Developer: Blizzard Entertainment
Publisher: Blizzard Entertainment
Platform: PC, iOS, Android
Tested on: PC
Hearthstone: Ashes of Outland – Review
Hearthstone will forever be known as the game that killed Blizzard’s physical TCG that was based on WoW. Nonetheless, this digital game has managed to win over many of the original TCG players, as well as many new ones who casually or actively play this digital variant of a trading card game. Blizzard allows players to play the game for free, but if you want to make any kind of proper progress you’ll have to spend some money. Not only to get a good and relevant deck for the season, but also because the game works a lot like popular physical card games, making cards from older sets obsolete and useless for the current seasons. Now, Ashes of Outland promises to bring some big changes to the table, hence we are revisiting this card game that is already seven years old.
It’s easy to say that the mechanics of the game remain unchanged, safe for the effects of a few new cards which can once again influence new deck designs. Even those not ‘buying’ the new expansion will be able to play through the prologue to unlock the new class, the Demon Hunter. It has to be said that the prologue isn’t that much fun to play through because of ridiculous RNG, making some of the levels unjustly hard. We had to replay several levels more than ten times, simply to draw that one card that helps against the specific boss, in order to progress. This isn’t fun, and this feels as if it was poorly tested by those who designed the levels.
The Demon Hunter seems to rely on its weapons a lot, which is a bit reminiscent of the Rogue class. Nonetheless, you can of course also summon critters and cast spells. The basic deck has a few high hitters in terms of weaponry, even allowing you to hit multiple creatures or perform several attacks in a row. Some minions then respond to your attack by summoning additional creatures to the board after you attack. There’s also a class-specific effect on some of the Demon Hunter cards named Outcast. This effect triggers when it’s either the utmost left or right card in your hand. When it’s in that position, its Outcast triggers, providing additional effects or even cost reductions for casting the spell or creature.
There have been several updates and readjustments done to the game, but they don’t feel like something that validates an entire review. We constantly see changes and new packs and sets being released in the game, proving that this is still a very active game with a massive community. While we would prefer a bit more love for the ‘free’ players, we know that this is just another business model to earn money of course. One big change to this business model is the fact that you only get a limited amount of double cards from opening booster packs, as the game will first gather as many cards from the set, before giving you more than a specific amount of doubles. This is a great addition.
Conclusion
Ashes of Outland is a slightly bigger set release than the previous ones, as it adds more content, a new class, a class overhaul and a few new mechanics concerning booster packs. There is nothing drastic being changed within the core game, but it shows that after seven years the game is still very active and still has a massive community. We hope to see bigger and better set releases as the game keeps pumping out new content, events and cards.
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