Hearthstone is a card game created by Blizzard with a World of Warcraft theme that’s played over the internet in head to head competition against others players. It’s a lot like Magic the Gathering with a few rule tweaks making for some enjoyable gameplay. Gone are the land cards of Magic, now every turn you earn one point of Mana automatically, capping out at ten. Other tweaks are the Taunt minion which you have to kill before striking a player. And extra damage to a minion that kills it doesn’t hit the player either.

But for all the upsides it has some of the typical failings of a free to play game. The effort you put in gives very little reward. It takes three wins to earn ten gold, and each card pack is 100 gold. That’s 30 wins for a hundred gold, and you loose a lot in the game. Sure you can do a daily mission for 40 gold, but you only get one a day. That and another 18 wins will get you a pack of random cards. With games taking 10 to 15 minutes to play, it’s almost impossible to get card packs without buying them. And then the random cards you get are mostly useless, so you’re suppose to break them down and craft more. Breaking cards down has a horrible exchange for getting dust, and to make cards it cost a lot of dust. Expect to be breaking down a lot of cards.

Hearthstone is a fun game to hop into for a few games. But you have to put in a lot of effort, and there’s very little reward. In the end it looks like they’re just trying to milk free to play players, and I gotta give this game a pass.

- D

Currently Playing: Hearthstone