It Came From Canada: Heroes of Dragon Age

Heroes of Dragon Age sees EA taking the deep backstory of the Dragon Age series that BioWare helped to create and allowing players to create armies of characters throughout the series' history, taking part in famous battles throughout the mythology. It's a free-to-play game currently in testing in Canada, and we're featuring impressions and a video of it in this latest edition of It Came From Canada!

All the combat is automatic, with players having no real say in what happens: just sit back and watch as everyone takes turns fighting. Players set up their lineup of fighters and then hope that they are advantageous in battle. Although there are strategy elements: using an army of the same type of character will give everyone a boost, and upgrading a character by consuming other ones can help turn even a poor fighter into someone who might help win some battles.

Yes, consuming other characters. Getting new characters is done through a card system, and consuming unused characters (really just a card system without much of the card metaphor) can upgrade a character's stats. It's kind of disturbing when it's characters consuming other characters.

There's an asynchronous battle element, too. Players can take on other players, or at least their current army, to get rewards. Of course there's the lengthy campaign to take on as well, which takes players through various challenges with the ability to repeat them to get additional rewards, including premium currency. There's energy systems for both multiplayer challenges and the singleplayer campaign.

Interestingly, for those who haven't had much experience with the franchise the game's language and characters are virtually indistinguishable from a brand new intellectual property, so don't think that there's a need to be previously exposed to the franchise to enjoy this one. The type of automatic combat is seemingly meant for a more casual, laid-back experience: it's something seen in other mobile MMORPG type games as well.

Heroes of Dragon Age does have a high learning curve early on, though - there's a lengthy tutorial section, which I explore in the video below. If all goes well this should be available internationally very soon, but soft launches are an art, not a science!