RSS Feeds
pc
Battleforge Impressions
Posted by Brian Crecente at 8:20 AM on May 14, 2008
At first blush Battleforge appears to be an amalgamation of Magic: The Gathering and Warcraft, a PC game that combines the strategy and pacing of a well put together real-time strategy game with the collectible nature and infrastructure-free feel of a trading card game.
During last night's EA event Richard Leinfellner, executive producer of the game and video president of developer Phenomic, walked the press through a quick co-op battle.
While Battleforge has single player and versus modes, it appears that it's really, at its heart, a cooperative game, supporting up to 12 players.
To play, players first build a deck from the cards they've collected by working through the campaign, which rewards gamers with new cards, trading online or buying booster packs.
Once the deck has been built, players use these cards to summon their armies, there are no production buildings or resource management, instead you fight to capture territories, which gives you the ability to summon larger and larger creatures.
In the demo we were shown one of the players used more of the aggressive, direct attack cards, while the other player used cards that were more about support and healing. While most of the cards we saw summoned creatures, which were then controlled like units in a typical real-time-strategy game, some of the cards were spells that did direct damage. The Inferno card, for instance, dropped comets onto an area.
Some of the game's creatures have specific abilities, for instance the Juggernaut, which is a massive creature that deals high levels of damage, also can charge it's way through enemy walls and fortifications.
The demo ended after the two players worked together to take down a sort of boss enemy. Once the enemy was defeated both players won his card, which they were then able to use in future battles. So winning a battle in campaign, gives you this permanent reward.
After the demo I tracked down Dirk Ringe, one of the development team members, to quiz him on some of the ins and outs of the game. Unfortunately, I couldn't check the game out because they were having some technical issues when I went by.
The game will support co-op up to 12 players and versus up to four. There will also be the ability to play through maps as a single player, but it doesn't sound like that's really the game's focus.
Ringe said the company plans to sell booster packs for the game starting with its launch, though you won't need to buy them if you don't want to. Essentially these packs will be a collection of random cards which might make deck building easier, but won't really give you a leg up on your competition. The game will include a robust system designed to allow gamers to permanently trade cards with one another, to bolster and fine-tune their decks. It won't support the ability to compete for cards, but players could always try the honour system.
From what I saw of the game it looks like it has quite a bit of potential, I like the idea of stripping away some of the resource management aspects of strategy gaming and making it a bit more about the combat.
Comments (AU Comments · US Comments)
There are currently no AU comments for this post.
Seventh
Posted 8:40 AM 14/5/08
Interesting... I like how the cards are in game.. unless I misunderstood.
Eye of Judgement is cool, but I think the potential for cheating/copying/etc was too high for it to be fair/fun.
I played a great deal of CCGs starting from MagicTG, L5R, Star Wars, Star Trek, Pokemon, Yugioh, etc etc... currently still playin L5R which is almost as old as the father of CCG, MTG.
RTS are fun, but I really disliked the economical portion of them. I was never good at managing resources while micro managing 3 sets of armies.
This sounds like there can be potential. If cards randomly drop from random mobs... this could make for a good diablo-like RTS/CCG mix. I will be keeping an eye out for this one.
Seventh
Dean T 08
Posted 8:37 AM 14/5/08
Hey, the blue giant thing near the center looks a bit like a heirachy walker from Universe At War: Earth Assault.
Dean T 08
SmilingPolitely
Posted 8:34 AM 14/5/08
"...but won't really give you a leg up on your competition."
If this is true, then the booster packs will serve at best a negligible purpose and next to no one will buy them. Or, in other words, no micro-transaction lovin' for EA.
Conclusion: Methinks EA is fibbing about this point.
SmilingPolitely
Sauce
Posted 8:32 AM 14/5/08
"No production buildings or resource management, instead you fight to capture territories, which gives you the ability to summon larger and larger creatures."
Sounds like a slippery slope to me, but I like Card Games and RTS so I'll give this game a shot.
Sauce
Maniclysane
Posted 8:23 AM 14/5/08
Eye of Judgement + Age of Empires? Or am I wrong? [No sarcasm]
Maniclysane
neojames82
Posted 9:12 AM 14/5/08
I love both RTS games in MTG so this seems like a match in heaven on the surface....but I'm going to wait and see after it comes out.
neojames82
alahsnackbar
Posted 9:05 AM 14/5/08
jhjhjhjolkn
alahsnackbar
icelight
Posted 9:01 AM 14/5/08
@SmilingPolitely: I agree. At it's best, it's a way for people to pay money not to have to complete the game. I'm sure there are some people out there willing to do that, but I'm certainly not one. There was that one article going around about a Chinese MMORPG really based on this system, and it sounded like a nightmare, so certainly it would be possible to take things too far. On the other hand, the whole business case for a CCG revolves around people buying lots of booster packs to try and find the few useful and rare cards they really want, so one does have to question EA's motives here. Could this be something where you have a 0.0001% chance of finding a card after defeating some atrociously hard army, or a 1% chance of buying it in a pack. Then they could claim that all the cards are "available" in the game as it sells at retail, while still making a strong business case for people buying cards direct from them.
icelight
onidavin
Posted 8:59 AM 14/5/08
Unless the packs are simply unlocks for cards that you can obtain via normal gameplay, they will give you a leg up.
Sounds cool, looking forward to trying it out.
onidavin
Heliophage
Posted 9:41 AM 14/5/08
I'm not a fan of either genre, but the concept is very interesting.
I look forward to seeing it executed.
Heliophage
z357x
Posted 10:59 AM 14/5/08
Seems like it would be cool. I love Co-Op games... The world needs more of them.
z357x
GhostWhoWalks
Posted 10:54 AM 14/5/08
You know...I am honestly intrigued by this.
I was a big fan of M:TG back in the day, but never had anyone to play with and fell out of the habit of buying new sets, which meant as time went on, the few people I did find had more and more of an advantage over me.
This seems to be very fascinating combination of Magic, Warcraft and a dungeon-crawler, the latter being due to undertaking missions for the promise of rewards (not to mention that 12-player co-op; when was the last time you heard of a game that let you form teams of players for battling the AI where the player limit was in the double-digits and the game wasn't an MMO?). It's definitely got my attention.
GhostWhoWalks
MonsterKingRen
Posted 11:40 AM 14/5/08
Wonder if the game'll be hacked by people to have more cards.
That'd screw the buy booster pack things, huh.
I mean if you can have more cards by finishing the game/beating stuff up, I don't really see the advantage in paying up unless there's buy-only-cards which there probably will be, and that doesn't give people the "leg up" or whatever.
That makes it unfair and a cash whore game.
TCG cash whore, what a surprise!
Oh well. Hope it turns out better than I'm ranting right now.
MonsterKingRen
Crimson (PS3 ID Black--Tiger)
Posted 4:26 PM 14/5/08
Magic the Gather...ing?
Huge MTG fan, I liked the novelty of EoJ, but It was a finicky interface and could be a pain to set up. But, undeniably neat. Co-op, single player expansion and maybe some new ideas on expanded content could make this work...
Oops, sorry, got optimistic about an EA title, sorry again.
Crimson (PS3 ID Black--Tiger)
Schabrak
Posted 5:59 PM 14/5/08
The game is made the creator of the first "the settlers" and SpellForce. Many of you just forget, that EA is made of more than some core idiots...
Schabrak