Summoners War Chronicles Review
Summoners War Chronicles PC Steam was released on 10 November 2022, it is a free game that is heavily monetized. I wanted to give Summoners War a go since it was supposed to be the updated successor of the super popular mobile gacha game Summoners War, with better gameplay, better content, open world and yes, upgraded graphics. I do admit, the game itself has at the very least crossed majority of what they set out to accomplished which is very rare for developers these day as they seem to tend to overpromise and underdeliver. While I personally always preferred Monster Super League series over Summoners Wars, I have played Summoners Wars on and off but never really competitively nor for long. At the very least, it was enough to make me give Summoners War Chronicles a go.
Combat
At first look for Summoners War Chronicles, within the first few minutes, I gotten huge Ni no Kuni: Cross Worlds vibes. I played Ni no Kuni: Cross Worlds back when it released May Last year, and Summoners Wars Chronicles feels like a direct copy of the game. Everything felt so similar, even the controls and the world itself. If I only saw screenshots of the game itself, I would probably get them mixed up. However, what is different from Ni no Kuno is, despite it has plan to, as of right now, Summoners War is not a Crypto Blockchain game, and there are no idle offline rewards.
Let’s be clear here, there is auto-combat, and auto-quest, auto-pathing and auto-teleport in this game. However, auto-combat itself may be disabled depending on the type of content you are attempting to complete. For example, to progress through the main campaign quests, there are dungeons have auto-combat the very first time you clear it. As for raids, you must complete the same raid 3 times before auto-combat can be unlocked for that specific raid. Otherwise, combat is very simple, ~5 or so abilities, wasd for movement and abilities to switch between different summons to cast different type of skills.
Elements
As one would expect from any kind of monster collecting gacha games, there will always be elements involved. Summoners War Chronicles monster’s are largely based on their prequel game Summoner Wars.
There are a total of 5 elements in this gacha game which are the following, where Light and Dark are separated as normal in their own elemental advantage category.
- Fire
- Water
- Wind
- Light
- Dark
Elemental advantage and weakness in Summoners War Chronicles gives the following bonuses or debuffs
If your attribute counters the other element, you will receive the following bonus.
- 20% bonus DMG
- 10% bonus Crit Rate
However, if your attribute is countered by the other element, you will receive the following.
- -30% bonus DMG
- -10% Crit Rate
- -15% Precision
PVP
PVP in Summoners War Chronicles is not true PVP as it is not real time PVP, instead, as with most gacha games, it is AI-Controlled opponents using the defence team the players have set up.
Further, to save some time, if your Combat Power outnumbers your opponents, you have a choice to completely skip the battle and receive the winning rewards instead using “Quick Battle“. While on the topic of Combat Power, a higher combat power does not always guarantee a win either, as PVP can be either auto-played or manually played. A well-played team can still beat a player with a slightly higher Combat Power.
Lastly, there are battle passes for nearly every little thing inside Summoners War Chronicles. Which can be seen as a bad thing as it really promotes P2W elements as battle passes are notorious to give an unfair advantage in player progression whether it is through more summons, direct increase in combat power or progression enhancement items. However, in this case, at the very least, the premium PVP Battle Pass can be purchased directly with premium cash currency which can be farmed in game as opposed to straight out money instead.
Cash Shop
As with what you will expect from any HIVE game, Summoners War Chronicles is no exception here, every few clicks you do, they will throw a “Limited time package for $50.00” get it now ad at you. It is quite annoying for an average enjoyer.
On top, I would rate this game to be very pay2win and even if you spend a few dollars a month at the game, you will have an overwhelming advantage versus a player who do not spend anything at all. Further, you can expect to get anything you want inside the cash shop, the only limit is as long as you can afford to spend.
State of Game
The steam game runs very smooth on my PC, while I have not tested it on my mobile yet, I cannot comment on that. According to Steam Charts, the game itself in on slow decline. Despite having some nice collabs events lately, a popular webtoon The Advanced Player of the Tutorial Tower that I personally have read and enjoyed too.
On a personal perspective, the game also feels very lacking compared to the prequel version, in both content & monsters. For example, monster collection wise, there probably isn’t even half of what the original game Summoner Wars has to offer. The combat itself needs to be polished up a bit more and it needs to be marketed a lot better. I personally have not seen much ads on the game itself as opposed to other mobile games despite Sensor Tower reporting Summoner War (the original game) making over 8 million in February alone, being one of the highest amount generated compared to other more popular titles that is constantly discussed in the gacha community.
There is huge potential in this game, but this isn’t something I can currently recommend as of right now.
Artwork
The artwork style in Summoners War Chronicles is pretty, chibi-like but feels very common and not unique. As mentioned previously, it feels like it copied Ni no Kuni: Cross Worlds homework and not in a good way. I personally expected alot more when I originally was alerted about Summoners War sequel game but feels like I was heavily let down here.
Fun
Summoners War Chronicles is very enjoyable, at least I was able to enjoy the first ~20 hours or so of gameplay, with a total of 33 hours to my steam account. However, I can say, at least 2-3 hours of it was on auto-play doing repeatable quests for weekly quests. The game itself is quite repeatable and gets very tedious very fast. Further, considering you would have to abandon your progress in Summoners War, it feels even less worthwhile as the game itself is lacking. I would not recommend this game for anyone looking to get started in a monster collector gacha game and instead play the original game or Monster Super League instead. While it isn’t open world, the content is much more polished for the time being. Hopefully HIVE will give up this whole blockchain movement that they started to integrate in some of their games like Summoners War Lost Centuria and focus on actually improving their IP games as it actually holds tremendous potential. Meanwhile, my main focus this year is still the highly anticipated Honkai Star Rail dropping in April 2023 for Mobile-style Games and Thrones and Liberty by Amazon Games Studio.
