Battle Ages is a free-to-play game that just released on 4/20/16 for Xbox One. At first glance it has a very clean, crisp and cartoonish look. I’ve never played Clash of Clans but it feels like it. You can join up with other clans, attack other players, defend your mini city and even play through the campaign. It has a very short tutorial that guides you through building, researching, attacking, and earning coins. It’s a good time waster, but not for more than 30 minutes at a time.
The most bothersome aspect to this game is that it contains microtransactions and you will soon see as you progress it’s very easy to want to spend real cash so that you can continue building or dominating. It claims to put you through an “epic journey across six distinct, authentic, and exciting areas including the Neolithic, Ancient, Classical, Medieval, Renaissance and Industrial Ages.” It is more like, hurry up build, and stop making me wait. Upgrading from the Egyptian period to the Medieval takes over a day! This is where you may find yourself buying your way through just to speed it up. It has all the pay to win signs built into a loveable cartoon game. Either fall in love with it, or rage at it.
You will notice researching and building your army rapidly increases in coins. Research things like thunder strikes, locust attacks, upgradable soldiers and new classes with each age you enter into. You even have to clear space in your little village by removing rubbish if you are out of building room. Once again, real money microtransactions become enticing to clear up these issues.
The mechanics of the game are off. The AI characters that you deploy do not respond to what is in front of them. For example, if you deploy a mob of 20 soldiers, 15 might attack the wall nearest them to get to the enemy defense outpost while the others run all over the place getting hit with ranged attacks and meeting their demise. This weakens your mob and they can get picked off easily further along in the campaign. You will see arrows shoot through pyramids. It is very chaotic, and annoying especially after you build up a nice mob to go attack with.
This is a game that looks kid friendly, but you should put a restriction on those microtransaction purchases or you may end up with an enormous amount of charges.
The bottom line is that it’s a good time waster. It may be fun if you have patience to wait out the building times and have nothing else to play.
