RATINGS:

Gameplay: 7
Graphics: 8.5
Sound: 7

Overal: 8

Pros: Nice cross branding between the company’s other online games and the physical board game.
Cons: Combat seems as if it could very easily become extremely unbalanced.

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We lately dedicated some of our time to give Krosmaster Arena Online a shot. This free-to-play 1v1 duelling game is the latest strategy title from Ankama Games and tasks players with positioning the characters onto a battle map where they move them around and perform various attacks to try and kill the other team.

Thanks to its successful physical board game counterpart that people come across in stores, Krosmaster Arena Online has already become quite popular, as it’s just a digital version of the former, which uses exactly the same characters, rules and mechanics.

An attractive aspect of the title is its cross-platform/ cross-game access that Ankama Games allows players of two of their other titles, Dofus and Wakfu. Krosmaster Arena can be accessed within these games and characters unlocked there can also be accessed in Krosmaster Arena Online. Correspondingly, players who purchase physical characters for the board game are also granted access to their digital representations within the online version, which results in a particularly powerful brand which is rapidly growing in popularity.

Upon entering the game for the very first time, we went through the tutorial, which gave an overview of the general match mechanics and rules, but was nothing more than an interactive slideshow, before we had to face off against our first opponent. However, we’ll get to that part of the story later. The game’s premise is that players have multiple characters in their team (we can’t say if the total number is limited, as we had 4 in our team, our first opponent only 3 and the next one 5 characters). Each character possesses its own character card displaying its attributes, as for example health, action points or movement points, as well as the various attacks/ actions the character is able to perform.

The map is comprised of a grid of 12x12 tiles and full of chests and coins for players to collects and well as obstacles. Both teams start at the opposing ends of the map and players will take it in turns using their entire team of characters. They are only allowed a limited period of time per character, which forces them to quickly think and act, before the turn passes on to the opponent who will then move their characters.

The game’s purpose doesn’t simply consist of killing all your opponent’s team members, but to remove their “GG”s, which is seemingly done by annihilating the characters. Each character has a combination of melee or ranged attacks that can either focus in single targets or whole areas of effect. Some characters are alternatively able to heal their team-mates.

When moving around their characters, players can collects the coins strewn across the map and enter one of the shop squares to buy upgrades and buffs they are able to use during battle. This means tactics and strategy revolve around gathering up resources, directly attacking the opponent and trying to reach a store to buy helpful items. Each turn, there also is a dice rolling mechanic that determines whether you are able to your defences, critical attacks and a some other buffs of which we’d already forgotten how they worked by the time our match began. A rather frustrating fact was that we were apparently unable to check our characters’ attack capabilities during the match, unless it actually was that character’s turn. We therefore were in a hurry then to read about its abilities and to perform one of them before the time was up.

Our very first match resulted in a pretty unexpected victory, the sweet taste of which was swiftly soured by the complete thrashing we received in the next one when our second opponent miraculously managed to kill 2 of our characters with just one of theirs in a single turn, which left us absolutely defenceless. As we hadn’t played more than just a couple of minutes and were already defeated, we came to the conclusion that either our opponent was way out of our level or the match balancing very poor. The game mechanics are significantly rather open for creating a one-sided battle with lucky rolls… or maybe we just really sucked.

Krosmaster Arena as such is very well presented with thrilling and bright visuals that capture the same chibi style the other games are famous for. Despite the limited time we spent in the game, we’re pretty sure that it may be particularly fun.

Please stay tuned for our first look gameplay commentary video as well as an in-depth profile we’re about to publish!

This entry was posted on Friday, July 25th, 2014 at 2:32 pm and is filed under MMO News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Puedes dejar una respuesta, o un trackback desde tu sitio web.