Rovio’s Darkfire Heroes is an auto-battler RPG with truly engaging combat, an excellent element-based character system, and some great PvP game modes. It’s currently lacking a bit in content, but there’s a solid foundation for Rovio to build upon, but with regular updates, Darkfire Heroes could quickly become the premier auto-battler RPG for mobile.

An auto-battler RPG with gacha mechanics

At first glance, Darkfires Heroes doesn’t look much different than any other auto-battler RPG with gacha mechanics. But spend just half-an-hour trying out the game’s various systems and you’ll find Rovio has tweaked and tuned the auto-battler formula in ways that make combat and characters more interesting. Even better, they’ve done so without completely eliminating the satisfying grind the genre is known for.

In Darkfire Heroes, players collect character and skill cards that are randomly dropped from chests earned by completing milestones, like finishing a stage or leveling up your account. The main story campaign is divided into branching stages laid out on a map. Each stage is divided into multiple sub-stages, and you must complete them all in order to advance to the next stage.

A character based auto-battler

The combat in Darkfire Heroes should be familiar to auto-battler veterans. Parties of heroes make their way from point A to point B, killing monsters and baddies along the way. What sets Darkfire Heroes apart is its in-game collision system that works together with its real-time combat to add variety to this tried-and-true setup . Characters can run into one another or block other characters’ paths, and the stages often have bottlenecks and split paths that you can use to maximize the effect of your spells. It’s a small thing that makes a world of difference to make combat more engaging.

Each character has an active ability and a passive ability. Active abilities can be cast anywhere on the map by dragging and dropping onto your target. Many of these abilities are generic AoE or single-target damage-dealing or healing spells, but there are plenty of heroes with utility spells, as well. For example, the hero Lyc has the ability to pull ranged enemies into melee range, which helps set them up for killer combos. Even most of the healing spells function differently -- one might cast a healing aura on a hero that affects nearby allies, while another drops a stationary healing pool on the floor that heals any heroes inside of it.

Even if a hero’s active ability isn’t that great, that’s usually made up for with some great passives. The hero Lirs has an underwhelming spear attack ability, but his passive gives him an extra normal attack whenever an enemy is stunned. Put some attack-boosting gear on him and pair him with heroes that stun and he becomes so much more powerful.

Each character has unique abilities

Spells work in a similar manner to abilities, but they’re drawn from a deck that you can modify in between stages. You can only have three abilities in your hand, but a new one is drawn whenever you cast a spell. The light card-game mechanics add a bit of randomness to the mix, even if they’re not as impactful as the hero abilities.

There’s a lot of fun in figuring out optimal configurations of spells and heroes. Individual characters each have a number indicating their “power level,” though that figure doesn’t tell the whole story. Team compositions and appropriate skill usage are both key to success in Darkfire Heroes, both in its single-player campaign and its PvP game modes.

One of the worst feelings in a gacha game is investing gear and in-game currency into a character only to have to replace her when you roll a higher-tier hero. In Darkfire Heroes, old heroes rarely become obsolete thanks to the unique element system. Beginning in the second stage, sub-stages provide power boosts to all heroes of a certain element, so it’s always useful to have heroes of all elements in your lineup.

Additionally, the game also has an Elemental Dungeon, which offers an extra challenge and greater rewards if you complete it. However, they’re designed for heroes of a specific element (which is randomized every 6 hours), so your older, underused heroes can still be useful weeks after you’ve pulled them out of your main lineup.

Rovio is best known for Angry Birds, and they bring that same fun, cartoony art style into Darkfire Heroes. The character designs are  based on the same fantasy archetypes you’ve seen a thousand times, but they’re executed really well. Silhouettes are strong, which makes it easy to find them on the battlefield with a quick scan. More importantly, the ability animations and UI are well-tuned for readability and impact. I had no trouble keeping track of which skills were being sent where and how they were influencing the battle. That kind of visual clarity is crucial in a game where there are dozens of characters on screen at once, especially if it has PvP.

Currently, there are two PvP game modes: Castle Conquest and Hero Race. The former is a simple MOBA-like mode where two players must destroy their opponent’s castle. It’s a bit like tug-of-war but with towers and minions. The latter is a foot race where two players power their way through waves of enemies to be the first to reach the stage’s end. Neither mode is particularly complex or deep, but the potential hero combinations and cool skill interactions add just enough strategy to keep things interesting.

The only issue right now is that there just isn’t enough content. Expeditions, for example, are overly simple and uninteresting -- all you do is “deploy heroes” to complete a quest which lasts a set amount of hours, then collect the reward when the time is up. Clans also need some love as there isn’t much to do in a clan and the in-game clan finder doesn’t always work.

A well balanced game economy that's not pay to win

Darkfire Heroes Monetisation Model

Chests containing rewards, including character and spell cards, can be purchased from the in-game shop. They must be bought with the game’s premium currency, Gems, which can be bought with real money. The current bundles and hero packs are priced fairly, and there isn’t anything that you can buy that’s explicitly “pay-to-win” -- Darkfire Heroes is sufficiently skill-based (and timewalled) that veterans can outplay a high-paying newcomer.

As a gacha auto-battler, Darkfire Heroes is going up against some major competition. However, Rovio have really put together a solid product that fans of the genre are going to like a lot. The real-time combat and interesting skill interactions make Darkfire Heroes the type of game players are going to spend weeks tinkering and optimizing hero combinations for. It’s only been a few weeks since full release, so the game is still lacking in content, but Darkfire Heroes is already off to a fantastic start.

By Andi Nuruljihad for Gamesforum Online