As you've probably gathered from my article history, or if you follow me on Twitter (my username is _runescimitar), I'm a huge fan of the Warcraft franchise. I've read many of the novels and comics. I've seen the film. I've played some of the classic RTS titles. The core game, World of Warcraft, is my favorite game of all time (specifically the Classic era). I even played and reviewed the now cancelled mobile game, Warcraft Rumble, which I really enjoyed. It should come as no surprise then, that I adore Hearthstone, the digital TCG themed around the Warcraft universe.
Hearthstone takes the iconic Warcraft universe and reinterprets the characters, monsters, spells, and locations into the format of a trading card game. For a lifelong Warcraft fan, and a fan of TCGs, this game quickly became a legitimate obsession for me. Ripping open digital packs and seeing what cool, rare or powerful cards I could collect and potentially add to my deck totally fueled me, almost like my past experiences with Pokémon or Duel Masters (the greatest TCG of all time). Hearthstone took the addicting, satisfying format of card collecting and battling and flawlessly adapted it into a digital experience. Dozens of digital TCGs have come and gone in the nearly twelve years since Hearthstone's 2014 release, and nearly all of them adapted the mechanics and format that Hearthstone pioneered.
I'll delve into the collecting part of the game first. Hearthstone, like many live service games, features a seasonal release format of new cards. They have small sets scattered throughout each year, and typically a few full blown expansions that include something like a hundred new cards of varying type and rarity. These expansions are typically themed in some way, whether its around the enigmatic Titans from Warcraft's history, or some Indiana Jones-esque adventure, and the cards will then be related thematically to the expansion. These will include class-specific cards (more on that later), as well as a nice selection of general cards that can be used in most decks. There are several different rarity classes, with Legendary being the hardest to find. Each regular card also features a rarer "Golden" variant, that shines and adds some minor animation effects. The great art and awesome card designs makes collecting fun in Hearthstone, though I'll note that it misses a key function from regular trading card games -- you cannot trade with other players in this game. I don't think the game is any worse for not including that though.
The gameplay of Hearthstone is genuinely excellent. Keeping with its connection to World of Warcraft, you have several different classes through which you build your deck around. Each of these classes features unique cards and abilities. I've never been a huge deck builder, but there's a creative spirit to this game that almost begs you to toy around with your cards and find playstyles and combinations that work for you. There are so many different card types that can function together in surprising ways. Two of my current decks are some of the most fun loadouts that I've ever used in the game. I have a Hunter deck who has loads of different spells and abilities that allow me to copy some of my strongest, most effective Beast cards. Some poor player will blow his trump card to take out what he assumes is my strongest card, and then I immediately pull out a copy of the card and destroy him. I also have a Paladin deck that is themed around knights and gold dragons. That deck is all about buffing the mess out of my units, putting damage blocking bubbles on them and then just annihilating my opponents minions. It feels like every time that I play Hearthstone, I encounter some amazingly creative deck that impresses me and makes me want to experiment more with my cards.
While PvP game modes obviously occupy the forefront of the conversation around Hearthstone, like with most TCGs, this game does actually feature some really neat single-player campaigns. I haven't spent as much time with these as I'd like to, but I can speak to the Knights of the Frozen Throne expansion, and more specifically the insanely difficult gauntlet of battles against the Lich King. The Lich King serves as the final boss of this expansion, and to fully complete this campaign, you must defeat him with each class. Simple enough, right? Well, it would be, except that the Lich King has a built in, bespoke cheat that he uses against every single class. So you have to build decks for each class, trying to plan for his different gimmicks, all the while struggling against the infuriating RNG of trying to draw the cards that you need.
For instance, the cheat that he uses against the Warrior class is that he gains 100 armor on top of his health. Obviously there are loads of different ways that you could go against that, but I went for a straightforward solution. I had to destroy some of the cards in my collection to get a resource that lets me build a new card from the overall card database, one that instantly destroys my opponent's armor. Then I had to reset the battle dozens and dozens of times until I finally drew that card and could use it against him. Each of the class challenges were difficult in their own way to plan around and figure out how to counter his cheat. This is one of my very proudest gaming achievements ever, up there with getting the platinum trophy in Elden Ring. When you finally fully complete the gauntlet, you unlock an in-game Paladin skin of Arthas before he became evil. I love using this skin with my Paladin deck, as it's a total bragging right and tells my opponent that I've completed that incredibly difficult challenge.
I think if you're even remotely interested in a digital card game, Hearthstone is worth checking out. The entire presentation of this game feels inviting, cozy and unbelievably polished. The mechanics are easy to learn, yet there's a high skill ceiling that it feels like you can work toward. With nearly limitless deck-building possibilities and thousands of cards, you have so much substance at your fingertips to play around with. If PvP isn't your thing, there are sizable single-player campaigns that still let you enjoy the wonderful gameplay of Hearthstone. This is a really solid package all the way through, and I highly recommend it.
VERDICT: Recommended
Reviewed on Mobile
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