Star Wars: Assault Team Review

I admit that Star Wars: Assault Team did not leave me very excited when I first heard of it, if only because I'm perhaps a bit jaded when it comes to collectible card games and free-to-play RPGs. Well, I went in with an open mind, and found that while the game is certainly simple, it's not dumbed down.

True to form, players collect cards of characters in the Star Wars series, featuring various tiers of cards that can be earned in story missions or bought in card packs purchased with soft or hard currency. Then characters can be upgraded by using item cards and spending more and more soft currency per upgrade to make them stronger for later story missions and when the PVP becomes available. There's also limited-time promotion missions to help promote coming back on a regular basis. It's a fairly-familiar formula to say the least.

But it's where Star Wars Assault Team thankfully deviates that makes it stands out. The combat isn't fully-automated like in many other casual RPGs. Each character can attack a specific unit, and deploy their special ability whenever it is charged up. For example, Han Solo has a "lucky shot" that deals a high amount of damage, and Chewbacca has "Wookiee Rage" that heals himself but also draws enemy attacks exclusively to him. The combat is still extremely simplified, but it doesn't feel dumbed down, necessarily.

The game rewards players with item and character cards for completing missions, but gold and the game's hard currency can be spent on card packs, with more expensive packs offering better cards. Hard currency can be earned as mission rewards periodically.

Levels are ruled by an energy system, with different levels requiring different amounts of energy - including the Promotion missions, which are intended as daily challenges offering special rewards for completing each of the three tiers, but at a high energy cost. As well, there's the standard campaign missions, along with the PVP mode where players can take on other opponents once they reach rank 3. Interestingly, most levels cost multiple energy from the outset, as opposed to just costing one at the beginning before steadily rising. It's a different approach, and one fundamentally more honest than having energy just cost one at the beginning, thus making later levels feel like a trick because they cost more than the initial cost. This defines immediately that energy costs more than one. It just feels more honest.

While Star Wars Assault Team has many of the standard trappings of the collectible card genre, the thing that left me somewhat impressed was that it was willing to be slightly above the usual free-to-play tropes - just enough to not feel insulting to the player. The production values are also rather good, from the 3D character models and landscapes to the slick menus. It's another casual-focused collectible card game with role-playing elements, but it's a better version of one.