For my first review, I'll take a look at a game I have been playing for quite a while now, called Dofus Arena. This pretty unknown game, tries to use the gameplay of games like final fantasy tactics, fire emblem and disgaea in a player vs player only game. Concrete: you make a team, another person on the other side of the world makes a team and you use those to battle against eachother the arena.
After almost 4 year of development, the core of the game is done, the amount of bugs plumbed to near zero and the amount of indications that the game isn't fully released yet came to an all time low. As such, I prefer not to wait until the game is released later this year to write this preview.
Images say more then a thousand words: this lets you know everything you need to know about the graphics and the interface. It shows an iop casting celestial sword.
Before even being able to battle, you need to get yourself a team. To do that, you pick up to 6 characters out of 12, give each character some spells or weapons and hand out some equipment. There's one catch: everything, even the tiniest item, has a costprice and the value of your team can't exceed 6000 kama. While this system allows quite a bit of strategy making before the match begins, new players often get overwhelmed by the possibilities.
Although you can always opt to use one of the premade teams or just copy teams.
Note that there is no way to get more then 6000 kama, nor any way to make the things you can buy with it stronger: there is no grinding possible.
Once you picked a team, you're ready to push the start battle button. 30 seconds later, you're on a (randomly picked) area where in the next 10 to 30 minutes you and your opponent will be trying to kill each others characters. From here on, characters take their turns, using movement points and action points to reduce the opponents health points to zero (how much and what you can do with these things depend on your equipment).
If you win, besides you getting higher on the ladder (elo system and represented by levels) you have a chance of getting equipment/emoticons for your avatar.
The game isn't very newbie friendly here either though, concepts like bonus cards, events cards, intiative, back/side damage, blocking/dodging and all the spells effects increase the difficulty of playing perfectly quite a bit. Still, I would claim the game is pretty easy to control and understand, as a simple mouseover explains the opponents spells and extra cards. Mastering the game to perfection is another thing.
So far, so good, but dofus arena has it flaws as well. To start with, the list you can do isn't very big: climb the 1vs1 ladder, usual friendly matches, participating in a clan, gathering coach (avatar) equipment, participate in some tournaments, watch/host replays. Although I have to note 2vs2 and integrated tournament support are promessed.
Additionally, the English community is pretty small in this originally French game. While most French are capable to make themselves clear in English and there are no discrimination problems with the tournaments, not being able to understand most conversations might get on your nerves.
Lastly, while it is definetly possible to get a functional and yet original team, a lot of people prefer to just copy teams.
To resume: Dofus Arena is a free grindless but complicated tactical game where you battle other people with personalised teams. It's pretty indept and balanced but needs to get more functionalities and community support before it truly can get released. However, this slow paced game isn't made for the average shooter/action gamer
Oh, before I forget: I do enjoy playing the game.
I hope that neither my inexperience with writing reviews, nor my lack of English vocabulary (not my first language) was too obvious...
PS: I wish I could say more about the story.
After almost 4 year of development, the core of the game is done, the amount of bugs plumbed to near zero and the amount of indications that the game isn't fully released yet came to an all time low. As such, I prefer not to wait until the game is released later this year to write this preview.
Images say more then a thousand words: this lets you know everything you need to know about the graphics and the interface. It shows an iop casting celestial sword.
Before even being able to battle, you need to get yourself a team. To do that, you pick up to 6 characters out of 12, give each character some spells or weapons and hand out some equipment. There's one catch: everything, even the tiniest item, has a costprice and the value of your team can't exceed 6000 kama. While this system allows quite a bit of strategy making before the match begins, new players often get overwhelmed by the possibilities.
Although you can always opt to use one of the premade teams or just copy teams.
Note that there is no way to get more then 6000 kama, nor any way to make the things you can buy with it stronger: there is no grinding possible.
Once you picked a team, you're ready to push the start battle button. 30 seconds later, you're on a (randomly picked) area where in the next 10 to 30 minutes you and your opponent will be trying to kill each others characters. From here on, characters take their turns, using movement points and action points to reduce the opponents health points to zero (how much and what you can do with these things depend on your equipment).
If you win, besides you getting higher on the ladder (elo system and represented by levels) you have a chance of getting equipment/emoticons for your avatar.
The game isn't very newbie friendly here either though, concepts like bonus cards, events cards, intiative, back/side damage, blocking/dodging and all the spells effects increase the difficulty of playing perfectly quite a bit. Still, I would claim the game is pretty easy to control and understand, as a simple mouseover explains the opponents spells and extra cards. Mastering the game to perfection is another thing.
So far, so good, but dofus arena has it flaws as well. To start with, the list you can do isn't very big: climb the 1vs1 ladder, usual friendly matches, participating in a clan, gathering coach (avatar) equipment, participate in some tournaments, watch/host replays. Although I have to note 2vs2 and integrated tournament support are promessed.
Additionally, the English community is pretty small in this originally French game. While most French are capable to make themselves clear in English and there are no discrimination problems with the tournaments, not being able to understand most conversations might get on your nerves.
Lastly, while it is definetly possible to get a functional and yet original team, a lot of people prefer to just copy teams.
To resume: Dofus Arena is a free grindless but complicated tactical game where you battle other people with personalised teams. It's pretty indept and balanced but needs to get more functionalities and community support before it truly can get released. However, this slow paced game isn't made for the average shooter/action gamer
Oh, before I forget: I do enjoy playing the game.
I hope that neither my inexperience with writing reviews, nor my lack of English vocabulary (not my first language) was too obvious...
PS: I wish I could say more about the story.