What is Hearthstone

What is Hearthstone

Anyone who attended Blizzcon might have caught a glimpse of what Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft is. There was a big invitational right in the middle of Blizzcon, that held both Hearthstone and Heroes of the Storm, both games currently, are being made by the famous powerhouse of a game maker that brought us Diablo, Starcraft, Warcraft and more.

SummarySo in all view and aspect, Hearthstone is pretty much a trading card game( except there's no trading, yet) You pick a hero that determines what kind of playstyle you have and you practice it again and again until you get used to the hero. The game has different characters from the Warcraft series and you can see a lot of familiar faces if you played Warcraft before.

There's a lot of different ways to play and I think that they might add more as it is in Beta right now. Considering that there are already a lot of people in the game, it's going to be quite famous and people will just simply love it because of how simple yet complex the mechanics are.

PresentationI have Hearthstone in my laptop( which is probably 7 years old by now) and on my gaming computer, and I'm proud to say that I could play the game in my laptop with no problem whatsoever. The game requires only minimum specs to play it on medium quality and if you have more than the required specs then you can play the game on a higher quality (there's not much difference however).

The game is played on a "Board" where different players have the place where they draw a card, where they place the card and where each hero is located. The "Board" looks very simple yet it is decorated very well. Different structures in the board can be interacted with, just in case you get bored waiting for your opponent to make a move. I've seen about three different "Boards" already in play, and I think that there might be more when the game is fully completed.

The way the game looks is very simple, it doesn't overwhelm as much as anything else, when it comes to effects and the way the game feels, it plays solid and fluently, without lags in my old laptop.

GameplayAs might you have read earlier, Hearthstone is a card game. Everytime you play, Yu gi oh, Pokemon, or even Poker, you know that you're going to have different cards that could have different impact in the game. The same in Hearthstone, different cards have different impact in the game, the bigger and the better the effect or the stats of each card, the bigger "mana" cost you'll need.

That is probably a new thing for people/gamers, "mana" in a card game. Well it's not altogether that new, like in Pokemon the card game, you need energy to let your Pokemons attack, or in Yu gi oh where you need to sacrifice a monster to put a bigger and stronger monster in the field. That's the same with mana, you get one mana each turn, starting from the beginning continuing to the end with a maximum of ten mana. So the game starts you off with one mana, then as each turn continues you gain and gain mana, until you have ten mana every turn. Why, you ask? Different minions have required mana for them to be played starting off with the weaker minion with a one attack and one life; they mostly require only one mana to play. Later on, you'll have a seven seven minion with an effect, now that requires much more mana. To put it in simpler terms, mana limits you to what kind of play you can make each turn and the mana system seperates early game, mid game, and late game, this helps the players adapt and catch up at some point.

Another key element to the game is the heroes that you play. Each hero has different playstyles, different skills, and different cards that are only meant for them. For example, playing as the Priest requires you to enter late game since you rely on harder hitting monsters and buffing them; however, that is not the case everytime. Playing as the Priest can just be healing or buffing monsters that can have a big effect in the game. Another example, playing as the mage, can have you a lot of spell power and lesser creatures, but then again, you can have a lot of creatures and spells to cover them. You can adjust to whatever playstyle you want and what you think can win you the game.

Adapting is the name of the game. You never know what card you'll pick from your thirty card deck, you can customize the deck, however, but you can't see or pick what card you want to play. I've lost games just because of having bad card pick ups, but that's the challenge of it. You have to customize your deck to the playstyle you want and adapt to the continually changing gameplay of each different game you play, because you never know what card or what kind your opponent would be.