Blood Gate - Age of Alchemy Review

Developer: DeNA
Price: FREE
Version Reviewed: 1.0.1
App Reviewed on: iPhone 5

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Overall Rating:

There’s no shortage of match-3 games on the App Store, which puts Blood Gate - Age of Alchemy at a bit of a disadvantage. On the plus side, there’s no fruit or candy in sight and it has a little more going for it than most.

Set in a grim and dismal medieval style world, don’t expect it to look too cheery. This is a somewhat bleak game but it’s fortunately backed up by some fast paced combat.

Unlike other match-3 games, you don’t have time to think each move through carefully. Instead, everything is conducted in real time with you having to match up gems quickly in order to fend off your enemy. Fortunately, you’re not alone. There’s a tag team style thing going on with you able to switch between characters during combat, regaining health by being out of play for a time. That adds a noticeable level of strategy to proceedings and goes some way to setting Blood Gate - Age of Alchemy apart from the rest. At first, you’ll slip up, taking too long to play a move, but you’ll soon get into the swing of things and it’s pretty satisfying.

After each battle, you can equip your characters with new and better armor, gained through regular grinding of levels. There’s a choice of hero classes too, giving you some variety to how things unfold. Such options are also where Blood Gate - Age of Alchemy’s considerably expensive in-app purchases rear their head, although you can duck around them through lots of grinding.

Blood Gate - Age of Alchemy won’t set the world on fire with innovation but it’s fairly dependable in terms of entertainment. There’s a plentiful supply of levels for you to work your way through too, so it should last a while.