Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft

So a friend recommended I try Hearthstone, a new free to play digital card game based around the Warcraft universe. Although I wasn’t too interested in the title, I figured I’d give it a go. The first problem I hit was actually downloading the bloody thing. Or rather, downloading Battle.net, the platform upon which the game is based and required for play. Unfortunately, the day I tried to download the client, the servers were down. Oh well.

Spin on another day and I get Battle.net downloaded and create a new account. Ugh. Between Steam, Origin and Uplay, keeping track of all these different platforms is getting a bit of a chore. But whatever, I set up the account and loaded up the Battle.net program. This is where things start to go wrong. Attempting to download Hearthstone I encounter one error after another. A simple fix solves one problem only to create another. Eventually, the only solution is to totally wipe all trace of Battle.net and start over.

Except I didn’t. I bought Child of Light and played that instead (review coming soon!). But a week or so on, I figured I’d give Hearthstone one more shot. I installed Battle.net and clicked to install Hearthstone. ERROR ERROR ERROR. Oh hell. I almost gave up there and then, but I decided to give it ONE. LAST. CHANCE. And hey, it actually worked this time!

So what were my initial impressions? Not exactly great, to be honest. It wasn’t bad as such, I just couldn’t seem to get very invested in it. The game takes you through a rather dry tutorial to teach you the basics. Necessary, I suppose, but a little slow and dull. However, given that the game was such a bloody nightmare to get installed, I wanted to at least put a bit of time into it and, I’m pleased to say, I really started enjoying it.

Once you get through the tutorial you get the chance to unlock the playable Heroes. Each has their own unique card set and abilities in combination with a general deck. Each represents a different class – warrior / rogue / priest etc – with a play style to match. It was whilst unlocking these Heroes that Hearthstone finally started to ‘click’ for me. I began to see and develop effective strategies to counter and attack my opponents. After unlocking every Hero, I gained access to a harder AI against which to practice.

But fighting the AI isn’t really where it’s at. There’s a Casual/Ranked 1v1 system as well as an Arena mode, although I’m not quite sure what that’s all about yet. After getting to grips with the core mechanics, I set about compiling my own custom deck and challenging that friend who persuaded me to try it. This is certainly where I had the most fun, and the game has a fiendish ‘just one more round’ type of addictive quality.

I can’t say how much longer Hearthstone will hold my interest, and I really don’t care much about the competitive ranked aspects of it. But as a free, somewhat strategic card game to play with friends or when I’m a little bored, it’s a pretty neat little title. The only major downside is the World of Warcraft icon on the Battle.net launcher. Watching. Waiting. Biding its time.

I don’t want to go back. Please, don’t make me go back.