A Gorgeous Mobile Tower Defense – Watcher of Realms

Watcher of Realms launched on July 13th, 2023 with an aggressive marketing campaign. Gamers couldn’t avoid seeing the ads for the newest mobile tower defense game across the internet. In what felt like a Raid: Shadow Legends type of launch, the developers made it clear that they wanted the world to know that Watcher of Realms was going to be the next big thing; boasting over 100 different characters at launch within a gothic setting that at times feels straight out of Diablo.

A sucker for all things mobile gaming, I knew I had to install and claim the launch and pre-registration rewards that typically give players early to the game a significant advantage. While I wasn’t too into Arknights or Path to Nowhere, I wasn’t going to let that turn me away from trying out another tower defense gacha game.

A Sluggish Tower Defense Experience

Now I’m not a fan of tutorials, but I understand why they exist. For most games, I prefer the trusty “skip tutorial” button to allow me to jump into the fray without training wheels. My personal feelings about tutorials aside, I felt like the tutorial in Watcher of Realms held my hand a bit longer than most other games. I was finding myself getting frustrated with the forced clicking and wished that the tutorial made suggestions rather than demands, or better yet, offer a skip button altogether.

Jumping into the stages, the gameplay was simple enough. Place the defenders or fighters directly into the path of the monsters, and place the rangers, mages, and healers on the walls. The point of any tower defense is optimal placement of towers or units so that the waves of enemies are neutralized lest they destroy your base or in the case of Watcher of Realms, your Soul Core. While the concept itself isn’t anything new, adding a gacha element for the units along with some RPG characteristics make for a unique gameplay experience for each player.

With only the basic characters that the game provided, I was able to clear through the first 3 chapters of the game without any trouble. I didn’t have to upgrade them beyond the upgrades that the game forced me to do. My biggest gripe at this point was that while the art for the characters and the cinematics are phenomenal, the gameplay itself was lackluster. I understand that the art can’t be as high of quality while in combat, but the game looked and felt very dated. It also didn’t help that the stages took a long time to get through, even with the 2x speed option on.

It’s understandable that the placement of your units has to be done manually, but once they’re in place, I expected some sort of auto-skill activation system that would handle triggering the units’ skills when available. Unfortunately, there isn’t one. I was beginning to feel like this game was missing some quality of life features that had become standard within the genre long ago. Because of this, the game requires your full attention for most game modes. While there is an auto-battle feature, it is only available for stages that you’ve already cleared. So when it comes to progression, even if your units are far stronger than what is required to clear a stage, expect to invest your time and attention on getting through it.

Plentiful Rewards That Come at the Wrong Time

When you jump into a game during its launch event, you can expect many rewards coming your way. For any game, it’s important for them to generate as many sales, downloads, and active players during their launch so that they can land at the top of the charts. Being at the top means more visibility and thus, more people likely to hit that download button. Because of this, launch events can be pretty outrageous with their rewards and sales, doing anything they can to reel players in and keep them on the hook.

With Watcher of Realms, I didn’t feel any of that. Don’t get me wrong, there were many rewards and still many that I’ve yet to claim, but the rewards themselves just aren’t what a new player is looking for. With a gacha game, there’s one thing that we’re all here to do: Summon. While this isn’t a waifu gacha game, the fantasy setting is just as appealing in its own right. When it comes to summoning opportunities, there simply aren’t enough. I don’t mean to sound like a greedy gacha player, but there aren’t enough summons to build your own unique roster. After progressing through many chapters of the game, I will stuck using the starter characters that the game provided to me. What fun is a gacha game when your team is just like everybody else’s because you can’t summon often enough?

Despite being starved for summoning resources, I actually had a fantastic summoning experience. I had gotten lucky and summoned a legendary character and my goodness, the summoning videos for each legendary character are spectacular! The art and videos are of the highest quality within the genre, I’d even go beyond that and say that they rival the quality of some recent console and PC titles. It truly made me want to build a team around this new character that I acquired, but unfortunately, I have yet to be able to summon enough units to have any other unit within the same faction.

So if they weren’t giving out many summoning materials, what did they give out? Mostly skill enhancement and upgrade materials. Here’s my take on why those are poor rewards for a launch event like this. You want your players to find a character or faction that appeals to them. After that happens, the player will want to target those units and invest their resources into building their team accordingly. But with such a small amount of opportunities to summon units, the player doesn’t have a chance to create that attachment and set those goals. Enhancement materials are helpful, but only if the player has characters they are willing to use them on. Gacha gamers typically know better than to blow all of their materials on the starter characters.

