Lego Star Wars Battles
By Jeff Haynes,
Common Sense Media Reviewer
Common Sense Media Reviewers
Strategic combat in a galaxy far, far away.
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Lego Star Wars Battles
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What’s It About?
LEGO STAR WARS BATTLES takes players to battlefields plucked from the entire saga of Star Wars movies to give them a chance to lead characters to victory against opponents in 1v1-styled battles. Players will select from one of four randomly chosen units, dragging and dropping them on the battlefield in land they control to advance towards enemy lines. These troops fight on their own without player input, causing destruction based on their abilities and attack strength. This unit deployment leads to a tactical choice, because while your energy regenerates over time, you have to decide whether it's worth it to flood the land with groups of weaker troops, or do you choose to save up your energy and deploy a more powerful unit, such as an AT-AT or strafing run to launch destructive bombing raids on positions or troops. If enough energy is stockpiled, you can summon a champion to the field, like Yoda, Darth Vader, or Luke Skywalker, each with their own unique abilities that can give them an edge against enemies. But you also have to choose quickly, because each battle is limited to two minutes and thirty seconds, so a mistake can have significant consequences for your side. As you advance, you'll have the option to place towers and turrets to fortify your defense or claim more territory before you launch an attack on the enemy base. Each tower counts as a medal, and is vital because if you survive till thirty seconds are left, you're prevented from building any more structures. From there, it's an accelerated push to defeat the enemy, or at least have more towers standing than they do at the end. If you're tied, players are thrown into a sudden death battle where the next structure to fall grabs the win. Succeed, and you'll gain experience points, as well as scans of tokens that can be used to unlock additional units and upgrade their stats. Seasonal play as well as daily challenges are included to ensure that players will constantly make progress and boost their teams. Will you conquer the universe for the Light or the Dark side? Do or do not, there is no try, young padawan general.
Is It Any Good?
This strategic action title puts a quirky, amusing spin on battles with easy to grasp controls, fast-paced action, and lots of destructive fun. One of the most engaging things about Lego Star Wars Battles is how simple it is to control. As long as you can drag and drop a card from your hand onto the battlefield, the game takes care of the rest. Sure, there may be some instances where you mistakenly drop an aerial strike on your side because your finger lightly comes off the screen as you're moving towards your target, but with practice, this is just an occasional mistake in the heat of battle. What's more impressive is just how fast-paced the gameplay feels without seeming completely out of control. Regardless of whether you choose to launch a squad of porgs at battle droids, or you save up for Gamorrean guards to smash through incoming attackers at your tower, there's no right or wrong way to deploy your troops, unless you choose to leave one side completely open to counter attack. Even as things get faster and more energy is produced towards the end of the round to give you an accelerated push towards victory, things feel firmly in control and hopefully like something you can turn the tide with.The big advantage of the shortened game rounds means that you can hop into a ton of battles and improve your teams with just fifteen or twenty minutes in your schedule.
That does lead to one of the bigger negatives of the game as well, though. Because you can quickly finish a game, there are some players that have simply cranked through round after round with other players and are vastly more overpowered that you will be. These fights aren't particularly fair or fun, because your best troops will frequently get shattered with only a few strikes from your opponent, giving you the sense that you need to put in more work if you want to have a chance. Luckily, these mis-matches are few and far between, meaning that you might find yourself saying just one more round to the mini-fig blasting mayhem.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about violence in video games. Is the impact of the violence in Lego Star Wars Battles affected by the lack of blood and gore included in the gameplay? Does the violence feel acceptable because characters simply break apart into Lego bricks? Would it feel okay if there was more of a story included in the game?
Are you frustrated when you face off against clearly unfair odds? Is there still a way to be successful when things are not tipped in your favor? Why do you think developers allow this kind of gameplay?
Game Details
- Platform: Apple Arcade
- Pricing structure: Paid
- Available online?: Available online
- Publisher: TT Games Ltd
- Release date: September 24, 2021
- Genre: Action/Adventure
- Topics: Robots , Space and Aliens
- ESRB rating: NR for No Descriptions
- Last updated: October 4, 2021
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