Hearthstone Reviews

Over the years I’ve recognized a passion within myself for this game I love the strategy the challenges and the different stories that go along with it the developers have done a great job keeping the game different over the years so it never feels monotonous. You don’t have to pay anything to actually get ahead in this game within the ranking system for certain modes and you can still earn cards and decks and rewards without spending any money. The game offers a lot of different strategies techniques and there’s a huge online community always available to give you information to better your decks and strats. I have always love blizzard games and I’ve been a fan since the beginning keep on keeping on guys!!

*****SIDE NOTE*****. anybody out there that gives the game less stars because of a bug or some type of network lag or application problem they experienced, lacks the understanding that technology requires tweaks, it’s something new, of course there will be an occasional issue, it happens on every platform and every game. Some people are able to recognize them and some cannot. My point here is that you lack patience for the develops that made the game. Give them a moment to see what is going on and to fix it. Blizzard has been an amazing company until the merger with Activision, however they still do a great job maintaining their games. This behavior alone, Blizzard has built their reputation off of.

It’s a great game and I have played for many years. It is quite feasible to play for free, but you have to be ready for the long haul. If you aren’t, don’t start. Also, forget the wild format. Its a dumpster fire and you’re already way too far behind to chase it. Standard is all I play and here is the formula… Collect gold by completing daily quests, but DO NOT spend ANY of it. You can collect around 8K to 10K to spend when the next set arrives. Each mini set will cost 2K so you will have around 6K to 8K to spend at once when the next full set releases. That’s 60-80 packs. You will get all commons/rares and get about 1500 dust from duplicates. Do this for each of the three cycles in the first two years and you will be able to play at zero to minimal cost. You can opt to pay some up front for the first/current set to get started. At the beginning of the third year dust all cards that go to wild which should give 30K-40K in dust to distribute over the three sets for the year. Again, more patience. Don’t blow it all on the first set of the year. I’m sure some people freaked out at the mention of the third year, but like I said it takes patience:). One more tip..Don’t try to play all classes early on. Aim to get a good set for two or three classes and learn to play them well. It is an expensive trap to jump from class to class and truly expect to suddenly win. Good luck and enjoy.

I have been playing this app since the day of its release. I really enjoy playing card game passively in my free time, and this fits in to scratch that particular itch. I think this game is probably the most polished of any card game I’ve played wether mobile or not, blizzard does not skimp on quality here. With all of the updates and changes over the years with achievements and the addition of tavern brawl and the two other game modes, there isn’t a lack of content here. Most people will complain about the steep price this app has, and yes it is true but honestly this game is truly free to play. Will it take you forever to get decent cards? Of course but with the free packs every week and special events that happen, If you play this game for fun and less for competition you’ll eventually get every card you’ll need. If you’re the type of person that looks at a free to play game and thinks, well if I don’t need to pay money I won’t then this game is perfect for you. It’ll take time for you develop a collection, but games are meant to be savored not consumed.

If you are big into the competition seen, this game is expensive, but you are probably coming from another card game like magic the gathering or yugioh where you can easily spend that kind of money if not more to make a decent deck.

Either way this is a fun game, give it a shot, the animations and voice acting are superb. This game is worth giving a shot.

I enjoyed Battlegrounds ever since beta and it was my main reason for playing this app. You use to be able to save your gold to unlock each season and now it’s behind a paywall. Why is this a problem, because you get two heroes to choose from instead of four. Most of the games have people that conceded because both heroes are gimped. I never use to concede as I could find at least one of four that I liked playing, now I concede 2-3 games at the start. Which makes it so you might concede after round one if you’re playing a hero that requires other players to play against. If I’m playing Ragnaros the Fire Lord for example and I start the game and 1 person (usually more) have conceded there is a good chance I will be eliminated before I unlock the hero power because there’s not enough minions to take out. This will lead me to concede. A lot of players are playing the same way because of the two hero issue and it’s making the game a chore to find a good hero and a game where everyone stuck around. I use to play to rank up, now knowing that it’s a game of concede I play the occasional game for fun and don’t care about my rank as I will probably lose it from conceding often. Blizzard, if you’re going to put a paywall up please at least give everyone a fair start and allow us all to choose from four heroes.

