Star Wars™: Galaxy of Heroes 0.33.1486183

With Disney's obvious ploy of milking the Star Wars franchise ten times more vigorously than how George Lucas ever did, there's no reason to wonder why Star Wars: A Galaxy of Heroes even got made. Although if you are a nineties gamer that grew up on X-Wing vs TIE Fighter, Jedi Knight, and Knights of the Old Republic, you can surely relate to my disgust.

As expected, there's barely any originality here. Star Wars A Galaxy of Heroes is as plain and boring as any friggin' freemium money sucker out there. I can't believe that people can fall for this crap! The main activity in this ahem... "game" is going through series of encounters in which your little collection of characters fights waves of mobs in a turn-based manner. You get all sorts of trinkets out of these battles with which you can purchase new characters and upgrade existing ones. It's needless to go through all of the mechanics of upgrading and purchasing since they are a moot point. The only reason for the existence of shards, energy, levels, items, crystals, credits etcetera, is for you to realize sooner or later that you really need to pump some moola into the damn game in order to pick up the pace of advancement. But herein lies the crux of the issue. The advancement leads to nowhere. There' no end game goal, as there is no end to the process. You simply acquire more and more, and when you seem to have collected everything, the devs throw some more bits and pixels for you to collect. Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes is an activity, not a game.

But I suppose it has one distinguishing element though. It is the dullest, most uninspired Star Wars title I have ever played! Granted, I certainly haven't played all of them, but I doubt any developer of a Star Wars game ever put a serious thought into releasing this kind of gameplay (if you can even call it that). You can simply tap the basic attack button every time it becomes available and you're set. Who cares about timing, secondary abilities, character levels, status effects, and upgrades when the gameplay itself doesn't go beyond the level a dumb clicker game? As an argument for this, can you even explain why are there auto and speed buttons in a game that is supposed to be a turn-based tactical combat game? The auto mode even 'thinks' for you, using abilities when needed and changing the default target depending on the situation. I am literally writing this while a battle is going on in the background... on hard mode... and I'm winning. If that is not an insult, I don't know what is! Of course, you will need to do some training and equip some upgrades from time to time, but that is just routine. You don't really have any customization options. Even paint by numbers is more interesting than this.

This auto mode reminds me a bit about the combat system in Final Fantasy XII (that's 12 in Roman numerals for those who can't help but rate SW: AGoH a V star app). However, in FFXII you had to program the automatic behavior of characters as part of the gameplay. It was like a programming minigame. Wouldn't it have been nice if AGoH would have switched all of this freemium bullshit for such a system? Granted, it still wouldn't have been original, but at least it would have given something to think to the drooling masses that wet themselves whenever they see a YT-XT 2600¹ on clearance at a toy store.

Final Thoughts

There are no final thoughts. Yes, the graphics are okay and John Williams's score is in there, but if I only wanted this, I'd go and re-watch the old trilogy. I declare Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes to be a shameless money grabber. Avoid if at all possible.

¹ I made that up, but it probably exists in the now-defunct Expanded Universe.