One Big Question

I sometimes worry that I come down too hard on games I don’t like, and Pixel Squad: War of Legends will be one of those times. I admit that Zitga’s pixel-art gacha RPG has a certain charm. However, I could never quite find an answer to the question, “Why am I playing this?”

Pixel Squad’s gameplay is straightforward to a fault. Players form a squad of heroes and face off against groups of enemies. They position their characters in a formation, start the battle, and mostly watch it play out on its own. Each hero has a unique ability that players can activate manually or automatically. If you play many gacha games, you have likely seen a similar setup many times.

In fact, you’ve probably seen it done better, or at least in a more mechanically engaging way. Each character only has one ability in addition to their standard attack, and the game doesn’t offer much else in terms of mechanics. Similar games might spice things up by introducing modifiers based on your party composition. Pixel Squad does not. Some games might give characters special abilities that move them around the field or have them target the back ranks of the enemy formation. Pixel Squad does not.

It might seem unfair to judge Pixel Squad for not having all the bells and whistles that other games do. But those bells and whistles at least attempt to make battles feel distinct. Most fights in Pixel Squad feel identical, and it gets old fast. I find myself thinking back to games I liked, such as Figure Fantasy, Counterside, and AFK Journey. All of them are gacha games with relatively hands-off combat. Yet, they had enough mechanical complexity to keep combat exciting battle after battle.

Of course, those three games also benefited from having a strong story and compelling character moments stringing their fights together. I haven’t played Counterside in ages, but it still sticks with me because of its world and characters. The latter is particularly important in a gacha game since completing your hero collection is one of the main draws. Meanwhile, the setting and story provide much-needed context to the battles. At a minimum, the game should tell its players who these people are and what they are fighting about.

Pixel Squad doesn’t seem to care about any of that. Characters have names and little post-battle quips, and the sprites are certainly cute. However, Zitga doesn’t bother giving them backstories, unique animations, or any other things gacha games use to get you invested.

So Why Am I Playing This?

So, the combat is boring, there’s no visual spectacle, no real story to speak of, and there is barely an attempt at characterization. Therefore, let’s return to the big question hanging over the whole game: why am I playing this game? More importantly, why should you play it? I still don’t have a good answer, and I suspect there isn’t one. There are definitely worse Android games out there, but many of those will at least leave more of an impression than Pixel Squad: War of Legends.