Battle Bouncers: Smashing Saga 9+

I honestly thought this was a different game, and nearly deleted it before trying it. I saw the commercial during another game and it has a similar title to a game I knew I would like so I downloaded it. I have hated wall games all the way back to when it was very likely the only electronic game you could own. I’m talking pre Atari, the true Stone Age of games. I’m sure I liked it when I first got it but when it’s the only game in town and then the Atari came out I began to hate it the same way I hated hair metal. I loved it at one time but now it’s embarrassing. The depth of this game, the affect characters have, the interesting levels all surprised me. I may start looking for other games I’ve excluded as result of this game and hopefully I can conquer my traumatic gaming past. I’m obviously exaggerating traumatic and considering actual trauma faced everyday I needed to point that out so I didn’t feel like a dick for putting that in. Great game even if you hate wall bouncers.

So I think this game is excellent overall. It’s a unique take on the normal brick breaker formula and it works very well. My main issue with the game is that you cannot train (level up) your team members beyond the level you are as a player. For example, if you are player level 20, that means you can’t level up any of your team members past level 20 either. It doesn’t matter if you literally have enough potions to level up a character to level 30, if you are only player level 20, then you can only level your characters to level 20. Only until you reach player level 30 can you use the potions that you’ve had since you were player level 20 to level up your team members to level 30. This is a really dumb way to make the game more of a grind, not sure if this was intentionally done by the developers to make you want to pay real money to speed up the leveling process, but either way, it’s dumb.

Developers, please fix this system. You already have other things such as energy limits and runes that can only be obtained in later levels to make the game more of a grind and slow progression, so why have the flawed training system too? Please let us train our team members to any level we can with the potions and coins we have, regardless of the level we are as a player. I want to be able to level up my characters when I have the necessary resources (potions and coins) to do so, NOT when I finally reach the next player level.

The cool things this game offers up will keep you hooked for a while. But once the game slows to a near dead stop about a month in your time in it quickly shifts to 10 minutes or so a day to buy all the items in the store for runes, 15 seconds to auto battle all energy away, 1 minute of watching ads required to collect daily quests, yuck. I’m tempted to rate this fewer stars but I genuinely enjoyed the first 30 days playing this.

Pluses: RPG Elements, Diverse set of characters to create a team, Fun and graphic skills that are essential to plan, unique enemies that force strategizing.

Cons: progression mid-game (30 ish days in) is nearly non existent, the energy scaling and replenishment means you’re really only doing some auto battles twice a day for 5 ish minutes each. Runes required to power up units are stupid high, ie 1 days worth of energy can be used to acquire ~10 required runes, but you need ~700+ (one month in). Alternative is buying everything in the store whenever it refreshes but that quickly becomes 95% of how you spend your time when you open the app. After buying some 50 chests of hero shards with saved up diamonds earned in-game (and some purchased), I’ve come to the conclusion they are worthless, shards acquired opening 10x vs shards needed of your lineup is a dumpster fire. Your best heroes will come from the store where you can reliably buy shards with in game currency.