By: Vincent Haoson, OnRPG’s Mobile Master
The mobile gaming scene has scene the rise of a lot of iTCGs. With Aeria Mobile releasing a lot of iTCGs as of late. After reviewing their fan-service-y Pirate Maidens, I take a look at their more “serious” iTCG, Immortalis and see if Aeria Mobile offers a whole new iTCG experience or a re-themed version of Pirate Maidens.
Starting Off
In Immortalis, you are a soulbinder with the task of controlling “immortals” or monsters that you can use to aid you in battles against monsters or other players. Typical to any TCG (IRL or Internet-wise), you are given a starter pack that contains a Rare “Immortal” with commons. You can then either conjure immortals or go through quests to earn experience points to get stat points to increase Party Cost or Stamina points.
Before you would go any further, the game makes you choose which would be your “partner” Immortal be from the Immortals you would get from the starter pack. You are also given the choice what element would your avatar be. Immortals that fall under your chosen element would earn bonuses within your roster so it’s best to choose to have a line-up that has the same element as your avatar.
Your Immortals
Once you’ve decided what your partner immortal would be, you are then tasked to either get more immortals for your roster or go through questing, as I’ve mentioned earlier. I’m going to focus first in the review is the Immortals aspect of the game.
Each immortal you’d get would have its initial stats divided to ATK and DEF and each card has a party points cost which determines how many you can put on a party. Your party will determine how big the boosts you will provide to your guild whenever battles occur (which happens at lot actually).
You can acquire Immortals through “conjuring” them, acquiring them through questing or getting them from incubated eggs that you can also get through questing.
Conjuring
The game gives you a lot of options when it comes to conjuring immortals for your line-up. The typical conjuring process requires you to spend conjure mana which can either be earned by going through quest areas, given automatically as login bonus and earning them through specific battles.
The other process requires you to spend actual money on the game. The Rare Conjure has a higher chance of providing you with higher rarity immortals at the expense of your wallet. Of course that’s one of the drawbacks to having the “advantage” in a micro-transaction based game. So the balls on your court with that one.
Evolution/Sacrifice
Typical to any iTCG game, Immortalis has the sacrifice/evolution mechanic. For Sacrifice, you get to increase a chosen card/unit at the expense of other cards. Evolution on the other hand gives you the option to acquire “rarer” cards because evolution allows you to “merge” your similar cards/units to get a higher rarity version.
While game’s sacrifice mechanic is nothing to write home to since every iTCG that came out already has this, I must commend that the game’s evolution system is in fact interesting. Unlike in other games (Marvel: War of Heroes for instance) where once you merge cards you don’t get something new. In Immortalis, once you evolved the card/unit more than thrice, you get a whole new card out of it. I also liked the variety of the cards you get once you evolved them. You get a different colored unit each time you evolve the card giving it a little variety from the humdrum all-too familiar gameplay.
Questing
For any iTCG out there, the only way for players to get cards aside from buying them outright is going through repeatable “quests” where you have the chance to either get the card or get items that you can use for whatever game feature it is available in-game.
For Immortalis, the other items you can get as you go through quest areas are mostly MP recovery items. Questing in the game is pretty straightforward where you won’t necessarily have to do anything aside from tapping at the quest button. Progressing along each area requires you to spend points which can be upgraded whenever you level up or whenever you finish an area.
Aside from the random encounters of getting items, immortals and experience points, questing also is the staging area for boss battles. Facing bosses in Immortalis doesn’t take much from you since the only way to defeat them is if you have a strong party composed of members of your own guild.
Guilds
Speaking of guilds, Immortalis puts a lot of emphasis on the interaction of people through the game’s guild system. The game partners you out from the start and once you are part of a guild you are then tasked to build a party (composed of you and two other guild members) that will form as your “default” party during boss battles.
Being part of a guild would also allow you to get people to trade with. You can also hatch your eggs with the help of your guild mates, as along as they are alive and actively playing the game.
Battles
Another use for guilds in Immortalis is to find support whenever battles happen. Battles in Immortalis pits your guild against another guild and for a duration you are given the opportunity to test out the strength of your parties against the guilds of other people.
This game feature would actually be your reason why you keep on coming back to the game. Since battles occur on a daily (hourly) basis, you and your guild needs to actually invest more time on the game than normal. The problem however is if the guild you are in is inactive since inactive guilds would only mean longer battles and the worst case scenario is that you’d lose more often than necessary.
Conclusion
Among the list of iTCGs out for the iOS, I can’t really recommend Immortalis as one of the top games to download. While the game does have a huge library of units, the game doesn’t have the wow factor for you to keep on playing.
Yes, battles are interesting to a point, but unless you have a group of friends to play with- or if you have a very active guild then it would only make things interesting, for a short duration. So the bottom line is, if you’re looking for an iTCG game to enjoy that’s not Marvel, then Immortalis is a decent option.
