Rumble On
Assemble a team, gather resources, and fight your way through hoards of a variety of menacing enemies in PlayHard.Lab‘s new addicting, role-playing project, Rumble Heroes. The game is a top down, casual, action-packed RPG in which the sole princess of your kingdom has been kidnapped. Consequently, it is up to you to assemble a formidable team to travel through monster-laden lands to save her while also reconstructing your starting village. Rumble Heroes has many praise-worthy aspects and can be a very satisfying game to kick back and play. The mindless hack-and-slash 2D action can be cathartic. However, hardcore mobile gamers will be quick to notice the disappointing drawbacks this game suffers from. The games heavy reliance on ads as a source of progression is perhaps the most egregious of these sins.
Heroic Travels
Rumble Heroes starts out as loads of fun. You begin with one hero and as you fight your way through a few waves of monsters you free a hero who joins you. You do this twice more until your squad comprises of four heroes. The combat in this game is extremely simple to grasp: simply walk up to a group of enemies and your squad will do the rest, dispatching them in whichever way they see fit. After you assemble a full four members of your squad, you will eventually encounter the village. The game tasks you with rebuilding it. You do this gathering a plethora of the game’s three main resources: food, wood, and diamonds. Gaining levels helps too as it unlocks new structures. Different structures become available as you ascend in levels. Some of the first of said structures are the pub. You use this to recruit new heroes and level up your current ones. The training ground is utilized to increase the competency of your team collectively. Using these structures consistently throughout one’s playthrough is imperative in making sure your team keeps up with the ever increasing difficulty of your enemies.
The pub displays three hero cards of either heroes you do not have or ones you do. You will then need to spend 100 gold to randomly unlock one. If you land on a hero you do not have, you will unlock it whereas if you land on one you do, you will gain points to level up said hero individually. Such a system makes it quite difficult to level up heroes you choose to use consistently if you aren’t lucky or willing to use microtransactions to re-roll several times. You do gain levels collectively though fighting and progression. However, gambling by way of the pub is the only way for your individual heroes to level up. This aspect of the game that can seriously hinder your ability to progress through levels.
Ads Ads Ads
Like just about every free mobile game, Rumble Heroes places a heavy emphasis on showing you ads. When you encounter a chest, you will have the option of watching an ad. Doing this exponentially increases the loot you receive from it. If your entire party dies (a very common occurrence in the later stages of the game if your characters are not properly leveled) you can watch an ad to revive your squad. The amount of ads would be excusable if it did not appear as though the game was coaxing you to view as many of them as possible. Microtransactions are also a big part of this game, and though they are less present than the ads, engaging in them provides you with a much better means to slay the increasingly difficult enemies than not.
Rumble Heroes can be very enjoyable. The combat is simple and intuitive and the resource farming can be very satisfying. The game falls short on its very heavy reliance on ads. As a result is likely to push many players away from an otherwise fun experience.
Is It Hardcore?
-
SCORE
I wish
Rumble Heroes has the building blocks of what makes up a great mobile RPG with addictive combat and satisfying resource farming. However, progression being linked to how many ads you watch or how many microtransactions you purchased is a major drawback.