Welcome to our Is that a good free mobile game series. In this series we look at games from both the App Store and the Play Store and review them. At the end of the article we try to answer the question – Is the current game a one of the best smartphone games? Is it a good free mobile game? For this review, we’re looking at Star Wars™: Galaxy of Heroes by Capital Games!
Is Star Wars™: Galaxy of Heroes a good free mobile game?
Your Answer Upfront:
With a heavy heart, I find myself having to give Star Wars™: Galaxy of Heroes the lowest score of any game I’ve reviewed so far. Perhaps the only redeeming qualities of the game are the characters and the soundtrack, with everything else looking like either a rush-job or another way to tie in microtransactions into the game.
Star Wars™: Galaxy of Heroes Review
Our recent article on Dungeons and Dragons more or less starts showing off our nerd credentials and, as part of research for an upcoming piece, we took a look at the Star Wars™ franchise and some of the games available on mobile devices.
To that extent, today’s focus will be EA’s (or, better put, EA Capital Games) Star Wars™: Galaxy of Heroes, a supposedly free mobile Strategy RPG available on Apple’s App Store (since 2020, according to the version history) and Google’s Play Store (since 2015), which boasts over 100 million players. Allegedly.
A long time ago…
Before we begin our dive into Star Wars™: Galaxy of Heroes, here’s a very short story: I was born far too late to experience the Original Trilogy, but I was old enough to nerd out over the Prequel Trilogy in the early 00s (well, 1999 through 2005) and much older and wiser to experience the Sequel Trilogy and Anthology films (AKA the Disney Era), alongside with watching every single animated series and playing the excellent Knights of the Old Republic (I and II) and even a couple of late mid-late 90s X-Wing games (and many other games in the series).
For all intents and purposes, I’ve been around the Star Wars™ franchise for most of my life and I’ve enjoyed (most of) it to the point where there are plenty of obscure factoids lurking around my brain that most Padawans aren’t aware of.
Now, with credentials like that, you would think I’d blindly jump onto any Star Wars™ bandwagon in existence and just tell you to go download Galaxy of Heroes and that’s the end of the article.
Oh boy would you be wrong. Let’s see why Star Wars™: Galaxy of Heroes is THE WORST GAME I HAVE EVER REVIEWED HERE ON BSG.
First of all, Electronic Arts already has a very, very checkered past with game monetization. When I saw the FREE with In-App Purchases price-tag, I already had a vague sentiment of things to come and man, was I foolish.
Upon first starting up the game you’re thrown, more or less, into the tutorial, using Anakin Skywalker (as he appears as a Jedi Knight) and Ahsoka Tano (arguably one of the best Jedi in the franchise) as your starter characters.
The combat is simplistic, you pick a target (or go with the auto-targeting) and tap a couple buttons when it’s your turn.
Having quickly dispatched a couple droids, your basic tutorial continues to… the Store. Yes, microtransactions are a part of the tutorial, and it takes a whopping THIRTEEN taps until you are FORCED to make your first microtransaction (albeit, with currency that the game provides you with).
My shock was so great that I had to double back, take out my Android phone and record the “first play” experience to actually count the number of (otherwise unskippable) taps it took until the game leads you to the store and makes you buy a “Data Card” (a very fancy way of saying lootbox). It was then that it hit me… This is an EA title. OF COURSE THERE ARE LOOTBOXES.
In an lootbox far far away….
The microtransactions are part of the experience! It all makes sense now! You might think I’m poking fun at EA’s past lootbox-related scandals (did you know that loot boxes are considered illegal in a bunch of countries like Belgium and the Netherlands? We need more of that.), but I am far from joking.
The game taunts you with “10x FREE Items and/or Characters per day” which may seem like a deal until you realize that even the Data Cards are tiered and you’re offered the lowest of them, which, likely, have a greater chance of giving you common (or less rare) items or character shards in an attempt to entice you into buying more Crystals (the game’s premium currency) to unlock and/or improve characters.
Moving on from microtransactions, let’s look at the actual game, its Strategy and Role-Play aspects, combat and character improvement.
Starting off with combat mechanics: we find rudimentary turn-based team tactics, with each of your party members (up to 5 per loadout) and enemy taking turns attacking, with multiple waves of enemies per level. All this is made somewhat irrelevant by the presence of the Autoplay button (alongside a speed button, that goes up to 4x).
Battles are ranked 1 to 3 stars, depending on how many of your party members die and there’s a few hundred different battles, all with vaguely themed designs inspired by well-known locations like Tatooine or even the Death Star where you find yourself battling waves upon waves of generic enemies.
