[Game]Might&Glory

Might&Glory:Kingdom War (Nord Studios, published by My.com) starts out as an uglier more boring Clash of Clans. It has some terrible monetizing ideas, a few neat new things, and amazingly, has people playing it. I have no idea why.

Right off it’s got a link to one of those old pages where you can get gems by signing up for a credit card or answering a survey. Who knew those still existed? After the first few levels of the clash-clone stuff, you get this new customizable weapon … which turns out to be a cash-only building. Upgrades to it cost gems. Lots and lots of gems, and lots and lots of upgrades to make it good. The game allow you to create customized “totems” with various bonuses — also cost a ton of gems to upgrade to where they’re useful.

Besides cash-only items, which is very unclashy, there’s the bad game-play. Air defenses are tuned way too high — nothing flying stands a chance. Wall breakers are very stupid, running to the nearest wall even if it’s right next to a hole they just made. After suffering with your pitiful army you finally unlock a must-use super-troop. The rest of the game is simply using this one troop (it looks like a goblin with a bazooka, but don’t upgrade your goblins hoping to get it. It’s actually a dark elixir troop).

On to the neat ideas: you get a defense building that pops out 4 archers (and then wizards). Those are much more effective than the usual warriors which run and and die quickly. Your 2-5 heroes march around the entire base instead of just standing there. A end-game weapon spawns tiny spiders who also roam the whole base. This eliminates the “plinking” part of attacks (where you drop archers in safe spots around the base to “trim” it) which I never cared for.

There are some nice new troops. One is a clever ghost; fast, hits hard, goes through walls and runs around the building while attacking. That looks so cool and helps it avoid traps and mortars. The next is even cooler — an invisible beetle which runs at and kills traps for 7 seconds (at which point it becomes visible and is instantly killed, which is also pretty cool). Finally you get an expensive but long-range barbarian who freezes his current target. He’s in the perfect useful-but-not-overpowering range. But again, use the goblins with bazookas if they still exist.

On a neutral point, you get a building which can make tiny 8-hour boosts for some defenses. You get it late and it’s very expensive to upgrade. I like the idea, but the way it’s done here seems pointless.

I cannot figure out why people play this game. At first you want to unlock the weirdly-named buildings just to see what they do. Then you can’t believe a base with terrible air-defense still killed your flying army. Then you want to see what those freaking powerful goblins with rockets are. But after that? Sometimes the game rains down fireballs on every troop I place. Same spot or different spot, all get blasted. I’m a little curious what it is, but not enough to bore myself to death trying to unlock it.