Strength in numbers - Merge War: Army Draft Battler Quick Review

“Merge” games are a relatively recent trend in the mobile space, and to the uninitiated, they might seem a little baffling. You just take characters, locations, or items and put them on top of other, matching pieces to create new, more powerful transformations. What’s the big deal? At its core, though, merge games appeal to the same base instinct as any good RPG: the joy of seeing numbers go up.

Merge War: Army Draft Battler is the latest entry in this space, and it’s also one of the slickest and most full of actual gameplay that I’ve experienced thus far. Where many merge games fall back on sluggish idle gameplay, Merge War lets players take on lengthy stages full of satisfying (if light) strategizing. It’s a compelling formula, even if it winds up being a bit shallow.

THE STORY

As with most merge games, there’s not much in the way of plot in Merge War. That said, California-based developer Funovus seems to have a knack for creating this type of polished, easy-to-jump-into mobile games. Past releases from them include Pocket Quest—a well-received RPG that blended roguelite, deck-building, and, yes, merge mechanics—and Wild Castle—a tower defense game that includes hero collection and city building and has hit over a million downloads on Google Play.

PLATFORMS

Merge War: Army Draft Battler is available on Android and iOS devices. I played via my Android phone, a Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra, and had no technical issues at all. It’s not a very demanding game, so I can imagine it should run fine with weaker phones as well.

TIME PLAYED

I’ve played around six hours total of Merge War over a week of casual play in sessions of thirty to sixty minutes. In that time I’ve made it to World 2 - Stage 8 of the main campaign, opened up the Challenge and Heroic Trial modes, and unlocked a handful of new units beyond the five that the game provides at the start.

WHAT’S AWESOME

• More strategy than the average merge game. Merge War structures each of its stages as a series of ten to twenty encounters, with units on your side of the board maintaining their growth as you progress, and enemies always increasing in strength. However, units begin back in their weakest form at the start of each new stage, so it’s not as simple as endlessly watching your strength climb.

Beyond that, each stage’s tile-based board is also peppered with obstacles such as rocks and useful items such as healing plants. These can only be removed or activated by merging units to grant bonuses to those tiles. Each unit type has a unique pattern of tiles that it doles out bonuses to when it’s merged; for example, merging two footmen will give bonuses to the two tiles located directly below them.

So between filling my board with the most power possible, I also had to carefully plan where units would end up so that I didn’t accidentally lock myself out of clearing debris from certain tiles. Or I could focus on earning gold (which carries over between stages) by activating a shrine on the board as much as possible. Each run at a stage presented new and engaging challenges.

• Unit variety. Merge War utilizes a basic rock-paper-scissors form of strengths and weaknesses, where each unit is given a color identifier that lets you know what enemies it can take on best and which will pose a problem. This forces you to put together a balanced team, since you can only bring five unit types into your deck for each stage.

Within that simplified system, though, the game offers a lot of variety in unit types that made me excited each time I unlocked a new one. Yeah, you’ve got your regular warrior (the footman), healer (the sage), and ranged damage dealer (the archer). But you can also unlock elemental mages, musketeers, and even a dragon. New unit unlocks are slow, but since the game only has fifteen total units right now, that’s not the worst thing in the world.

• Optional one-time fee to get rid of ads. First, the bad news: Yep, this is another mobile game that’ll prompt you to watch ads to maximize your rewards. You don’t need to watch them often, since stages run rather long, but it’s still annoying. Thankfully, I was able to pay a one-time fee of $14.99 to remove ads from the game for good while still getting the bonus rewards from watching them. And that price may seem steep, but I already feel like I’ve got my value out of it; assuming the game continues getting updates from here, it will have been more than worth it.

• Pavlovian progression. Outside of the joy of merging within stages, players are also given paths for permanent progression between stages. As your account levels up, you can buy little stat boosts that apply to all your units (increased HP, more damage to bosses, etc.). And as you earn and open up treasure chests full of unit cards, you can also level up the units themselves, giving them a higher base to start on in each stage. These systems can be manipulative and push people to spend money, but they feel well-balanced so far in Merge War, and served to keep me happy that I was moving forward even when I failed at a stage.

WHAT SUCKS

• Microtransactions. As mentioned above, I don’t mind the fairly high one-time fee to cut ads from the game, and I don’t feel like this game’s loot box leveling system is balanced in a terribly manipulative way. Nonetheless, the fact remains that the game offers a way to directly exchange money into the game’s premium currency, and then use that currency to buy treasure chests which will be full of gold and unit cards for powering up your troops. It’s a scummy system that preys on players who either get frustrated easily or have too much money (or both). I wish it didn’t exist.

• Energy system. I hate energy systems in mobile games. Merge War’s spin on it is relatively fair: You max out at twenty energy, and it costs five to run through a stage. But since each stage is likely to last anywhere from twenty to thirty minutes, you’ll likely have earned most of that five energy back by the time you finish. I only completely ran out and had to just stop playing once during the time I’ve spent with the game so far. So yeah, not terrible as these systems go, but it still sucks that it’s here at all.

SHOULD YOU PLAY IT?

If you’re already into merge games or if you’ve been curious about this odd new sub-genre, Merge War: Army Draft Battler is absolutely worth giving a shot. It’s one of the best and most polished merge games I’ve played, and I’m definitely planning to stick with it as my go-to casual strategy title right now. Just be aware that it also employs all the usual free-to-play mobile game monetization tactics. It may be better than most with how it uses those schemes, but if you can’t stand that stuff, it’s likely to be a major turn-off here.

💬 What’s something in your house that you have two of and wish you could merge together into one stronger copy? Personally, I wish I could take the two old, busted PlayStation 3s I have sitting in my closet and put them together into a shiny new PlayStation 5. Share yours down below!