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The free to play model of gaming has become ever popular with success stories from Riot Game’s League of Legends, Valve’s DOTA 2, and Blizzard’s Hearthstone. With a successful business venture you are going to have other developers clamoring to get on the bandwagon and receive a piece of the PC micro transaction pie. That is where Rubicon Development comes in with Combat Monsters. Rubicon Development, developer of such games as Great Little War Game 2, Zombies Dead in 20, and Jungle Coin Falls, has presented us with their largest undertaking yet. According to their ‘About This Game’ page on Steam, Combat Monsters was a game that took 14 man-years to make. Combat Monsters is a CCG that is being released for Steam on PC, iOS, and Android. It was added to Steam on January 20th, 2015 and has been available on iOS and Android for a year and few months. Is Combat Monsters what CCG players have been looking for? Will it live up to the claim that it took Rubicon Development “14 man-years” to develop it? Well if anything else can be said about them, Rubicon Development knows their target audience; especially when you take a look at their PC system requirements.
…What I really disliked was that every time I finished a match, I would see my amount of Rubicoins be tripled and then that amount is subtracted with a red X near the value down to the normal amount.
When it comes to PC system requirements, Combat Monsters is accessible to just about any PC gamer. From their store page on Steam, Rubicon Development has listed the system requirements as the following: Windows XP or newer for the OS, 512 MB RAM, a DX9.0c compatible graphics card, DirectX Version 9.0c, and my personal favorite only 300 MB of available space. With requirements as low as this, Rubicon Development has made it to where anyone can pick up Combat Monsters. As I continued to learn about Combat Monsters, I noticed that four key features were being presented to the players. These features included terms such as: Card Gaming Evolved, Strategize, Extensive Multiplayer, and Massive Content. With this in mind, I booted up and started my journey into Combat Monsters.
Combat Monsters introduces their players to a Tutorial immediately as it loads up. As the tutorial started, I was intrigued that the game had an arena with a hex grid inside it. This was an amusing feature that provided the game a tactical element not commonly seen in CCGs. Most CCGs are going to involve having a pool of resources that allow you to summon cards to the field. I noticed that your character and your opponent throws down a mini sized version of themselves onto the arena. From here the game begins. A player gets a pool of resources, known as Mojo, which replenishes at the beginning of their turn. From here, a player can use Mojo to activate their cards. Like Blizzard’s Hearthstone, I was amused to notice that there were monster cards, equipment cards, and spell cards. On the arena, some tiles have a circle on them with symbols. These circles, when your character or monsters started their turn on them, would provide a bonus; ranging from extra Mojo to a defense, attack, or health bonus for the creature standing on it. With this in mind, tactics came into play on where you maneuver your monsters to get an advantage on your opponent. Having gone through the tutorial, I was brought to the main game.
Overview of the combat grid
After completing the tutorial, a player now has access to a myriad of features, provided by Rubicon Development. There is a single player mode with 6 quest lines available. Each of these has around 19 to 26 matches with bots. The quests have branching paths where players can earn new cards with a victory or they can go for Rubicon Development’s in game currency called Rubicoins. Each quest line has a boss match at the end that offers a player the chance to win more Rubicoins, unlock more cards, and to get a Steam Achievement. What CCG would be complete without the ability to play random people or your friends? Combat Monster’s multiplayer mode currently offers 4 types of play. Their first multiplayer option is Asynchronous Battle Manager, a game type where a player has up to a day to make their move. Second is Realtime Battle, the typical matchmaking where you face off against an opponent online. Third is Pass & Play, where you can do local multiplayer on the same computer and share your decks and card pool. Private Battle is the last type of multiplayer. This mode allows you and a friend the option to make a game where a host name and password is required to join. With these features in mind, I realized a player could get absorbed into this and get many hours of content. Rubicon Development takes this further by adding in rewards for the player to work for.
…As the tutorial started, I was intrigued that the game had an arena with a hex grid inside it. This was an amusing feature that provided the game a tactical element not commonly seen in CCGs.
