The strength of HoDA is in it's roster of cards that will be familiar to fans of the RPG games. Allistair, Duncan. Morrigan, Flemeth and Isabella in addition to hundreds of others. Cards come in 6 different levels of quality. Common, Uncommon, Rare, Epic, Legendary and a higher form of Legendary for a few amazing cards called "UR Legendary". Once you collect an awesome card then you have a grinding task ahead of you to make it even more awesome.
Leveling:
The character development process in HoDA is pretty advanced and can be confusing to new players. Every card has both a level and tier stat. Level is increased by just battling with the card and gaining EXP, every level you gain will add health and attack power. Leveling has a cap based on the card's quality. A rare (gold) card will cap at level 30 while a legendary (green) card will cap at 70.
Leveling up Merril
Tiering:
Tiering up the card is how you raise this level cap and make the card even better. Tiers go 1-4 and add 5 levels for each so a Tier 4 legendary card will have an extra 15 levels bringing it to a level cap of 85. Tiering up is done through the consume screen. This is just where you use your lower quality and even higher quality cards you don't want to increase the target card. You will also unlock higher critical damage percentages and fortifying slots which is a more advanced form of character development. Tiering is a long slow process but if you obtain a matching card and consume it then it will unlock the next tier for the card automatically. So this works as a shortcut.
"View All" when consuming will show your progress
As you increase the card through the consume screen you will unlock heath and power slots. These slots can then be used in the fortify screen to really increase the stats of the card even further. Fortifying is how you make a good card into a totally awesome world wrecking card. A card can have a total of 10 slots, 5 heath and 5 power. Placing a card into a slot uses that card up but adds to the stats of the target card. The higher quality and higher tier you fortify with the more stat increase it will give.
Fortifying with good cards gives better stat boosts
Factions and Groups:
Every card has a faction that it belongs to that is represented by the color of the little circle it stands on. (Your "Large Creature" in your party does not have a faction). The faction colors are. White, Black, Red and Blue. Some cards are dual faction and have a multi colored circle. Factions offer a bonus to damage. White faction gets a 25% damage bonus to Red faction cards, Black gets a bonus to White, Blue gets a bonus to Black, Red gets a bonus to Blue. This will take a little time to get the hang of but it helps you in forming a party to take on certain enemies of a particular faction. Also if you build a party of 4 similar faction cards you get an additional damage bonus the whole time.
Groups take the game even further in party building. Every card belongs to either the Warrior, Rogue or Mage group but there are also other groups that many of them belong to as well. For instance if you are familiar with the RPG games you know what a Grey Warden is. Several cards in the game belong to this group. Cards like King Allistair have a special bonus that gives +50% health to all Grey Wardens. So grouping other Grey Wardens with him will make them all better. There are quite a few groups including Outlaws, Chantry, Blighted, Dwarves and Demons among others. Getting the "leader" cards of these group like a King Allistair is the way advanced parties are built.
Full team of Blue faction mages
Gameplay:
For all the great card collecting, character development and party building options HoDA offers it's main weakness is that gameplay could use a little improvement. When you logon you basically have two options. Either fight in the PVP event to gain rewards from the reward ladder it has or fight in the Nexus PVE content to try to collect new cards. Let's look at PVP events first.
PVP Events:
In HoDA you are not fighting against another live player you are just fighting against the army they have placed in their first army slot. PVP events run all the time and usually last 24-72 hours. Every battle you win will add "banners" to your total. This banner count is how you collect rewards from the event and then your total will give additional rewards you once the event is over. So you are trying to climb the banner leaderboard in events. The events have an energy bar that allows you to fight 6 times about every two hours. Spending gems will refill that meter right away. Events usually have a special bonus for a faction color or group. So an event may be giving +300% damage and health to Blue faction cards. Obviously you want to build the best Blue faction team you can to participate in that event. Just make sure you read what the event bonus is and use the "event enhanced" selection in the heroes screen to see who you have for it. The best feature is that you are never forced into a fight you can reselect battles until you find a good matchup for your team.
Scoring some free gems in the event
The Nexus is you against the computer and there are usually several different ones running at the same time. They offer a chance to win a variety of legendary cards with the drop rate based on the difficulty level you have chosen. The Nexus is a series of 4-6 battles. You have to finish your Nexus to collect the rewards. If you die then you have the option of using a revive potion or spending gems to continue the battle. The Nexus has it's own energy system, based on your level, that is different from the PVP event one. You gain a point every 5 minutes and the Nexus costs varies from 15 to around 60-70 energy based on how hard you want the challenge to be.
Card Packs:
Both the PVP events and the Nexus give you the chance to earn cards but they can also be purchased through packs in the store. The game has two different currencies. Coin is the in game currency and can be earned through gameplay to purchase Soldier packs which mainly give you low level cards but you have a chance at good ones also. Gems are the premium currency which can be gained through the PVP events or purchased via credit card. With Gems you can purchase Champion packs or other specialty packs through the store. These give you a better chance at pulling good cards.
Lucky Epic pull from a soldier pack
Conclusion:
HoDA is a fun game, it's very addictive and also frustrating at the same time. Every card pull and Nexus reward is based on a random number generator so keep in mind you are never guaranteed a good card when spending your money or investing time. The free player can do alright in this one but you will quickly see that there are players out there that have spent their way to unbeatable teams. It's a great time killer and if you are a fan of card collectors it's clearly a good addition to your mobile device. The game is fairly bug free and you probably will not experience many crashes but the consume screen could certainly use some improvement since it does lag at times and it takes longer than it should to work on your cards.
Pros:
- Great franchise based on a popular gaming series
- Graphics are amazing and rank at the top of any mobile game
- Lots of cards to collect with new ones coming out all the time
- For an auto battler it still offers a deep strategy element in choosing your party
Cons:
- No real social content. It does not have a guild system and feels like a single player game
- Consume screen is a bit clunky in it's functionality, lags at times
- Developer is prone to change content and drop rates.
Overall Score
4 out of 5 stars
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