Week 10 - Quick Analysis 2

Battleheart – Battleheart comes from the developers of “OMG! Ninjas”, a platform game in what I perceived as the style of the also recent Castle Crashers from Behemoth. Battleheart, unlike Mika Mobile’s former game, can be defined as an RPG, but at the same time it’s also very similar to a simple Action RTS game; you control from 1 (min) to 4 (max) characters (though, there are quite a few others than you can swap in and out of your party) who must strategically use skills and avoid or engage enemies in order to survive the waves of enemies that plague each map. The game starts off rather simple with two major characters (a cleric and a knight) and the game quickly opens up, allowing you to purchase the services of other classes: barbarians, more knights, bards, mages, and rogues. However, if all you did was fight monsters through the “story’s” 20+ levels, this app would be a rather uninteresting and boring arena romp, very similar to many other games on the Apple App Store. To remedy this, Mika Mobile’s Battleheart boasts a robust skill tree system and a very large variety of items of varying rarities to collect and equip (and sell for money).

Every class has around 10 or so skills that are unlocked as the character levels up: every five levels, the characters gain 2 new skills, but the twist is only one skill can be equipped at a time. This allows for great variety in technique and gameplay because you can focus a character on the passive end of his skills for one battle, then switch him/her to a full on attack character for another, more aggressive battle. The range of skills is rather astounding and the only thing I think the game is missing is the ability to improve your characters skills based on what skills are used in battle, of course, that is more of a personal preference than an honest-to-god problem. The items provide a fantastic incentive to keep on playing because you are consistently hoping to find or discover new items in either the unlockable arena battles/field battles or at the Market, where items change after every battle. In the end, Battleheart is a really fun RPG/RTS hybrid that hits some of the simpler aspects of the video game on the head and thus creates an experience worth buying. (8.5/10)