I think it’s finally time that I did a review of a mobile game, and what better game to review than Summoners War. I’ve been thinking about the game a lot lately because there’s a huge event that begins tomorrow. But to be fair, I’m always thinking about the game because I put in more than 4,000 hours across ten years. It’s one of the first gacha games, and it’s still as big as ever.
The game doesn’t have a grand story or insane visuals like some of the modern gacha games, it doesn’t even have a world to explore. But it’s very straightforward, effective, and lots of fun. The main story takes place over a series of scenarios that are like small dungeons. Take a party of monsters and defeat other monsters in turn-based RPG combat. Complete one and you get to move on to a harder one.
There’s dozens of these to go through, and you can redo them as often as you like for training purposes. Completing these dungeons will cost you dozens of hours, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg for everything the game has to offer. There’s a bunch of other single player content like monthly challenges, harder dungeons, and other content. These will help you with training, and some will reward you with a bunch of cool items.
Then you have the multiplayer side, which there’s a ton of content. There’s the arena which lets you battle other players regardless of how good or bad you might be. There’s also guild content and a world arena. The game has a blend of multiplayer content for both casual and competitive players. The game has a little something for everyone.
There’s literally hundreds of hours worth of content, but I hadn’t even gotten to talk about the two best aspects of the game yet. The first is the insane roster of monsters for you to train and collect. In a nutshell, there are two kinds of scrolls used to summon monsters. Cheap and common ones will get you a one, two, or three star monsters. There are rarer scrolls that are harder to get and can land you a three, four, or five star monster.
Five Star monsters are the pinnacle of the game because of how rare and strong they are. You’ll likely open more than a hundred of the better scrolls before you even get a single five star monster. This makes them highly sought after for both training and collecting purposes. If you’re not spending any money, it’s going to take ages just to get a few, but it will be worth it.
All the monsters are good in their own way though, and there’s more than a hundred to collect. There’s a ton of monsters, and each one can be one of five types. The usual stuff like water, wind, fire, light, and dark. I’ve been playing for a decade, and there’s still more than a hundred unique five star monsters that I haven’t acquired yet. There’s lots of grinding involved, but the training and collecting aspect is lots of fun.
Plus there’s always an event to keep players busy. Every year, there’s a big anniversary event that lasts a few months and rewards players with massive rewards. Twice a year, there’s a collaboration event that brings characters from other gaming, anime, and movie franchises. Plus there’s a bunch of smaller events every few weeks. There’s already so much to do, but the developers are constantly adding more monsters and features to make the game even better.
There’s also a bunch of new quality of life and accessibility changes every now and then. If you played the game a few years ago and stopped, it would look totally different now. The best part is that you don’t have to spend even a single penny to complete the solo campaign. Try the game out for a few hours and see if you like it, of jump back in and play some more.
8/10