Aerena - Clash of Champions

From the screens on the App Store you'd be forgiven for thinking that Aerena - Clash of Champions is a MOBA.

But I have it on good authority that this free-to-play strategy game is much closer to Advance Wars than League of Legends. There's even some Magic: The Gathering thrown in as well.

Whatever the case, I'm going to spend the next week with it, playing it for a full seven days before delivering the definitive Pocket Gamer verdict. And you can't stop me.

The first thing that strikes me about Aerena - Clash of Champions is that one of the main heroes keeps saying "it's clobberin' time".

Only two hulking beasts can get away with something as cheesy as that, and their names are Ben Grimm and CM Punk.

Most of the dialogue I've read so far has been a bit overly dramatic. That's not to say it's badly written, it's just not for me.

The game is all about mid-air arena battles for Ether. These see you fielding three mighty soldiers against three hopefully-not-quite-so-mighty soldiers. You have an airship too, and have to protect it at all costs. Once it loses all its health, you lose.

The airship might be fragile, but it can also unleash some super-powerful attacks that can change the course of a game. Most of them deal large quantities of damage to a specific enemy.

Combat is turn based, and each hero can perform two orders before the turn is over. These include moving and fighting.

The game has already told me I'll need more heroes to progress, and it looks like each character will have decidedly different sets of moves.

Bloody Mary, for example, is only able to shoot in a straight line, but her reach is extremely long. These kinds of advantages and limitations are already coming into play, and I've not put that much time into the game yet.

I've already been rewarded with plenty of achievements, bonuses, and experience points though, and so far I've enjoyed what the game has to offer.