Relic Arena

gg

Relic Arena is an unironically deep and satisfying game with a polarizing aesthetic. THE HUMOR I'll start with the most vocal complaint about this game: the humor. Many people describe it as cringe. To be more specific, the humor is a mixture of chronically online and zany. For example, there is a character you meet in the tutorial named Discord Admin, he is depicted as balding and obese. Another example, you can play as Abraham Lincoln and use an emote to make him say the line, "I'm going to f--k you up". Fortunately, most of the cringe is confined to the tutorial, and fades into the background when you focus on playing the game. THE GAMEPLAY At its core the game is an auto battler that revolves around buying abilities called relics for the characters on your team. There are up to 4 characters on your team and every character can have 4 relics, with some exceptions. Generally, you buy relics to synergize with each other to maximize their effects. Maybe you buy a relic that grants a character AOE damage in a radius around themselves and then you buy another relic that allows them to quickly jump on top of the nearest enemy. Maybe you buy a relic that boosts the nearest ally's attack speed and that ally has a relic that increases their damage with each attack. On top of relics, at the beginning of every match you get to choose a leader to play as. Leaders have special abilities that can influence what relics you end up going for and overall how you play the game. Finding interesting combos is in my opinion what makes the game fun. As a high rank player of the game who plays with other high rank players, I am impressed with the diversity of ways in which you can play the game while still being competitive. When it comes to balance, the developers have done a good job at identifying things that are overpowered and adjusting accordingly, that being said, balance is an ongoing thing. But so far so good. In other reviews some people were saying the game was luck-heavy. I have to disagree. Although luck is a part of the game, there are plenty of things that are within your control that you can do to improve your odds of winning, in example: which relics to pick, the order in which to cast relics, the positioning of your team, choosing to upgrade or not upgrade your shop, etc. MONETIZATION The game is free-to-play and every leader can be unlocked without spending real money. You can also obtain a generous amount of cosmetics for free by just playing. NOTE: as of this review Harambe can only be obtained through buying the battle pass, but you will be able unlock him with in game currency after the battle pass ends. A more controversial point is what one of the game designers calls "pay for convenience". For example, you can spend real money in order to have a quality of life feature that is bookmarks. During a game, you are rolling a shop of relics, very occasionally there may be something you meant to grab but accidently skipped over because you forgot. So wouldn't it be nice if you could bookmark that relic so that a little icon would appear next to it when it appears in the shop to remind you to pick it up? That's "pay for convenience". Does that give paying players a slight edge? Yeah, probably. Do I feel like I'm playing at a disadvantage? Not really. I'll let you decide how to feel about it. COMMUNITY This is more subjective, but part of why I have played this game for over 200 hours is because of the small but passionate group of people who have already formed around the game. The game allows you to create private lobbies to play with others and I have played in my fair share of them to the point that people begin to recognize me and I them when playing on ladder. There is even a person in the community who has gone out of their way to host community tournaments, which is a lot to do, and quite rare for a game of this size. You will find that this game has a staple group of people who are approachable, helpful, and sporadically funny in their own right. Perhaps being driven here by the personalities of the lead game designers themselves.

Love this game, very quirky but it was easy to jump into after slogging through a few games. Can't wait for more.

gpoo

Hidden gem of an autobattler

В отличие от классических автобаттлеров (вроде Teamfight Tactics или Dota Underlords), сами персонажи здесь бесплатны. Основной упор сделан на покупку исторических артефактов-реликвий, которые дают героям уникальные способности и собираются в разрушительные комбинации.