Introduction

Top War: Battle Game, offered by Topwar Studio and released on Jan 156, 2020, is a fresh twist on the tried-and-true mobile strategy genre. In a landscape populated with castle builders, war simulators, and resource management games, Top War diverges from the norm with its unique merge mechanics. Instead of the standard “tap-to-build” or “wait-to-upgrade” paradigms present in so many other mobile strategy games, Top War: Battle Game introduces a merge feature where players combine similar units to upgrade them, an innovative mechanic that aims to keep players engaged.

The game is set in an island world, where players start off with a base and strive to expand their territory, defend against threats, and build a dominant military force. As is customary with most strategy games, it involves resource collection, unit upgrades, and PvP combat. But what differentiates Top War is the merger of units, buildings, and even resources to unlock advanced tiers, all packaged in a vibrant graphical display and intuitive user interface.

Pros and Cons

√ The merge feature is refreshing and offers a different strategy component than traditional games in the genre.

√ The user interface is clear, making it easy for newcomers to understand and navigate.

√ The visuals are colorful and engaging, making the gameplay visually pleasing.

√ The developers regularly introduce events, new units, and challenges, ensuring players have fresh content.

√ The game promotes alliance formation and competition, encouraging social interactions and strategic planning.

× Like many costless-to-play mobile games, there are in-app purchases that can significantly speed up progress.

× Despite the unique mechanics, gameplay can become monotonous after extended play.

× Some servers can be dominated by powerful alliances, making it hard for newcomers.

× Occasionally, new updates might introduce glitches that disrupt gameplay.

× The game takes up a significant amount of storage space and might run slower on older devices.

Review

Having played Top War: Battle Game for a few weeks now, I have somewhat mixed feelings about the experience. On one hand, the core gameplay loop of building your base, amassing resources, training units and battling enemies is highly engaging and fun. I really enjoyed plotting the optimal base layout, balancing resource production and planning army composition. The graphics are top notch with detailed environments and smooth animations. Troop variety is solid with ships, tanks, planes and soldiers. The mechanics for battles work nicely, allowing you to control units in real-time. Joining an active alliance also made the experience more social and enjoyable.

However, Top War is plagued by some unfortunate flaws and monetization issues that hold it back. The game is absurdly complex for new players, overwhelming you with numerous confusing systems and upgrade paths. Tutorials are severely lacking. Also, free players quickly hit walls where you need to spend real money to progress at a reasonable pace. Things like building times, research times and resource caps quickly become prohibitive. Top War constantly pushes expensive packages, bonuses and deals which disrupts the experience. Losing battles simply because an opponent has spent more money is frustrating.

In addition, while the core mechanics are fun, battles do mostly boil down to having bigger and more troops than your enemy. There isn’t as much strategy as I’d like during actual combat. The gameplay can feel repetitive and redundant at times. The user interface is also clunky making management and navigation a chore. Lag and game crashes during battles is also an issue.

In general, Top War: Battle Game delivers an entertaining and addictive mobile strategy experience, but is heavily marred by aggressive monetization and repetitive gameplay. Diehard fans of the base building and battle genre may still find something to love here, but the pay-to-win elements and complexity make it hard to recommend fully. With some improvements to battle tactics and progression, Top War: Battle Game could be a perfect strategy game.