I’ve been playing this game for a long time and I’ve read a lot of the reviews. I hope new players see this and take it into consideration. This game is very difficult to start fresh in, other people point out that you either have to spend a lot of money or time to even try and catch up to players that have been playing for years and it’s true. In my opinion if you’re thinking about getting this game on a whim and it’s not something your seriously interested in play don’t get it, however if you are serious it’s very possible to play semi regularly and without paying any money. Play they game and focus on the challenges they put out, it might be a slight grind but it can be a very fun and enjoyable game. Play the solo quests and take advantage of any and all free offers. Save the gold rather than buy packs as soon as you get the coin, and take 10 minutes to look through the different deck builds to find one you like. This game does without a doubt have its downsides but it’s also really fun and I enjoy playing it and probably won’t stop anytime soon.

If you read this I hope it’s been insightful and if you’ve considered getting it because of this review try and enjoy it! But don’t stress yourself out or burn yourself out trying to grind, it’s game your supposed to enjoy it.

I originally gave this game a 5 star fantastic review, but I now must take it back... This game is fun, but there are also a LOT of un-fun things about this game! The arena is the most disappointing part in my opinion. It is highly inconsistent and I have had so many drafts where my card pool was so terrible that even if I was a grandmaster level player I wouldn’t be able to get 3 wins. Then there is the overall cost to be a competitive player and have a small variety of decks. This isn’t like typical card games where your cards hold actual trade/sale value. So all you can do is pay for packs and hope to either get the cards you are hunting for or 4 other cards of that rarity to break down and create the card you want, IT’S A FLAWED SYSTEM! I know Blizzard is loving the cash flow though! If the game continued to hook you up with packs, the way it does when you are a new player, then it would make the game more fun! I loved playing and winning packs, it motivated me to spend money. All those free packs dry up fairly shortly after you start playing regularly. And the quests hardly pay a half pack a day, it makes the game dull! Who wants to continuously play with 1 or 2 decks every day? Not me, it gets boring, then you can’t even get value out of crafting 1 deck into another, it’s all bad. Blizzard seriously needs to improve the games dull factor.

I’ve gotten to a point now where I play enough to get enough gold for lots of packs for each new expansion. But it only got to this point because I used to pay a lot, so I have enough bad cards to disenchant for the good new ones I don’t get that come out. However, I do believe you can reach high ranks including legend without paying a cent. All new users to this app get a free meta deck. I believe these get updated with each expansion. These may include few or many legendaries and epics, *especially “highlander” or single card decks that include synergy cards by only having 1 copy of each card in your deck (but by the time next year comes these cards rotate out so highlander decks will be gone). When you start, pick a deck with lots of legendaries and epics, play that deck and play the game a lot to build up a bunch of gold by doing quests and do the “tavern brawl” every week for a free classic pack, also with each new expansion you get straight up free cards and a free legendary, along with free card packs with new expansion quests. Over time, you get into a rhythm of saving up gold for the next expansion, disenchanting crap cards and making 1 to 3 viable great decks for each expansion. You have to play a lot, your limited to a couple classes as well, but I find that it’s actually more fun to main a class or 2 anyway. Good luck.

The game overall is fun, I would give it 5 stars. However, the first time I downloaded it it wouldn’t let me make an account, which is needed to play with friends and save my progress. When I finished filling out the account creation form, it asked for a security input, which I assume is one of those ‘I’m not a robot’ pictures where you type in what it says. I was unable to do this security input because it wouldn’t load the picture so I couldn’t see what it was. If you’re under 18 there is no security input, so I set it to my actual birthday hoping to go through a parent email to get my account activated. When I tried to do this, however, a dark red rectangle with an x in the upper left corner appeared when I clicked ‘create account’. I assume this box is meant to tell you what’s wrong, but nothing was wrong and the box was blank. I had filled out all the fields correctly. After this, I decided the game was taking up too much space on my phone, so I deleted it planning to reinstall it once I freed up some space. After I had more space, 2.8 GB to be exact, I redownloaded the game. After I downloaded it, I had 1.3 GB left on my phone, which shouldn’t be an issue for anything. When I opened the game, it said ‘Failed to get update. Please check your network connection.’ My WiFi works perfectly fine for everything else, so this should not be an issue. The game fully downloaded all 1.5 GB so I don’t understand why it doesn’t work. Please fix this.

I used to play the main game function a lot but once battlegrounds came out I pretty much just play that. For the last couple months I have noticed an issue with it. Minions of playable factions in that round of battlegrounds are supposed to be plentiful if nobody is playing that faction, because there are a limited number of each minion per faction and if nobody buys from a faction then those minions stay in the pool to be used. Recently I have been playing and noticed that when I am the only one playing a faction, say elementals, there are almost no elementals to buy and use. Even though I am the only one buying them and using them, nobody else is playing that faction. If there is a set number and if they are supposed to be showing up more when nobody is buying them because they are sitting in the pool to be bought, then where are all the minions not being used in that faction???? Why are they not coming up to be bought and used??? How come 3-4 players can all play beasts and get super strong with all the same minions and yet when I am the only player playing elementals I get crapped on and can’t find any minions to use??

