Arel Wars 2 Review

Meet the new Arel Wars, same as the old Arel Wars. Well, Arel Wars 2 brings some tweaks and changes, but it’s largely the same. The goal is still to summon a horde of units to attack an enemy’s base, that’s also summoning forth their own units. Last base standing wins. Players can use special skills and upgrade their mana and total unit population to help even the odds against their opponent. Between battles, units, including the hero unit, can be upgraded, and new equipment and unit cards bought.

The biggest change is that the player now has the ability to directly control their hero unit. So instead of summoning it out to clear things up, it’s always there. This is where the biggest improvement to the game is: there’s a degree of strategy to deciding just what to do. Want the hero to stay back and protect the homestead? Or send them out and blitzkrieg the base? It’s the player’s choice. It’s definitely the most interesting part of this sequel, though much of the tactics feel the same.

The interface is still full of very small fonts, though at least the game seems to be designed for Retina devices, and it is very colorful, and lots of spirtes can be on screen at once without things choking up at all. There’s no widescreen support at launch, though. The online multiplayer is back, which provides a lot of replay value along with the many missions to complete in singleplayer mode. The lesson of not overwhelming the player with menus and information was not heeded, as it's definitely as bad as it was before.

One of my other complaints about the original Arel Wars was the way that it felt like it worked against free players, and to address these concerns, Arel Wars 2 has decided to…not even give players any of the secondary currency at the beginning of the game like in the original. Zero steps forward, two steps back.

The first game was so unremarkable that I had to download it again to remember just what specifically was different, and Arel Wars 2 is similarly unremarkable and rather average. The story is seemingly inconsequential, there’s way too many blocks of small text to take in, and the missions are still just about spamming units that are hopefully powerful enough to take down the opponent. Once again, for fans of Gamevil games or strategy titles, and aren’t afraid to eventually spend some money, this may be worth checking out. The average person should probably pass.