Popular movie plus mobile game plus freemium usually equals bad news. Star Wars: Assault Team is not all bad, but it’s definitely not worthy of long-term residence on your device. It’s a collectable card game featuring characters from the original Star Wars trilogy (Episodes 4-6). That means, Han, Leia, Luke, Chewy, R2, and everyone’s favorite freelancer, Boba Fett. You acquire the cards via battle or purchase, upgrade, train, sell and acquire items to move up tiers. That’s all good, but the gameplay lacks any real strategy or variety.
After selecting a team of 4 characters, preferably a combination of the typical RPG classes (fighter, armor, healer, etc), you select various battles to gain experience, items and additional cards. Each round is turn-based and you select who will attack whom or use special powers like R2’s disruptor or Han’s lucky shot. Interesting for a few rounds, then it gets repetitive fast. And fighting monsters like a big spider or a rat is lame.
It’s also very difficult after the first couple of levels and it takes a long time to upgrade your cards to the point where you can advance in the game. That’s the freemium-gone-wrong situation. For players to shell out cash, the game’s got to be good and replayable. It also can’t be play-to-win or I’m screaming, “It’s a trap!”
Also, there’s a freemium energy meter. Each mission takes several bars and each energy takes four minutes to regenerate. Not sure why four minutes? How did the geniuses behind this game come up with 4 minutes? 5 minutes was too long and 3 minutes too short? Did they do market research on that?
Like all Star Wars anything, the game’s got the nostalgia-factor and you can’t beat the music. But ultimately, gamers, even Star Wars geeks like me, want to play good games and Assault Team unfortunately falls short.
