This has been out for a while on the DS but just came out on Steam last week or so. It is a very good game but I don't think it's as good as the ridciulous 95%ish reviews that most sites gave it on the DS. It's closer to a puzzle game than a strategy game with RPG elements. You line up stuff horizontally or vertically for different effect, and you units in theory have a wide range of stats that you got to utilize. In reality, once you get even a halfway decent Elite unit, you'll just end up using them as much as possible with no regard to strategy because they're powerful. It takes about 2-3 hours to actually level your hero/units to the level cap and after that character progression stops, and the game gets around this by forcing you to start over at level 1 5 times.
It'd be far better if it takes more like 10-15 hours to hit the max level, and have say 2 campaigns instead of 5. You get the Elite/Champion way too fast in this game too, and since you can only use a total of 2 Elite+Champion, this means even though there are 5 unit type, you'll quickly settle on 2 if not 1. Even when you only have say 2 types of Elites, if you're say Haven, the Knight is just way stronger than the Priestess it'd be pointless to put Priestess in your army at all even if they didn't take up potential spots for Knights (and I think they do) because you'd have to worry about replacing them if they died.
The fights against guys who are higher level than you (usually the challenge battles) are very tough. The Unicorn battle in the first campaign doesn't seem winnable until you hit the level cap unless you just loaded until the guy magically fail to draw any Unicorns (which is what I did).
The game overall is quite fun, but lack of progression really messes up its variety. If you run with Priestesses instead of Knights, that totally changes how you've to approach the game, but since there's about 2 hours of gameplay for the campaign left by the time you get them, why would you even bother leveling up an inferior unit? The game really should have battles that force you to use some units, but then you could end up in a FFT 'Wiegraf versus Ramza' situation if the next battle forces you to use say, Priestesses, Griffins, and Archers that you never leveled up because they suck. Sure you can always go to the tried and true 'go in a circle and fight random enemies' approach but that's not exactly fun. Still, they can make it that if a battle forces you to use certain units, they're brought up to some minimum level if you neglected them the whole game.
This game is a good example of one of my greatest gripes about strategy-like games. Most people play the game simply aren't any good at it and don't even know that. I checked GameFAQs for this and I'm sure the FAQs are just making up strategy as they go, since the non-challenge battles in this game is easy enough that all you have to do is send your strongest Elite/Champion units to win. You don't need some hypothetical 8 chain combo to beat anybody in the game, and the challenge battle guys can kill you in about 3 turns so you'll never have time to setup a big combo anyway. And no the AI isn't 'weak' because it'd really suck if you lose every game you play if the AI actually tried. In fact if the AI simply always goes first, and always concentrates on Champions first (which they get them long before you), you'll probably lose 75% of the equal level battles. We're not even talking about broken units like Unicorns where if one appeared at all you probably lost the game.
A well designed strategy AI usually ensures you can almost always win without making it too obvious, and Clash of Heroes does this by making the AI less aggressive at using its big units compared to you, even though it has no reason to do so.
I guess the biggest problem of Clash of Heroes is that it can easily have been a lot better with a few changes. But it's still a great game even if it cost $40, and it's only $15 on Steam.
It'd be far better if it takes more like 10-15 hours to hit the max level, and have say 2 campaigns instead of 5. You get the Elite/Champion way too fast in this game too, and since you can only use a total of 2 Elite+Champion, this means even though there are 5 unit type, you'll quickly settle on 2 if not 1. Even when you only have say 2 types of Elites, if you're say Haven, the Knight is just way stronger than the Priestess it'd be pointless to put Priestess in your army at all even if they didn't take up potential spots for Knights (and I think they do) because you'd have to worry about replacing them if they died.
The fights against guys who are higher level than you (usually the challenge battles) are very tough. The Unicorn battle in the first campaign doesn't seem winnable until you hit the level cap unless you just loaded until the guy magically fail to draw any Unicorns (which is what I did).
The game overall is quite fun, but lack of progression really messes up its variety. If you run with Priestesses instead of Knights, that totally changes how you've to approach the game, but since there's about 2 hours of gameplay for the campaign left by the time you get them, why would you even bother leveling up an inferior unit? The game really should have battles that force you to use some units, but then you could end up in a FFT 'Wiegraf versus Ramza' situation if the next battle forces you to use say, Priestesses, Griffins, and Archers that you never leveled up because they suck. Sure you can always go to the tried and true 'go in a circle and fight random enemies' approach but that's not exactly fun. Still, they can make it that if a battle forces you to use certain units, they're brought up to some minimum level if you neglected them the whole game.
This game is a good example of one of my greatest gripes about strategy-like games. Most people play the game simply aren't any good at it and don't even know that. I checked GameFAQs for this and I'm sure the FAQs are just making up strategy as they go, since the non-challenge battles in this game is easy enough that all you have to do is send your strongest Elite/Champion units to win. You don't need some hypothetical 8 chain combo to beat anybody in the game, and the challenge battle guys can kill you in about 3 turns so you'll never have time to setup a big combo anyway. And no the AI isn't 'weak' because it'd really suck if you lose every game you play if the AI actually tried. In fact if the AI simply always goes first, and always concentrates on Champions first (which they get them long before you), you'll probably lose 75% of the equal level battles. We're not even talking about broken units like Unicorns where if one appeared at all you probably lost the game.
A well designed strategy AI usually ensures you can almost always win without making it too obvious, and Clash of Heroes does this by making the AI less aggressive at using its big units compared to you, even though it has no reason to do so.
I guess the biggest problem of Clash of Heroes is that it can easily have been a lot better with a few changes. But it's still a great game even if it cost $40, and it's only $15 on Steam.