The Tide Will Sweep You Off Your Feet

Taking a break from the standard game mode was the best decision I had made in Watcher of Realms. The game offers a wide variety of game modes that I was expecting to be the typical industry standard, but they actually had a few unique mechanics that made me wishing my favorite games could implement. The most impressive of them all had to be the “Tide” game mode, where you have to survive increasingly difficult waves of enemies, being able to upgrade your deployment area and units in between waves, and gaining some abilities to use. Seeing your characters annihilate an army of hundreds of foes was something I didn’t expect. I only wished the animations within the game were done at a similar quality as the art in the character viewing screen.

The guild raid, while standard in most games, was done a bit differently than the typical guild raid combat system. Players actually have some input and can save up the hero skills to use when the dragon is charging up it’s ability so that they can interrupt it and cause more damage. The game really does well at making player input have a substantial effect on the outcome of battles. This could be a good and bad thing for some players. If you’re able to invest your time and attention, the game will feel satisfying for you. But if you are expecting battles to be done mostly automatically, I wouldn’t say this game is for you.

The raids for gaining materials are helpful and the material rewards are quite plentiful. The gameplay is sluggish like any other battle in the game, but once you’ve cleared a stage, you can use the auto-battle function. The auto-battle function isn’t to be confused with a sweep function. The battles will still have to play out, so they’ll still take up a considerable amount of time to clear, but at least you won’t have to place your units or perform any actions yourself. The existence of this feature makes me wonder why they didn’t implement an auto-casting option within the regular gameplay.

Packing a Price but Lacking in Value

Looking through the cash shop, I started to understand the thought process behind some of the decisions that the developers have made in regards to the summoning rewards. While the game doesn’t offer many summoning opportunities to the player, the cash shop does, or does it? Comparing the content and prices of the packages to other games in the genre, Watcher of Realms have higher prices for fewer products.

If you’re looking to get your summoning materials from here, you won’t have an easy time. You can expect to spend $29.99 for a 10-summon package that may or may not include additional items of value. There is a “Growth Fund” also for $29.99 that when fully completed, grants you 4 Legendary Summoning Crystals that give you a chance to get either an Epic or Legendary unit. It also just barely includes enough diamonds to purchase 10 summons. Compared to other gacha games with “growth funds” or “progression passes” of similar price, the value simply isn’t there. Many similar games grant the player enough premium currency to perform a 10-summon for every milestone completed. The 4 crystals that give you either an Epic or chance to get a Legendary aren’t as valuable in this game if you don’t have units of the same faction to battle alongside them.

The Privilege Card or what is a VIP Pass or Monthly Pass in other games rubbed me the wrong way. While the first purchase is only $4.99 and then $9.99 every month afterwards, the 3.5x speed option is locked behind this pass. To make matters worse, I might misinterpreting this, but the pass says that, “3.5x speed will be activated during Auto-Fights.” If the 3.5x speed isn’t an option in the normal gameplay, that lowers the value substantially.

I wouldn’t consider myself an expert whale gamer, but I’ve played many gacha games and their cash shops are all relatively the same. It’s clear that the Watcher of Realms microtransactions are lacking in value for their high prices.

Ratings

Art: 8.5/10

• Very detailed art, cinematics are of the highest quality
• Art isn’t as good during gameplay but that’s to be expected.
• It sort of has a Raid: Shadow Legends + Diablo vibe.
• The menus and UI look a bit dated it doesn’t look like as much effort was put into them as the characters.
• Pretty much everything surrounding the characters is super high quality, the art, the summon videos (goodness the videos for summoning a legendary are insane!), the upgrade cinematics, etc.

Gameplay: 7.5/10

• Characters have abilities requiring user input which is engaging.
• Strategic placement required after a few chapters, makes the game challenging.
• Tide game mode is awesome, the game modes make it stand out from the rest of the tower defense/mobile gaming genre.
• Requires your attention, not a game you should expect to be able to auto or play while doing other things.
• Even the easy stages take up quite a bit of time.
• Could use a higher speed multiplier like 4-5x.
• Guild raid is pretty standard but implemented a bit differently.