Locked behind a level cap, the Dark Side is…
An interesting choice made by Capital Games is locking the Dark Side battles behind a level-wall (and a mandatory minimum of 3 Dark Side characters). Perhaps this is supposed to give the game some sort of flow and direction, but I can’t see any reason why they couldn’t have let you at least chose which side you want to start off with.
The first alternative game mode you’ll be unlocking is Hard Mode, which is, more or less, revisiting previous locations to battle slightly more difficult enemies (or considerably more difficult ones if you decide you don’t want to spend a single penny).
This isn’t necessarily a bad idea, but it builds up the tediousness and overall feeling of boredom that comes with the repetitive battles and enemies.
The game is marketed as a Strategy Role Playing Game on both the App Store and Google Play, so let’s dig into this aspect.
Looking at the strategic element, I could probably see how they can justify it, since you’ll want to give a minimum of thought to your team composition.
As with every team-based game, you’ll want a tank to soak incoming damage and taunt enemies, a healer to restore your party and the rest of the loadout full of heavy hitters to take down the opponents.
Now, the Role-Playing part of the marketing completely baffles me.
According to Vahé Karamian, in his book “Building an RPG with Unity 2018 – Second Edition”, the core elements of an RPG are:
- Story and setting
- While the setting is as generic and vague as possible, there technically is one.
- There is no story to be found.
- Exploration and quests
- The exploration aspect doesn’t exist past some location names on a holotable.
- The quests are generic: complete level X, use skill Y, upgrade character/gear, buy X shipments
- Items and inventory
- While both are present, they just seem to serve the purpose of making you repeat battles in the hopes of being able to upgrade a character’s equipment at some point in the future.
- Character actions and abilities
- Characters do, indeed, have some abilities, but they’re a means to an end, as opposed to allowing you to customize your gameplay.
- Experience and levels
- Both are there, it’s one of the key progression requirements
- Combat
- Generic, boring, tedious. Autoplay more or less makes the combat feel like it’s not even there.
- Interface and graphics
- The User Experience is fine up to trying to use the Collection/Inventory system which is clunky and, at times, confusing.
- It should be noted that I do not necessarily agree that this should be a core element, considering that RPGs exist outside of video games (Dungeons and Dragons, anyone?)
While Star Wars™: Galaxy of Heroes manages to fulfil most of these requirements, it does so at a very basic level to justify itself being an RPG, at least on paper.
Now, taking a look at the reviews on both Google Play and the App Store, most reviews seem to call it “a neverending grind”, “greedy”, “pay 2 win”. I have to agree.
There’s little to no substance to Star Wars™: Galaxy of Heroes and, at the end of the day, it’s yet another half-game with far too much monetization for its own good, praying on players that don’t know better than to spend hundreds of dollars on microtransactions to get any sense of fulfilment from a title that only further monetizes on a beloved franchise.
I know that licensing the Star Wars™ IP isn’t cheap, but that is never going to be an excuse for releasing a lootbox simulator.
With a heavy heart, I find myself having to give Star Wars™: Galaxy of Heroes the lowest score of any game I’ve reviewed so far. Perhaps the only redeeming qualities of the game are the characters and the soundtrack, with everything else looking like either a rush-job or another way to tie in microtransactions into the game.
How to download Star Wars™: Galaxy of Heroes?
Star Wars™: Galaxy of Heroes is available for Android Phones and Tablets on the Play Store and for iPhone and iPads on Apple’s App Store. The game is, sadly, not available to be played on M1 Macs.
You can use an iPad and to stream the game to your Mac if that’s what you wish. Or maybe you can try and setup an Android Emulator on your Mac to play it that way. We’ve covered Android Emulators for both Intel and Apple Silicon macs so you can play Android Games wherever you are.
However.
If you want a REAL Star Wars™ game to play on the go, I would suggest you look at a couple premium, established games available on the App Store and Google Play:
Star Wars™ Knights of the Old Republic
Star Wars™ Knights of the Old Republic II
Where To Next?
I’m just as disappointed as you with regards to this implementation of a legendary franchise. We seem like we are really tough on it due to the monetization but in reality we see that its design was driven by greed first. We wrote a really big article on the way monetization affects a game’s design and you can read all about it in this article.
We have more reviews of both free and premium mobile games, such as Metal Slug Attack or QB Planets! We also have other articles with tidbits and interesting facts, like this article that answers the question “What is the Number 1 mobile eSports Game” sorted by the prize pool.
If you want to stay up to date with our articles, make sure to give us a follow on twitter. Or, leave a comment bellow telling us what premium or free smartphones games you enjoy!
You can also check out our coverage of other iOS games and Android games just released for your smartphone. Thank you for visiting Best Smartphone Games, I sincerely hope we’ve been of service!