Hearthstone: Curse of Naxxramas

From inception, it was obvious that Blizzard planned Hearthstone as a multi-player game. The single player experience offered little challenge. All the focus was on quick and thrilling multi-player matches

So the announcement of a major piece of single-player IAP came as something of a surprise. The Hearthstone community closed its collective eyes and dreamed of the wonders Blizzard might conjure.

What many were hoping for was something structured a bit like the superb Card City Nights - a series of battles set inside some sort of overarching frame of exploration and adventure.

What we got was just the boss battles. Each section of Naxxramas has between two and four fights, each with a custom hero power and deck. You beat one, move onto the next, until you're done.

That unlocks one or two class challenges where you face a rematch against one of the bosses with a pre-made deck.

So it's a bit disappointing to find that this so-called dungeon doesn't feel like a dungeon at all. There are no traps, no random encounters, no delving down into the black unknown by flickering torchlight. Rather it's more like an extended version of the original weak single-player offering.

The fact that there's been no appreciable improvement to the AI just reinforces that sense. The decks the bosses use break some fundamental rules of the game, and some of their hero abilities are extremely powerful. But that's just a thin veneer which lends an initial sheen of difficulty to what are mostly very easy fights.

Hearthstone aficionados will get some pleasure from the tougher ones, which require a bit of thought and a custom deck to win. But once you've done it, there's only one reason to return and try it again: the extra challenge offered by Heroic mode.

But the bosses are still constrained by the same poor AI routines. So the additional difficulty has to come from decks and powers upgraded to the point of insanity.

The result is fights that are hard to win, and need a good collection of cards and a better grasp of how to use them to overcome. But with only the clumsy tool of buffing their existing abilities to up the barrier, this mode pushes too far the other way. Even with the best decks at their disposal, an experienced player needs a hefty dose of luck to win a heroic fight.

Whichever way you toss it, it's a pretty disappointing experience.

The lure that pulls players through the duller boss battles is the treasure at the bottom of the dungeon. Each win unlocks a pair of brand-new, never-before-seen cards.

Beating all the bosses in a wing nets you a shiny new legendary for your collection. None of these cards is craftable unless you've already won it in Naxxramas. They're exclusive to people who've bought the IAP.

It's got to be said that most of these are worth owning. Some offer methods to balance common deck styles in the meta-game. Others are just fun to tinker with in their own right. A few combine into temptingly ludicrous power snowballs if you're lucky enough to draw the right cards.

But as is always the case when there's something tempting on display, you have to look at the cost.

This is where Naxxrams falls flat. Entry to a wing costs £4.99 / $6.99, which seems a high cost for relatively little content of dubious quality.

Value concious players can get it with 700 gold earned in-game. Yet it's telling that this isn't good value at all. That gold would buy seven booster packs, which has a real-world value three times that of a Naxxramas Wing. Someone at Blizzard really wants you to pay cold, hard cash for this expansion.

It's hard not to conclude that Naxxramas is a cash cow, designed to generate more income for a free game that must cost a pretty penny to run. If so, it's sad that something we originally heralded as proof you could make a good, fair free to play game seems set on selling itself down the golden river after all.