Story: 8/10

• The plot and setting is pleasantly unique and interesting which isn’t easy to pull off in the oversaturated fantasy game genre.
• The game takes itself seriously which is nice for those that want to immerse themselves into the fantasy setting.
• The type of game that if you’re into the story, you’re going to find yourself looking forward to big updates that expand upon it.
• The story can drive players towards wanting to make certain faction teams that they enjoy the lore of.
• Gothic fantasy stories aren’t for everyone, the deeper they go, the more players tune out.

Daily Routine: Medium (10-20 minutes) / Chore (20+ Minutes)

• Medium once you have gone through the tutorials and unlocked the ability to auto-battle some things.
• I can tell that if you want to grind this game and optimize what you do daily, it would require considerable time due to the time spent in stages and would probably be considered a Chore (20+ minutes).

Free-to-Play Friendly: 7/10

• You can certainly progress and have a good time without spending any money, but there is a lack of opportunities to get the diamonds/summon materials necessary to perform summons at a decent pace. TLDR, while you don’t get to summon often, you don’t really need to in order to progress.

Cash Shop: 4/10

• It’s clear that they’ve purposely starved the in-game rewards of summoning items so that they can make summons more appealing in their cash shop.
• Very expensive packages for very few rewards. The number of summoning items included within the packages isn’t worth it.
• They offer a “privilege card” which is like a VIP card or monthly pass in other games. They lock the 3.5x speed option behind this card which is $4.99 for the first purchase but $9.99 normally. (And it has limited functionality)

Generosity: 6/10

• Quite a bit of launch rewards. (Launch rewards were plentiful but if there isn’t anything to fill in their place once they’re gone, the game is going to feel even slower than it already is.)
• You’re given a ton of stamina so if you want to grind the game all day, you shouldn’t have any trouble doing so.
• Many different quests/rewards tabs mostly give you the materials you may need. Once again, the rewards are mostly focused on materials and not summons.

Overall: 7/10

The Pros:

• Fun gameplay and game modes
• Absolutely gorgeous art and an interesting story, the creative side of the game is by far one of the top in the genre
• Launch rewards are helpful
• Requires the player’s attention, good for those looking to occupy their time throughout the day

The Cons:

• Very summon-starved, not many opportunities to acquire a unique roster
• Sluggish gameplay
• Requires the player’s attention, not a game for those that don’t have the time to invest.
• The cash shop isn’t worth it, prices need to be lower or the included items need to be higher (especially the summon materials).
• Without the launch rewards, the game’s progression would feel absurdly slow.
• Needs higher speed multipliers available to players without locking it behind a purchase. Even 3.5x doesn’t sound like it’d make the game much faster.

My suggestions:

• Could use a sweep function instead of just an auto-battle function. Possibly some sort of ability to auto-clear a stage if your battle power is much higher than what is suggested.
• When players first start up a game, being rewarded with skill enhancements and ascension materials aren’t too helpful since they haven’t had the chance to find a character they like. As a long-time gacha/mobile gamer, I have gotten into the habit of not blowing all of my resources on the starter characters since they typically don’t amount to much in the long run. Give them some summons, let them get some characters that are interesting, and then give them rewards once they have somebody to use them on.
• My TLDR for what the game needs for improvement: Speed up the gameplay and increase opportunities to summon.

Final Thoughts

Watcher of Realms does a few things very well, but doesn’t hit the mark in other areas. While the creative side of the game is superb, some attention needs to be given to the progression system. I find that when a game gives you too many summons early on, you end up with the meta roster and don’t ever need to change your team for the rest of the game. This makes the gameplay boring and detracts from the thrill of chasing the characters. But in Watcher of Realms, I felt like there weren’t enough summons to create a team beyond the free characters that you earn through the story. This made the game feel rather lackluster since you just have to work with the basics and don’t have a chance to make your team “your own.”

I’m keeping Watcher of Realms installed and will continue to play it when I have the time to give it the attention it requires. While I wouldn’t consider it worthy of being a regular game of mine, it’s enjoyable enough to get some play time… At least until the next game comes around that I want to try out and review. I’m hoping the Moonton team continue to update the game and hopefully listen to player feedback. The core pieces of the game are incredible, with some tweaks made over time, it could solidify its place on the home screen of gamers’ phones worldwide.