World of Warriors iPad is the next step from Mind Candy, the guys behind Moshi Monsters. It’s an interesting step into the iPad gaming world and what could be a serious F2P collectors title.

Moshi Monsters hinged on the idea that you’d want to collect loads of them. Gotta catch them all, as some other toy franchise once mentioned. Now with World of Warriors, Mind Candy have taken that formula online and attempted to make a monetisation-rich collectible-character-game. But does it work?





World of Warriors Review: Awesome. A free to play turn based strategy, with a huge list of collectible characters from history. Or perhaps it’s more of an adventure beat em up, a little bit like Final Fantasy, but not quite. Or even, god forbid drawing this parallel, like Pokemon.

I really wanted to like this game. I got enthused by the heady list of the finest warriors from history (albeit in a Mii-ed form), including fan favourites like Joan of Arc, Lancelot and Genghis. Great, this is my kind of thing. I’m already building a brutal little squad in my head.

Game Mechanics

It’s turn based strategy RPG. Kill stuff, level up, advance. You select your fight, see who you’re up against, then pick your appropriate squad. Your squad pick will be based on who’s best against the elemental composition of the bad guys, or who needs levelling.

The overarching mechanic is that of four elements: fire, earth, wind, water. There is a handy diagram in the fights to help you figure out who’s gonna beat up who. This is where the strategy element comes in during the fights. If you’ve played Pokemon or anything like that, you’re in familiar territory.





Visuals! Maps and combat.

The basic attacks have a fun touch-screen action timer to hit and the specials go a bit further and this is, for me, the most exciting aspect of the combat. It’s fun to try and hit the Perfect strike. The visuals are cool and blocky, somewhere between WindWaker and the Mii Channel.

The central map that I had to explore during this World of Warriors review looks great and if you’re anything like me, you’ll spend a minute zooming in at all the cool areas that are begging to be explored. Icy mountains, volcanoes, jungles etc etc. The usual, but done real nice.

The PatienceWall

Except I started to realise pretty quickly that if I wanted anymore than five choosable characters, then I had better open my wallet and enable in-app purchases. Lots of them. World of Warriors doesn’t have a paywall, it has a huge PatienceWall. If you’re anything like me, then you’ll eek and grind out for as long as you can, knowing full well that a well placed 4.99 in the game would unlock a world of wonders (or more specifically, 4.99 will unlock a random go into the red crystal door for a guaranteed rare hero). But instead, I’m sat there clinking together two blue crystals and not much else.

Stubborn, yes. Unless there’s something more, I’m not sending my cash out just to feed my impatience.

There area a few ways that you can hit that PatienceWall and World of Warriors provides a couple of ways to get round it. You can pay, or a more novel approach provided is to earn crystals by playing games from a network of titles, signing up to a service or some other online connection. An easier avenue, but not one that sits particularly well with me. It’s better than a cold hard Paywall though, that’s for sure.





Blue Door Days

As mentioned at the beginning, I had high hopes for this game. I really really wanted that badass squad. But once you realise that the blue crystal door is only going to be be feeding you potions and scrolls, and not heroes as promised, you’ll see the height of the PatienceWall setting in. Those red crystals aren’t coming around that often.

Each time I opened that blue door, my heart sank a little more.

With reservations, it’s a deleter.

Big Plus Points:

Fun combat, well worth a download for a few hours of fun.

Nice touch-screen UI elements, enjoyable to play.

Loads of characters to collect. Hey, it’s history!

Lovely map and lots going on.

Big Minus Points:

If you don’t pay, you’re never gonna catch ’em all.

Tough to see that huge roster unfilled.

Game depth isn’t huge with only one special per character.