With a similar story to older school Japanese RPGs for some reason, the player has to battle enemies intent on destroying mankind.
Each battle, you draw from a deck of cards. Whatever the number of the value of the cards you draw is the power value added to the characters in your party for their attack. The colour of the card denotes which character receives the bonus. This is because every character utilises either Earth, Fire or Water to power their attacks, enemies included.[sc name=”quote” text=”This is because every character utilises either Earth, Fire or Water to power their attacks, enemies included.”]
The game most adamantly warns you however to avoid going above 21. Once you go above 21, the entire attack is scrapped and you lose your go. While it does make sense to make some sort of mechanic to avoid just spam clicking the deck and get the highest value, it feels arbitrary and somewhat punishing to the player.
However, if you hit 21 exactly, the value goes to all characters and you get x3 damage bonus for that attack, essentially ensuring you win the fight. The randomness and possibility for critical hits makes the actual combat fairly exciting, though it can feel a little dull just hitting a card deck and doing some basic probability math.
To alleviate this boredom, each major character has a special ability they can use after a few basic attacks, so in the very least, you have the ability to make some other input in battles except for drawing and doing maths.
Characters in your party are recruited from the wild, but are also other people playing the game online. Battlejack appears to be attempting to create some sort of MMO feel by allowing all players to be able to hire one another into their parties while offline, making certain battles much easier.
The method of making your characters more powerful is quite terrifying, however; you have to sacrifice – it literally uses that word – other characters you’ve recruited along the way to get more power for your primary characters. This is the only way to level up and improve them. This means that your lovely party is walking around the countryside, destroying the natives and then sacrificing them for +2 damage every now and then.[sc name=”quote” text=”This means that your lovely party is walking around the countryside, destroying the natives and then sacrificing them for +2 damage every now and then.”]
The combat and base mechanics of Battlejack are all based around the deck clicking core concept. Other than that, the game is essentially moving forward through the story, beating the four sets of enemies in each level and unlocking chests that contain gold and other power-ups and items to make future fights a little bit easier.
Battlejack feels supremely like an effort at bringing classic JRPG game concepts and simplify them down to a mobile game’s level, except interpreted by someone with a very simplistic idea of what people want in a mobile game.
Battlejack isn’t a bad game by any consideration, but it lacks the depth or intricacies to make it anything more than that.
It could be a lot more, but for now, it’s just cards and attack values.
[review pros=”Visually pleasing. Decently balanced.” cons=”Gameplay not varied enough. Lack of originality in design. Rather strange story.” score=5]
[appbox googleplay com.grandcru.battlejack]
[appbox appstore id1064497671]