If this ever gets looked into and changed I’ll change my rating cause I love the game but it’s like every other battlegrounds round I play I will be the only one playing a faction and get crapped on even though I should be the strongest one around since nobody else is buying or looking for the minions that I am.

Blizzard has built a beautiful game, the production value is abnormally high for a mobile game. The game has good mechanics, and a reasonable approach to “free to play” IMHO. The paywall basically boils down to: you need to choose your engagement/investment level. If you want to play for free and slowly build your collection, you can do that... but, you probably won’t be playing any super competitive decks with all the power cards for at least your first year, and will always make come budget compromises. If you want to fast-track into highly competitive play and run all the best cards, there is always $$$. Blizzard actually improved the F2P experience in a recent update by raising the baseline gold offered by all daily quests while also lowering their completion requirements. It’s now easier and more rewarding to complete daily quests. Personally, I take a mixed approach and set a budget of what I’m willing to spend on the game in a year and buy cards selectively at new set releases, then otherwise just operate using quest gold. Pick how you want to play, just please don’t complain about the paywall. There are no “surprises”: you choose when and how much money you want to spend. If you want all the best cards, don’t want to save for them and don’t want to pay for them, then this probably isn’t the game for you.

I have spent 100+ hours in this game and have played it semi-steadily since its initial release. It’s a great game that has evolved intelligently over the years. It is definitely not a pay-to-play game. It’s true, you do have a choice to pay for card packs and extras, but win rate is not effected at all by a players readiness to drop money into the game. It’s this aspect (among many others) of the game that reflects favorably upon the developer’s good choices during game development. There are many resources in game and online to help new players craft top tier decks that have high win-rates in ranked play. Many of these decks use simple card choices and strategies. However, don’t be fooled by my use of the word “simple.” It’s a very challenging game and will test your strategy and tactical skills. You will suffer some frustrating losses, but these should not reflect badly on the exceptional development team blizzard chose for this wonderful game. All losses challenge your skill to adapt decks that can be used semi-consistently agains all heros, decks, and strategies. All losses are learning experiences rather than testaments to the game’s apparent imbalance.

I probably should have given this game a 4.5, or perhaps even something close to a five, but no game is perfect or without flaws. However, this game is very possibly the closest a mobile-friendly game has ever come to being “perfect.”

It’s the game I may have played most my whole life. It scratches almost all of those magic the gathering itches and is a lot cheaper to play. Being a mobile app makes it more accessible too. I’ve spent many hundreds of hours and even a couple hundreds of dollars on this game. It’s very easy to justify a purchase on this game over buying a new piece of media for entertainment due to the replayability of this app. I’ve been playing since it’s second expansion and though I did find myself taking a 1 year break from the game, I believe such intermissions of obsessions are common in this field. I have taken many breaks from magic the gathering, and like magic I’ve found myself back into this app. Just like riding a bike. I was back to rank 5 on the competitive ladder in just 1 day. Though now they have added a new way to play that is free and requires you to have nothing but time. Battlegrounds is my new favorite way to play this app. I hit rank 3 on the ladder before discovering the joy of battlegrounds and now I’m having trouble doing anything but battlegrounds. Cheers to the new development team. I was worried about the state of the game after the departure of Team 5’s first lead, and former head director of HS, Ben Brode, but this app is just as fun and animated as ever. Looking forward to the demon hunter!

I’ve been playing this app for over five years now and in the last year Blizzard has made this app almost impossible to level up, compete and just have fun playing its game due to its ridiculous algorithm. You can barely win with the decks the tournament masters are using let alone your own. You might get away with a couple of wins before the algorithm figures you out and then proceeds to pit you against decks that are your counter opposite the rest of the time. Making games long, frustrating and unable to get the wins needed to rank up or just simply to help get your hero to 500 to 1000 wins. In years past in wasn’t easy and nor should it be. But at least they made you feel that you were accomplishing something for your time invested. But now they want you team their game like a slot app or farmsville. Where you waste your time investing in something that doesn’t matter and doesn’t amount to anything in reality for hours. As they try to force you to buy the products they’re hocking in the hopes it’s the answer to helping you achieve your goals. This feels like “Ready Player One”. And this app is the Oasis and for years it’s was fun and immersive. Then in comes I.O.I. -aka Microsoft. Which has turned the game and their focus into a only profit driving platform with all their add on’s they try to jam down your throat every month taking the fun and enjoyment out of your time invested. This game is not for me anymore.

