★★★★★ Another Apple Arcade Winner.
Tue Oct 12 2021 pr071xI haven’t played “Clash Royale,” but others are saying it’s a clone of that game. What I really enjoy is being able to play and progress without real-world money (apart from the arcade subscription). To me, that levels the playing field, preventing frustrating pay-to-win scenarios, and ensuring anyone can pick up the game and make progress without being hindered by $$.
In that regard alone, this game is a winner. It’s highly addictive, competitive, and requires effective strategizing to advance into higher echelons. In short, you’re rewarded for your time spent playing, not by how much money you’ve spent. I’m really a fan of the Apple Arcade model, and hope it rewards developers enough to incentivize quality game development and updates.
This game is fun. You win some, you lose some. Your strategy triumphs, or it fails, but as long as you keep playing you can upgrade your deck and modify your strategies. It’s fast paced, competitive RTS battles in two minute segments. The short time keeps it casual enough for anyone to play when you’ve got a few moments, while addicting enough to hold your attention for much longer periods of time. Overall, I think it’s a clear winner for Apple Arcade- kudos.
★★★★★ Game is good but match making can be irritating
Tue Oct 18 2022 Arebitrue87If you’ve come from clash Royale this game is fun. Has many similar functionalities without the paywall.
My only complaint about the game is the match making. You’d think the game would make you based on level but many times I’m finding myself matching with people 2-3 levels higher than me with card levels that are also 2-3 levels higher. I normally don’t even try anymore against people that higher level (I’ll put up a fight if it’s 1 level higher) than me cause all I’m doing is delaying the inevitable loss, no strategy on earth can stop them when you’re burning through your points to just stop the March towards your fighter and takes multiple cards to take out one of theirs. And it’s not occasional either, it can be multiple matches like this before they finally put you against someone who is equal level/card level to you. I’ve been dropped an entire world just trying to play when I was close to going to the next world, broken up into multiple playing sessions.. I’d rather sit and wait for a match then constantly be placed against higher level people for an inevitable loss. Basically if you’re half way decent at the game they delay you from going up a world by placing you against people who are over powered in association to you.
★★★★★ SW Battle Arena Clone, and it’s ok
Tue Nov 01 2022 JonnyH57I am back to edit my review down a star or two after actually playing way too much for a few weeks now… So If you ever played Star Wars Battle Arena (back before NetMarble went kaput), this game is (edit: almost) literally a clone of that game, except you don’t have to hold your phone sideways and the characters are Lego’s, but otherwise it scratches the itch the BA left, and I’m thankful for that. However it does feel a bit lazy in that there’s not quite as many unique features and different attributes for the characters and Heroes as there were in the old game.
For example: Each hero used to have a companion card that could only be used along with that hero, or that would at least be enhanced by using it alongside its corresponding Hero. You also used to be able to earn more card slots in your arsenal during game play, allowing you a few more options.
Finally, just a general re-balancing of the heroes abilities and skills would be beneficial, instead of The Mandalorian being an indestructible super sniper, while there are other heroes you’d love to use but just can’t, unless your goal is to lose consistently. Anyway, I do enjoy the game and if I’d never played its predecessor, I probably wouldn’t have as much to say… but alas I have and thus I do and did. But I’d still recommend…
★★★★★ Camera will lose you games
Sun Oct 17 2021 Maroch0Honestly, this game is more or less pretty great if you’re in to games like clash Royale. My only problem is that sometimes when you’re on the opponent’s side of the field, your camera will pan up and what’ll happen is that sometimes you’ll lose all your troops and want to start resetting in the back/building towers, and sometimes you’ll accidentally do the opposite of whichever you wanted to do. And it would be completely fine if your camera didn’t move automatically, but when you try to pan back down, it forces you up until everyone dies. And so when you try to build a tower, it’s like right next to a troop card, so you’ll accidentally play a troop, which has gotten me a few losses because after a certain point, you can’t build anymore and I wanted a tower but, well you know.
And the opposite has happened too, where I want to put a troop down, so I try to pan the camera down, but in doing so, I accidentally build a tower since the bottom towers are right where you need to swipe to pan down.
One way this can be fixed is by making towers like a toggle option where you have to tap the tower before you choose, you can’t just hold and drag on accident, OR let the camera be free/not move at all instead of automatically forcing it somewhere.
★★★★★ Frustrating
Mon Dec 30 2024 Marco McMullenThe genius developers made it so that once you start to sniff a chance at winning more than one battle in a row they pair you with much higher ranking person even though they say they pair you with a player with similar trophies, or, they’ll battle you against a player with somewhat “similar” trophies but higher level cards, so regardless of your good strategy, you will lose. The amount of card rewards you get for winning a ridiculously high amount of battles for each planet is also a joke. They need to at LEAST double or triple the amount of cards. Even for the boosted rewards, after earning hundreds I can count on my hand how many epic/legendary card rewards I’ve gotten which is nonsensical considering epic cards are useless unless they are leveled up significantly. The light side has a significant advantage as well especially with the tauntaun & Varactyl while the dark side has no such card equivalent. Light Side wins significantly more than the dark side which leads me to my next point - to no surprise, out of almost 100 battles I’ve been “randomly” selected to play as the dark side over 70% of the time. Doesn’t seem like fair odds to me. The amount of rewards are too low, they make the competition absurdly difficult, the game time is too fast, all to make you play as long as possible.
★★★★★ Great game, a couple flaws
Thu Sep 15 2022 mooooonkeI’ve been playing for a little over a month now and I really enjoy the game. It’s similar to clash Royale, but has completely removed the pay to win aspect that we all hate so much.
