine when most of your unlocked heroes are at 2/10 if not zero, are pretty much low unless you open multiple chests. A friend of mine has been considering between getting pure gold or the chest, which already comes with 25,000 of that. The tokens and spices are tempting, to say the least. Also, if you've already unlocked a hero, do you continue getting figurine pieces for them by way of dupes?
After spending the evening with the game I gotta say it's not very good. The energy timer is way too harsh for how short rounds are. It's easy to exhaust in about 5 to 10 minutes, especially with a Quick Loot or two. Leveling heroes becomes a grind quick. Even after leveling them a few times the stat increases are barely noticeable. Often times they just don't do enough damage without multiple matches, which is often impossible. I'll go for several consecutive turns with the board only having one possible match. Eventually you just die. I was able to progress fairly easily at first, but then the enemies become damage sponges and when the board is limited frustration sets in. The entire game is mired in contrivances and economies and timers. It's cute and fun at first but VERY quickly you will hit a wall that cannot be overcome with skill.
Under "tips" in the game (an obscure little ticker across the top you can scroll through in one of the settings menus) I found out that you do double damage with the same color. So red defeats mushrooms, and green defeats blobs, etc. You can also tap on an enemy to target them. These two tips have let me progress much further. The energy to play thing is still rediculous. I won't pay (and I've spend plenty on other FTP games) unless they fix the energy to play.