Such a good game. This is the only game to completely hold my interest across so many years and it never gets stale always new content expanding game modes and stories. Even a cool yearly rotation that keeps things fresh. Regular matches have 3 play styles, there is a weekly wacky custom game called brawl, so many play styles and decks, duals, mercenaries, battlegrounds, solo storyline and more. So many unique play styles that are all worth playing. Two areas it falls short. You cannot talk to other players. A voice chat on/off option during matches would be very cool. People only message you when they are upset and they lost a match, and even then it’s typing when if you’re in a game is hard to do while playing. And you can’t use the in-game gold to buy a lot of the items. You can still do free play on the games and do well, and use gold to get more cards. But lots of cool stuff I wish you cooks get just by saving up and playing a lot. Even if the gold price is really high there should still be one. Especially I think all of the fun visual items should be unlockable with the gold you can earn. Outside of these small things there are endless good things to say and I recommend anyone who reads this to play this.

I am on an iPhone 11 which has a fairly decent screen size. I pretty much exclusively play Battlegrounds which is my favorite mode. I play it on PC often but I figured I’d download the mobile version for when I’m on the go for work and have some downtime.
The mobile version works just fine, but my problem with it is there is a TON of wasted screen space. On either side of the playfield there is a large border that is fine on PC but on mobile every tiny bit of screen space matters. I often end up in situations where I have some cards in my hand and I have no idea which card is which, and I waste several seconds of my turn just trying to see which card I’m about to select. Then, because the UI is so tiny, i oftentimes choose the wrong card and play it by accident because I’m trying not to waste too much of my timer. This ends with the wrong units being summoned, the wrong cards being chosen to buff or for effects, it’s just a mess and extremely frustrating because it’s easy to accidentally derail your whole strategy just because the tiny UI screws you over.
If you guys could figure out a way to utilize screen space better for mobile devices that would be awesome and it’d be a 5 for me. As it stands it’s just not very much fun to play because it’s very finicky and frustrating.

The game is a strategical with many millions of different combinations of play styles. It also has multiple game modes, all which are unique, respectfully. The upside is one could get addicted to this game because it is very engaging and fun. The down side is starting off a on a new account is massive disadvantage. Just to have even a slight chance against the top players, a player would need to spend at least $150 BUT, that is only one game mode out of 6 different ones to choose from. I’d say out of the 6, you’d only need to pay to win for 2 of the categories. The other 4 categories are still super fun and you don’t need to pay 2 win. It’s more luck based and skill based. Card animation is also a problem for mobile gamers. They do take a bit longer to play (compared to cpu card animation) and that is an overall disadvantage. Other than those 2 problems I’d say this game is still pretty solid. You don’t have to play pvp (a pay 2 win category) to enjoy the game. Personally I’d recommend battlegrounds and arena for free 2 play. I’d recommend buying an account from a trusty worthy site for much cheaper if you’d like to play pvp (you’ll save around $50-$125 buying an account).

I got sucked back in for the first time in 5+ years, and it’s grown a lot since then.

Like most games, there’s micro-transactions for ‘loot boxes’ and bonus content, but there is more than enough free content that not buying them doesn’t impact your play all that much. The solo adventures have gotten wayyyyy better since the game first came out. Mercenaries is a lot of fun, the story-type heroes campaigns are really cool and very challenging. When it first came out I felt bad that I couldn’t participate in the seasonal campaigns because I couldn’t afford the micro-transactions, but now there’s more than enough content that I don’t feel the FOMO like I did before. It might change if/when I get through the free content, but that won’t be for quite some time.

You can get a lot of free cards and packs and stuff even from just the solo play campaigns if you don’t want to face the arena, duels, vs, etc. You can earn coins to go into the arena, earn prizes based on that, and earn more coins etc that it should pay for itself without having to throw real world money at it. If you have the expendable cash, go for it fam, but it’s not such a strict paywall to the point where poorer players are not left in the dust.

I’ve been a loyal this app player for six years and the most recent update has been the straw that broke the camel’s back. For a long time the progression system has forced new players to either spend large amounts of money or large amounts of time in order to actually enjoy the game. Blizzard has consistently increased the price required to play and enjoy the game. Most recently Blizzard promised a new progression system that would give more of everything to players no matter how much they play however it is clear that the sole purpose of the new system is to increase profits. Numerous players have done the math and found that the new system rewards all players less while being complicated enough to conceal that fact. Furthermore, the new system feels awful because rewards are now so spread out you often won’t receive anything after days of play. Lastly, the only response from Blizzard to this outrage was that there were going to be “events” in the future that would make the system comparable to the previous version. This doesn’t really dress the problem that the old system was bad, that the new system is less transparent, and that previously events were on top of the normal progression. The new update has also introduced a huge number of bugs and made it clear that the only thing Blizzard is spending money on is new ways to extort players out of their money.