My biggest critique is that the scan system (loot crates) can become biased in the type of cards you get. The game is structured so that you either play light side or dark side (chosen randomly each match) and each side has its own cards to build a deck from. You get new cards by unlocking new planets and completing scans. However, the only way to get a scan is by winning a match. Depending on which side you played that match, (light or dark) that is the scan type you get. I find that it creates a positive feedback loop, in my case for the light side, where I get better light side cards, win more light side games thus get more light side scans and so forth. Maybe it was designed that way, but my dark side deck is significantly weaker and it makes it difficult to get new dark side cards. I am only missing one legendary light side card (from what I have unlocked) compared to many more dark side cards, even common ones.
Other than that I love this game and highly recommend it.
★★★★★ Not Really an RTS…
Sat Oct 09 2021 DadDudeTrentI’ve played it quite extensively over the last few days, really comes down to who has the higher level base ship. I’ve encountered players of the same level with higher level troops, that mechanic is just for the grind but is odd as an RTS. At least tournaments balance troop and ship levels. Could still pull out a “card” you’ve never even seen and wipe you out that way, but at least it’s more balanced. Game play is your classic wait for resources, deploy troops one at a time. I get it’s a game but I have a hard time wrapping my mind around how porgs can take down an AT-AT and Boba’s seismic charge is really an EMP that disables even organic characters, but I digress. It has potential, it’s not bad to play a few rounds…but will I unlock the last arena? Probably not due to not really seeing the reward.
Also, there are “tournaments” which seem to have decent rewards. Other reviews have mentioned something that feels very much like a bot. Troops being spawned crazy fast, despite the “balancing” done (card and ship levels are the same) your troops will not kill theirs even if you’re playing the right cards to do so. Best part is that you’ll probably win the first match of the tournament (feels like you’re matched with somebody that’s AFK most times), then really have to work hard to move any further.
★★★★★ Extremely Flawed Matchmaking
Sat Jul 19 2025 CZ203This is a frustrating game to like. It *is* an enjoyable experience when you find yourself in a good match against someone of equal or comparable skill/power to your own, but the issue is, I find it’s rather difficult to find matches like this with the current matchmaking system. I’ll usually end up steamrolling whoever I’m up against (which isn’t as fun or satisfying as it sounds on paper), or I end up getting completely stomped without any real chance at even defending myself. More often than not, it’s the latter, which really hurts my motivation to continue playing. If the matchmaking took into account the power of the players decks instead of the arbitrary ranking system, I feel like the matchmaking would be a more consistent and better experience. Even implementing a combat power system a lot of other mobile games employ would be a decent place to start to improve the longevity of this game in my humble opinion.
Edit: There’s no reason to even attempt to begin playing this game as a new player. After reaching a certain threshold, you will exclusively be fighting players who’ve spent much more time with the game and winning becomes virtually impossible. It’s really tragic too, because this could be a really good game if the developers gave it the attention and management it deserves. But as it stands, all you have to gain from trying to play this game is frustration.
★★★★★ Very fun but annoying
Tue May 28 2024 Scott.BFOK, let’s get to the basics very fun, fun fun, fun, but the guy won’t stop telling me what to do… I want to upgrade my deck, but he just keeps telling me to battle I want to upgrade my deck. I had a close call in one battle. I almost lost.😞 it’s very very, very annoying!!!😡 he makes me so mad😡 anyways it’s fun. It’s just like my dad’s game. He plays it to get money. It’s called the pirate game. Real name, pirate nation. It never tells you to battle.😍👍🏻 the battles are more fun than the battles in this game👎🏻 I hope it comes to the arcade and I can play all the time that would be so exciting😍 the game annoys me so much. I love the game too, but at the same time, I hate it.❤️💔 not too fun but I love it so much because I keep beating all the other players online🤩🤩🤩so don’t shut down the game so now you know the reason why I only gave it 3 stars I’ve played the game more and I’m coming back to write again. I almost died again. The game keeps getting less and less fun. I can’t wait till I finish the tutorial so the guy doesn’t tell me what to do and don’t take this too harshly👍🏻 again I’m writing game is so annoying. I just lost and again don’t take it too hard, but the game is so annoying😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬😡😡😡😡😡😡😡🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬👎🏻👎🏻 but please don’t take it off the App Store
★★★★★ Poor matchmaking, and few useful/popular units
Tue Jan 03 2023 LagamorphwarperI really wanted to give this game a chance, so I’ve been playing it almost daily for the last three months or so. I gave myself plenty of a chance to level up my characters, both regular units and champions. Doing so locals up your bass ship, which is the thing you’re trying to protect the most.
The consistent problem I had was being matched with people who are in much higher leagues than me, usually with much higher competitive scores. My heroes are almost all level eight and level nine, and I would be fighting against people with champions who are level 11 or level 12.
The other gripe I have with this game is the uneven levels of usefulness when it comes to various units and champions. Pretty much everybody’s using the same units, because there’s only a handful of good ones per team. Same goes for champions, you really only see the same two or three, and use for either side, and it gets very boring very quickly. I was hoping as I got the higher levels and unlocked my worlds, but I would see more, but that really happened. Everyone uses Din Djarin for the light side, and mostly Boba Fett or General Grievous for dark. At this point, I’ve sunk enough hours in the game that I feel like I didn’t judge it too soon. It’s not a new game anymore, so I have a feeling the imbalances are here to stay.