Aerena: Clash of Champions Review (PC)

Aerena is a bite-size free-to-play turn-based tactical combat game for PC, Mac and tablets, coming from Cliffhanger Productions and set in a unique steampunk world, geared toward balanced turn-based multiplayer encounters.

The setting is a resource-depleted Earth, after the discovery of Aether, a new and mysterious power source. The race for Aether has pitted nation against nation until almost nothing remained of the old Earth, and now battles are fought on a much narrower scale, between small teams of champions.

The fact that large-scale conflicts have become symbolic does not change the fact that battles are deadly clashes, and as such each faction brings its own very best to the front lines of combat.

The game itself revolves around tactical choices made on a 6x6 board with various obstacles, bonuses and hazards, controlling 3 champions, each with his own play style and strengths and weaknesses.

You select one ship, five champions and three shells to be loaded unto the ship, and you deploy your forces and try to pilot your team toward victory the best way you can.

The way to achieve victory is to get the opposing ship's health points to zero, and the main way of doing that is through killing enemy champions, but you can also opt for direct attacks from your heroes or to utilize shells for the last points needed to secure the win.

Shells are one-time uses of a special power such as damage or healing to a single character, and heroes are one-time uses... well, that all depends on positioning. Your ship is also a factor in the matches, since bigger ships that come with a larger health pool also come with a wider body and are thus more susceptible to receiving damage from stray enemies.

The small battlefield makes matches more intense

This looks like a scene from steampunk Rocky

The champions themselves are pretty varied, and the fact that you can only have three of the total of five deployed at any given time on the battlefield adds to the level of strategy and to each one's particular usefulness depending on the situation at hand.

For the most part, the big difference is between melee and ranged champions, each one with varying stats such as movement range, attack damage and health, and each hero also comes with two special abilities that can have a great impact in the outcome of any match.

There are enough differences between the heroes that you can formulate different tactics to employ based on the layout of the terrain, and although at first glance many of the heroes will appear similar, the small way in which they differ will turn out to be a heavy factor in your decisions.

Will you hold your champion back to gather more energy and use his second, more powerful ability, in order to damage several enemies at once, or will you rush in and charge an opponent, knocking him off the board altogether?

The seemingly limited number of moves you can make moves Aerena somewhat closer to chess, but with a lot more variety due to the fact that it's an asymmetrical game. But just like in chess, tempo will play an important role in the outcome.

The only critique I would have here is that you can end your unit's turn without moving effectively, turtling and waiting for the opponent without any penalty, unlike chess, where the obligatory nature of movement can pierce a hole in an otherwise impenetrable defense.

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Aerena is deceptively deep, and because of its small-scale nature, it can seem very casual. Yet, once you start climbing the ranks, you begin to see how your enemies are able to capitalize on your every mistake and how having the next couple of turns figured out ahead of time and synchronizing special attacks with the judicious use of shells can completely devastate an adversary.

You can always plan ahead, paying attention to the unit order and the all-important positioning while deploying your troops to make sure they're not blown away before they get a chance to make a difference on the battlefield.

Another aspect worthy of mentioning is that the game is free to play, which might lead some to thinking that it rewards spending real currency, which is not the case.

You can purchase everything by using in-game currency, which surely takes a while to accumulate, but allows access to everything that you would otherwise spend real money on, from unlocking new ships and champions to restocking on shells, which is done automatically, at a rate of one per hour.

While unlocking more heroes will offer you a wider range of choices, it doesn't automatically mean that you'll win more, as the champions are pretty well balanced and the way you use them is the important factor in Aerena.

The Good

The Bad

Conclusion