Players get the opportunity to spend their Rubicoins on chests, which unlock more cards, or on heroes. A player starts the game with 1 hero and if they spend 6,000 Rubicoins, they can unlock one of the other 14 heroes. After playing about 20 matches, I was able to accumulate around 3,000 Rubicoins and that included completing an entire single player quest line. There is the opportunity for so many unique cards; so I spent the Rubicoins on chests. Combat Monsters offers four types of chests ranging from the Mini chest for 400 Rubicoins to the Mega Chest for 7.500 Rubicoins. More cards are offered and the chance for rarer cards increases when a more expensive chest is purchased. The fourth one, known as the Epic Chest, is rewarded when a player refers Combat Monsters to a friend. My reasoning for buying a chest is because there are currently 622 unique cards available for players to collect. This includes 156 monsters, 88 weapons, 26 armor cards, 36 shields, 219 spells, and 97 runes. A player needs to have a deck at a minimum size of 30 cards and up to a maximum size of 200 cards. As for rewards provided by Valve, there are 25 total Steam Achievements for Combat Monsters. These achievements are for collecting all of a type of monster cards, heroes, referring Combat Monsters to your friends, and completing the single player quests and tutorials. There is also a section for managing your deck and this was my favorite feature of the game.
I use to play Magic the Gathering for years and I can say that there were many times I would organize my cards not just by rarity. Combat Monsters offers the player’s filters for the cards they own to quickly determine what they want to view. Since there are 622 cards, this feature is not only a time saver, it is useful for those who want to strategize and create a deck to match their play style. You can filter what type of card appears and each type has their own filter to lower the amount of cards shown. If a player wishes to research what Combat Monsters has to offer for card types, they can still filter by card types that they do not own. This is a feature that can provide a player the drive to play more games or if they do not have the time, they can use Rubicon Development’s micro transaction features.
With a free to play game, a developer needs to make money somehow for all the work they put in. Thus it is expected that micro transactions will be available. Some players do not want to invest hours and hours of gameplay to unlock heroes or buy chests. Rubicon offers the purchase of Rubicoins from the main menu of the game. Most of these options that I saw, they were fair. These are the options that Rubicon offers the players to purchase Rubicoins. For $4.99 you can buy 10,000 Rubicoins, $9.99 will net you 22,000 Rubicoins, $19.99 gets you 52,000 Rubicoins, and $39.99 will get you 120,000 Rubicoins. The only part that was not friendly and I personally did not like was that there are two micro transactions meant to be used for a single game. Prices for these seem okay at first and offer either a double rate of Rubicoins for a single match or triple. It is $.99 for the “Doubler” and $2.99 for the “Tripler”. Now if these were only offered on the Get more Coins section, I would have no problem. What I really disliked was that every time I finished a match, I would see my amount of Rubicoins be tripled and then that amount is subtracted with a red X near the value down to the normal amount. As if this was not annoying enough, Combat Monsters keeps track of all the Rubicoins you have missed in previous games because the player did not buy a Tripler. If it was not for these last parts, I could be all right with the all of the micro transactions; but this action disgusted me and frankly it soured my mood at the end of every match.
There are some problems for this game if you are a PC gamer. There is a limited option menu, consisting of volume control, camera control, whether or not the monsters/heroes make noise, or if you can play in Fullscreen or Windowed mode. For a PC game, this is lazy. I was hoping to be able to play around with the resolution at the bare minimum. As a result, the game is cartoony and in this reviewers opinion, quite rushed. The single player is a joke and an excuse to have more bot matches but with a flashier name. I think calling them quest lines was amusing and they should have just offered a bot match option in game selection. Most of these, I could ignore. It is a mobile port and it is a free game. What I cannot ignore was having a constant nagging reminder that I did not buy the Tripler after every single match. If that was not there, I could feel more confident in the fun replay ability of Combat Monsters.
Regardless of this sour feeling towards Combat Monsters, I would recommend this game to the following gamers. Fans of the mobile version who will be excited to have Steam Achievements and to see this running at a solid 60FPS or more. If playing a CCG with many rewards and hours upon hours of content is your style, you will enjoy Combat Monsters. This is a fun game to pass the time. With matches averaging around 10-15 minutes, you can get a game in at your leisure in one of its many multiplayer modes or single player quest lines. Having many cards to choose from your style of CCG? Then Combat Monsters will satisfy that need. Is this a good PC port? Not really, however it is going to satisfy the customers who do love this game already. With over 900,000 matches completed online, a notice you will see when you go to Multiplayer mode, Combat Monsters is a fun CCG that offers something new to players. The hex grid with tactical movements is a fun improvement on the traditional CCG. Yes it does have that annoying Tripler being announced at the end of every match. If you can ignore it, Combat Monsters can be another CCG that you as a player can enjoy. You can find it on Steam now. With only a size of 356 MB, give it a download, try it yourself, beat some heroes face in, and collect some monsters; just know what you are heading into. Game on!
