Fantastic artwork, animations, and sound
I still snicker at some of the noises and sequences some cards set off when you drop them on the board. Just about every card has something that adds flavor. When Shamans summon Totems, a blue ghost image drops from the sky as it lands on the board. Many Beasts roar. The Knife Juggler throws a blade that launches from his card to a random enemy target when you play another troop. Fireballs and Pyroblasts burst in flames. Frost cards and spells encase their targets in ice. Legendaries enter with a flourish, and some, such as Ragnaros the Firelord, arrive with a blast of flame. The Warrior’s Brawl card throws all Minions into a cartoony fight, and only one survives.
But the most special card might be Leroy Jenkins. Based on the now infamous World of Warcraft incident, this Legendary shouts out his name — LEROOOOYYYY JENKINS!!!! — just as the player did in the original raid that made dear Leroy a meme. A musical flourish joins his triumphant charge onto the board.
Little bits like this add a great deal of character and make Hearthstone more fun than many standard card games.
What you won’t like
Legendaries can unbalance
It can be frustrating dealing with a player that throws down a deck stacked with Epics and Legendaries. I came across a few who had five or more Legendary cards, and one Warlock player with five Legendaries and six Epic cards — my poor Shaman deck, one with which I win more often than I lose, just couldn’t remove the steady flow of Giants and Dragons that spewed from this deck.
But most of the time, I found that decks were balanced, and some of the best players, I noticed, where those whose decks weren’t built around throwing out a Legendary or two but just good, consistent plays. In fact, skilled players can feast on those who build decks around one Legendary and have no clear strategy for when someone kills that card.
Frequent nerfs
For a couple of months, two of my favorite cards were the Novice Engineer and the Defender of Argus. These were powerful Neutral cards that worked in any deck. For 2 mana, the 1/2 engineer also gave you a card when played on the board. Not every Minion that would find itself played on turns 1 or 2 could remove it. And the 4-mana Defender of Argus may look like a bad deal at 3/3, but it added 1 attack and 1 health and Taunt to adjacent Minions. But a patch in January made both of these weaker, dropping Novice Engineer to 1/1 and Defender of Argus to 2/3. Now the Engineer would die to almost any card, including the Mage’s class ability to throw a small fireball.
Blizzard frequently adjusts the power of cards. Not every update makes cards weaker — one of my favorite Hunter cards, Unleash the Hounds (which summons a 1/1 Hound for every enemy on the board, and it can attack immediately), went from 4 mana to 2 mana. This made it a must-add card to every Hunter deck, and since it syncs up to several of that class’s other Minions well, the update made it more powerful as well.
Whether an update leaves you with better cards or weakens them, regular players must pay close attention to what Blizzard does to address the balance and tinker with their decks to absorb the changes.
A few technical issues
Hearthstone is always-online, but I’ve had few issues with lag or connecting to Battle.net, Blizzard’s multiplayer servers. The problems I have seen have been with effects — sometimes, cards “hover” in your hand or on the board or block others in your hand for no reason. The sound effects stutter as well every now and then.
Conclusion
As someone who hasn’t touched collectible card games since the mid-1990s — and hasn’t played Warcraft since it was still a real-time strategy game — I’m amazed at not only how quickly I picked up Hearthstone but also how much I’ve played it. It’s easy to learn, easy to get into matches and play, and it’s fun. It’s led me to check out other digital card games — and I’m again surprised at how much I enjoy these.
My only concern lies in how quickly Blizzard adds expansion packs and different quests to keep its first F2P venture fresh. Such games need regular updates in order to remain interesting to players, and while Hearthstone’s depth could keep some players interested for months with just its current content, it’s going to need more than just artistic touches to become a long-lasting game.
Expect more Murloc cards. Everyone hates Murlocs.
Score: 95/100
Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft is out now for PC and Mac. It’s coming “soon” to tablets as well. Blizzard provided GamesBeat with early beta-test access, but the reviewer used his own money for microtransactions since he plans on playing the game far into the future and feels using anything he didn’t pay for wouldn’t be fair to other players.