EA Phenomic's BattleForge Now 'Play 4 Free'

I played this game pretty thoroughly during the beta.

Basically, it's like a combination of Magic Online and really horrible RTS design. The best units, generally, are a small portion of the rare cards which constitute maybe 1 out of every 10 rare cards. There are certainly lots of solid commons and uncommons, but the rares often make the "deck" of units.

Also, the upgrade system is EXTREMELY frustrating, since to have any chance of beating the harder singleplayer missions or to be competitive in multiplayer you NEED 3 copies of EVERY good card in your deck, then you need to grind out multiplayer games in order to get the virtual currency you earn from wins or close losses in order to buy the upgrades, and then you have to spend MORE of that currency to do the actual merge/upgrade process itself. Such a stupidly designed system, which only rewards the ULTRA hardcore guys who do nothing but play this game. Also, drops in multiplayer (at least in beta) meant you got NO reward, even if you were just demolishing the other guy, making the virtual currency tied to wins VERY hard to get. And the money you use for upgrades and stuff (in beta anyway) could not be bought with real money.

Plus, the RTS game itself sucks and is reminiscent of Warcraft 1-era gameplay. Overall, a huge waste of time and money that could be used to play actual good RTS games that don't try to nickel and dime you.

3 thoughts:

1. Reviews paint the RTS gameplay and clunky, cluttered, confusing, and confounding.
2. This seems like a pretty obvious sign that they're starting to worry about their player base dwindling
3. Cool idea that hasn't been a bigger hit simply because they were too focused on making $$ from the micro-transactions and the whole concept rather than concentrating on making the gameplay excellent. If you build it (with quality) they will come. ;)

So does this game 0wn or what?