Battlegrounds is an experience that you don’t find in many other games. Everyone starts from the bottom, and from there it’s up to you to adapt what you’re given to be the last one standing. I’ve played battlegrounds for a long time now, and even though I’ve never spent a cent on the game that doesn’t stop me from getting a good placing. The most amazing thing about it is that despite playing so many games, I still can find new unconventional ways I’ve never seen anyone use to make a strong build and place first with, although there is certainly an aspect of RNG to the mode, 99% of the time I do badly is my own fault, gambling for a specific build rather than rolling with the punches. There are occasionally builds that tend to outmatch others, but if you know how to counter them you can even beat an army of divine shield, poison murlocks with an army that would usually be crushed. And builds that are brokenly overpowered are nearly always nerfed sooner or later, but even with the occasional imbalances and things I dislike, you are far from locked into a single build, and it’s nearly always in your power to pull together a contender for a win.

Look I saw this game and thought wow that looks really fun and I read the reviews, now if your looking for a game where you can be on an even level with other players without first putting hundred of hours or hundreds of dollars, than this is definitely not that game. Keep in mind if you can really dedicate yourself to a game than go for it, but I don’t have the time to do nothing but sit here and play this and when I do play I would like to actually be on an even level of playing field but no this is a heavy pay to win game and if you do manage to put hundreds of hours into this game good luck dealing with what sometimes and most of the time will be pure chance deciding your game. Let’s say you got the two of the same skill people your opening hand is deciding your wether you’ll win or not and you could get the worst thing in the world or pay so that you can have a better deck than your opponent. Now this game has single player stories which are fun however these have even more chance involved than most games you’ll play. Your entire deck as you go is up to fate based on the three random options presented to you and anything you want to synergies with your deck you might not get one bit of. Don’t believe me download it go to the witch wood single player and play Darius Crowley count the number of time just a bad hand or bad luck causes you to have to restart it all over again

this app! The game everyone loves to hate or hates to love. I am currently waiting for it to redownload because the game has been having issues updating for months, so you have to reinstall to get it to work, so I thought I would write a review. Pros: The game runs smooth, is visually stunning, and has many heroes from the warcraft universe that makes the game fun and enjoyable to play. Animations are nearly perfect, and dropping large minions is satisfying. The game is fairly addicting to play, and you can easily dump hours into it if you’re a fan of magic or Yugioh. Cons: Get ready to pony up some cash! The game is definitely pay to win. Sure, you can do dailies for gold and buy packs that way, but you’re going to have to make this game a full time job to get anywhere near crafting a competitive deck. New expansions come out regularly, which expect the player to drop $80 to get cards necessary to be competitive. Card design is horribly imbalanced and full of overpowered cards (for example, yoggs puzzle box plays 10 random spells with 10 random targets), which makes any hard work during a match feel unsatisfying and a waste of time. Hardly a game of skill and more a game of luck based on who had the larger pocketbook. All in all, unless the devs take a serious hard look in the mirror, don’t waste your time and money. There’s better games out there for you to invest your time and money into. Like Bowmen on the PC.

All I can say is that if you really like card games, paper or digital you can’t go wrong with what is weird to say the OG of the genre. The gameplay can be summarized as stupidly simple to learn, hard to master. If you need an analogy, it’s MTG simplified, but make no mistake that doesn’t make the game less complex. Rather, the game lets you know what is possible within its confines and what isn’t. While also automating things that paper TCG players hate, like rolling for effects, shuffling the deck, making tokens, etc. In terms of constructed play It’s got a strong standard format and a crazy eternal format. While it could use more formats, there are 4 constructed, 2 of which are “good”, being standard and wild. Twist needs a little more thought behind things such as bans and legal sets, but has huge potential. Classic is just, okay, it’s vanilla this app before power creep set in, so no real depth honestly. Sounds ranty, but the point is there are options for everyone. You even have have a “free” game mode, called Battlegrounds which is this games version of autochess, which I cannot lie is addicting and infuriating. Only gripe is they’re both packs/loot boxes and multiple battle passes. But even those aren't blasted in your face so, to an extent that’s “nice.” TLDR: Like WOW it’s lasted 10 years and counting, so it’s pretty good, plus I can play it on the can.