“The Star Wars game mobile gamers have been waiting for” has soft-launched in several countries, giving us lucky faux-Australians a taste of EA’s mobile card RPG. Not featured: gripping excitement. Update—now available worldwide!
Originally posted on 10/17/15
You know those mobile “role-playing games” that are big right now? The ones where you summon random characters, battle through three-tiered stages to earn experience points and equipment to upgrade your characters? That’s exactly what Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes is. It’s the old “let’s take a popular mobile genre and put Star Wars all in it” trick.
It’s not bad. It’s not great, either. The battles are interesting until you’ve leveled your characters up enough that auto-battle gets them every time. Cultivating a strong Light Side and Dark Side team takes some experience and item management. The cast of characters is pretty diverse, but like all Star Wars properties it feels like it’s waiting until December for that big Force Awakens update.
Like any game in the blooming genre, the more money you spend on premium character pulls the more powerful your team, so in the end it all comes down to patience versus paying, and isn’t that what this grand intergalactic conflict all boils down to?
No? Well there goes that metaphor. Fudge.
Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes is currently soft-launched in select territories, so expect details to change between now and when the game is released on Android and iOS in North America later this year.
Update: Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes is now available worldwide on iOS and Android, and I’ve been playing every single day since this article was originally posted back in October. Yeah, it’s a bit addictive.
Since the soft launch much has changed, but the core gameplay is pretty much the same—collect heroes, upgrade heroes, fighting increasingly difficult battles to earn bits to upgrade and collect more heroes. New features have slowly been implemented, like a series of Cantina battles players can take on with a mixed Light and Dark Side party, a daily Global War campaign, which is basically a survival mode for the players entire roster. PVP battles aren’t forced into automatic mode anymore, giving players more control over getting their asses kicked.
Having spent not a single dime so far I’ve collected 27 characters and risen to level 55. Had I spent money I’d probably be higher up on the PVP ladder and my characters would be much more powerful, but I’m not to worried about it. I log in, complete the Daily Task list, earn my rewards and then wait for 24 hours to pass. It’s a small grind, but it’s a small Star Wars grind, which makes it much better.
Plus it’s got this guy. Any game with this guy can’t be all bad.
Find the author wandering about his totally native Australia or contact him at fahey@kotaku.com or follow him on Twitter at @bunnyspatial