BattleForge has been called a massively multiplayer online real time strategy trading card game. But that’s only partly true. It’s not a true MMO – not that many games that call themselves MMOs are either…
What it really is, is a real time strategy that uses on tradable cards for units and support powers. To be clear, there are no physical cards. Your deck is entirely digital, and is tied to your online account. The virtual cards can be bought and sold in the in-game auction house, and cards can be bought using the in-game currency, more of which can be acquired in exchange for real life money.
That may sound like a slippery slope. How many micropayments does one make before the sum total is very macro indeed? Well, quite a few. And since there’s no monthly subscription, ala World of Warcraft, one could splurge quite heavily on shiny new cards and still play much more cheaply than a Warcrack-head.
But there’s a game here, and that really is the most important part. As I mentioned earlier, it’s a real time strategy. A fantasy real time strategy, so brace yourself for gaggles of Warcraft fans calling it a rip-off. Once you’re into the game and playing, it’s not far removed from standard RTS fare. The only real departure from the norm is the almost total lack of base building.
Power nodes need to be captured. These provide the currency you spend to spawn units and use support powers. Mana towers also need to be captured. These grant access to the power of an elemental orb. More on those later. There are fortifications, and places where fortifications can be built to defend objectives. These can be garrisoned with appropriate defensive units, and can create some interesting tactical opportunities.
Using cards to spawn units is ever so simple. Your cards are spread across the bottom of the screen. You simply click on the card you want to use, and click where you want its effect to occur. Simply put, you click on a card with picture of a flamey dragon, and then click where you want the dragon to appear. Or click on the picture of the big hailstorm of death, and then click on an enemy formation to Papamoa them into submission.
Each card has a power cost and elemental orb requirement. The most basic units might require that you control say, one fire orb and one orb of any other alignment. The more powerful cards require more orbs in more specific combinations and a lot more power. In order to gain control of orbs, mana towers must be captured and aligned with an element.
Even the basic starting deck provides you with a greater variety of units than many a full-blown RTS, and once you start spending points to buy booster packs, you’ll be fair inundated with different units. Since your in-game deck size is limited, this makes card selection something of a juggling act. As I’ve never really dabbled in the dark arts of TCGs, I found it quite a nice change to specify which units would be available to me for a given mission. For many, this will be the most important aspect of the game. Those people likely know lots more about Magic: The Gathering than I do.
They might also be more tolerant of the sometimes-clunky auction and card-handling interfaces. Sorting through cards can get annoying with even the starting deck, let alone trying to juggle cards once you’ve got a few booster packs and other additional cards.
The missions themselves show a reasonable amount of variety, though often missions that seem very different at the outset will often play in a very similar way, which can make things repetitive. But that’s where the multiplayer component comes in. Like avatars of chaos, other players can throw a spanner into even the most precisely tuned works. And that’s the great gamble of online multiplayer. Will your co-op allies be helpful, tactically smart, and fluent in English? Perhaps, perhaps not. But it does mix things up. Unless they disconnect early on, which happens more often than I’m really comfortable with.
The interface doesn’t help in this regard, since the chat window is tiny, and gets spammed with extraneous info on a near-constant basis.
There’s a surprisingly involved story here, told through loading screen text, voice-overs, and for those wanting more, a veritable encyclopaedia of canon info that gets added to as you play. I’m too elitist for such nonsense, getting my fantasy fix from proper books and all, but for the less pretentious (but equally geeky) gamer there’s a real gold mine of useless but interesting trivia to be delved into.
BattleForge’s visual style is somewhat reminiscent of the Warcraft franchise, though more so World of Warcraft itself than the previous RTS games. Colours are bright, armour is showy and ornate, and swords are unrealistically impressive. And I’m okay with that. There are also units that look surprisingly realistic; the lower level frost cards spawn some properly gritty soldiers with excellent accents. But it’s the higher level stuff that makes for pretty screenshots, and they’re largely very effing cool indeed. High level fire units are worth having in your deck just for their spawn animations.
But how does it stack up? Surprising well. The RTS gameplay is solid, with a decent UI and enough advanced features to manage a battle without too much dicking around. I sometimes wished for the camera to zoom out further than it can, but I had been playing some Supreme Commander beforehand. Of course, that could start causing framerate issues for those with older graphics cards. A 256mb 8600GT @ 650 MHz (on a low-end dual core machine) will really only handle medium detail at modest resolution, and the high graphics settings are pretty enough warrant an upgrade. The same system with an ATi HD 4850 makes for a more enjoyable experience.
I first fired this game up not long after launch, and the patcher was pretty badly broken. The official forums (as well as many other gaming forums) were full of people having the same issues I was, with EA staff suggesting ridiculous fixes like creating a new Windows administrator account. After a few days, the patcher was patched, and was able to patch the game. EA have gained a reputation for releasing broken product and for abandoning support of very active titles, and when issues prevent the game from being played for several days after purchase, one has to wonder just how dedicated they are to keeping this game running. The answer probably lies in the profitability of the booster pack purchases, which has the potential to make all but the biggest-spending players uncompetitive in PvP.
Conclusion:
BattleForge is a solid RTS, with pretty graphics and hopefully genuine longevity. Assuming additional missions and new cards are released semi-regularly, this could be quite a long term timesink for someone looking for something outside the usual MMO or online FPS box.
Tags: Games