Angry Birds Epic pits the irritable avians against the evil pigs one more time, this time in a casual turn-based strategy romp with strong IAP elements.
Angry Birds Epic: On the plus side
Rovio’s ridden the Angry Birds franchise hard ever since hitting gold with its original inertia-based slingshot birds games. Not that even those were original in pure gameplay terms, as any long term player of Scorched Earth could tell you, but still, it’s been a highly profitable ride for Rovio.
Of late it’s been trying to branch the franchise out, with its Telepods toys for Angry Birds Star Wars II and the racing-centric Angry Birds Go, which seemed to pretty much come and go without all that much fanfare.
The latest Angry Birds game still pits you in Avian versus Porcine combat, but this time within the context of a strategy RPG title, albeit a very light casual take on the genre. You pick your Angry birds, swipe towards the enemies to engage attacks (or tap, or use special powerups), wait for damage to be done, then wait for them to retaliate. Lather, rinse, repeat.
This kind of thing has been a staple of RPG titles for decades now, and Rovio’s take is a decent introduction if this type of game hasn’t appealed to you before. As you play through the wafer-thin story, your birds gain levels and new equipment that make them better fighters, making harder levels more approachable. Some battles are single enemy affairs, while others stack on multiple waves of enemies to make your way through. Unsurprisingly, it all looks and sounds rather good, as long as you’re not tired of the Angry Birds aesthetic already.
Angry Birds Epic: On the minus side
In taking turn based combat into the casual arena, Rovio’s made Angry Birds Epic into a very simple game. Possibly too simple, because if you do play more than a few levels at once, you’ll quickly rumble to the fact that the action never really varies. You do get new birds and upgrades, but at the same time your enemies get stronger as you go along, making it all a bit moot.
(the obscure jokes are free. Not good, but free.)
Repetition and grind quickly set in, and that’s not exactly ideal, especially as there isn’t enough story here to offset the battles as you’d get in a more traditional RPG.
BUT WAIT! EMPTY YOUR WALLET AND YOU CAN KEEP GOING! DO IT NOOOOOOOOOW!!!
Then there’s the IAP element. Angry Birds Epic is free — and for now it’s only “soft-launched” in Australia, New Zealand and Canada — but in-app purchases are everywhere. Just lost a level because foes ganged up on one bird, or simply because you needed to grind some levels before trying it? You can pay for the tokens to make that happen. The same is true of buying health potions in-battle — which means you really can pay to win if you’re determined enough — or the various materials needed to create weapon upgrades.
Each weapon upgrade has a random dice roll to work out how effective it can be, and naturally if you roll up a dud, you can pay to re-roll that as well.
It’s also a mandatorily online game, so if you had thoughts of grinding a few levels on a long plane flight, forget them.
Angry Birds Epic: Pricing
Angry Birds Epic is a free iOS app with a lot of IAP options. You could spend quite a bit on this game if you’re not careful.
Why, do come right in. Make yourself very comfortable.
Angry Birds Epic: Fat Duck Reserved Verdict
The soft launch is usually a way for companies to tweak out any bugs or sort out pertinent gameplay issues, but I don’t think that’s at play here, and that’s why I’ve got to give a reserved judgement on Angry Birds Epic.
Simply put, the code seems quite tight, and very minor gameplay tweaks aside, I can’t see why this couldn’t be released worldwide right now, save for one thing.
That one thing is the presence of in-app purchases.
Right now, the IAP component isn’t terrible. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again; I have no particular issue with IAP being used as a way to “sell” a game, as long as it’s worthwhile and not entirely tilted towards simply sucking money out of gamer’s wallets no matter what.
Why yes, Dungeon Keeper, I am looking at you.
Angry Birds Epic isn’t that bad right now.
But that could very easily change. Being always online, I’m sure Rovio’s crunching the numbers to see how gamers play the game, where they do (or don’t) cough up actual cash, and tweaking around that. It could very easily slide into a position where it’s not just optionally-pay-to-win (where it is right now) into you-must-pay-to-continue-or-grind-for-days. Or worse.
Somebody’s taking the pith.
As the code and IAP structure are right now, there’s no doubting that Angry Birds Epic has elements of grind and repetition to it, but then that’s been a hallmark of every Angry Birds game to date. If you’re a casual player you might not even notice taking one or two levels at once. More dedicated players will hit a boredom wall much more quickly than that, and be better served with different and deeper strategy titles.
I erased all of my Angry Bird apps after Snowden revealed that the government is spying on you through this app. I don’t want the government to know how much of my life I wasted playing this game.