War of Crown review - A strategy RPG as functional as it is unoriginal
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On the face of it, Gamevil's War of Crown is a perfectly competent, highly enjoyable SRPG with plenty of points in its favour.

It has a deep combat system, a ton of menus to tweak all your stats in if you so please, and plenty of variety in its objectives to keep you on your toes.

And yet it feels like well-trodden ground, and with other games out there that do the genre much better, it's not long before you'll wonder why you're not just playing one of those instead.

To arms

Gameplay in War of Crown will feel instantly familiar if you've played a strategy RPG before – you need to move your squad of heroes around a grid-based battlefield, killing everything that comes before you.

Each hero has its own elemental class – fire, earth, water, light, or dark – and you'll need to take advantage of their class to deal more damage to enemies of the opposing class.

There's also height advantages to think about, and three different moves for each hero that you'll need to employ at the right times to ensure your victory.

War of Crown

While all that is a lot to take in and consider, you're also up against a stringent time limit – fail to win in 10 rounds and it's an instant game over.

But despite sounding impenetrable, the combat is actually pretty easy to pick up, and before long you'll be stomping monsters all over the shop with your well-trained band of misfits.

Or, if you get bored of that, you can whack the game speed up to 2x and hit the auto-play button, and just watch the battle unfold in front of you.

Give me strength

If you want to get the most out of your warriors, then you're going to need to dip into War of Crown's numerous detailed menus.

There's one for levelling up, one for enhancing skills, one for equipping armour and weapons, one for levelling up equipment, one for enhancing equipment… the list goes on.

You can, thankfully, ignore these for the most part if you want to keep things casual, but for fans of nudging stats up by small amounts, there's plenty to enjoy.

War of Crown

And there's also plenty of variety in dungeons and objectives to keep you interested, and a PvP arena mode if you fancy taking the fight online.

Yet there's nothing especially new here. All these ideas and designs have been used in just about every game going at this point, and the game just doesn't inspire the same kind of excitement as the titles it is borrowing from.

Battered and beaten

Overall, while there's plenty to sink your teeth into here, there's very little to actually give you the drive to do so.

War of Crown feels like it should be a fun game, and it backs this up with a solid combat system and plenty of variety in missions.

But it's just the same game you already know – and one that's been done far better before.

War of Crown review - A strategy RPG as functional as it is unoriginal

It's functionally a good game, but War of Crown doesn't have enough of its own personality to really shine
Score
Ric Cowley
Ric Cowley
Ric was somehow the Editor of Pocket Gamer, having started out as an intern in 2015. He hopes to take over the world the same way.