Should you download it and read up on strategies for the game? Yes.
Should you spend some money (1 purchase/month or less) on it? If you’re a Transformers fan.
Score: 3.5/5
“Transformers: Earth Wars” is a freemium mobile MMO strategy game by Backflip Studios and Space Ape Games. Set mostly in the Generation 1 era, it sees Autobots waging their battle to defeat the forces of the Decepticons, with classic characters like Optimus Prime, Megatron, and Bumblebee playing a major part in the story. It was released on June 2, 2016 for both iOS and Android.
So “Transformers: Earth Wars” has been my recent time suck, to the point that I have stopped playing “Pokemon Go” to focus on the game. Yes, I just said “focus on the game”. As a Transformers fan, this is probably the best game there is for mobile phones now. Yes there is “Transformers: Robots in Disguise” but I’m not that enthused by it, mainly because I much prefer the characters in “Transformers: Earth Wars”.
But yeah I’m still buying Transformers: Robots in Disguise figures. Go figure.
Highlights
Amazing 3D models and graphics
There’s only one word to describe “Transformers: Earth Wars” – beautiful. The 3D graphics are lovingly rendered with such detail that you know fans are working on the project. You’d think they only concentrated on the character models, because that’s what fans are looking out for right? Well, I watched the ’86 “Transformers: The Movie” recently and I realised that the mortars and beam laser designs are based off Autobot City armaments in that film! That’s the homage level that the creators of the game are giving you.
Classic characters we all know and love
The game starts off with favourites like Optimus Prime and Bumblebee, and also gives you a chance to acquire other characters like Arcee and Seaspray in weekly events. To make things more interesting, each faction has at least two complete groups of Combiner teams as characters that you can collect. The creators of the game have already hinted that they have big plans for the Combiner teams, meaning that at some point we’ll be able to see them combine, right, right?
High level of interactivity
If you’re waiting to recharge your characters, you can go into a gallery mode where you can view them from all angles. That’s what we would do in real life to our Transformers, examine and play with them. Tapping on them makes them transform, which is one of the coolest aspects of the gallery mode. The Transformers aren’t static models either – they move and perform signature poses even when you’re just admiring them.
An actual storyline
There’s sort of a story in which Megatron has some plot to gain crystals on Earth. It’s told through weekly events and an in-game campaign, which rewards you with new characters and tells you more about what each faction is thinking. In addition, whenever you get new characters from events, there’ll be some small vignettes that flesh out each new Transformer that you have, giving some life and personality to what would otherwise just be additional soldiers for your forces.
Weekly events
And every weekend, there’s a different event that varies the gameplay. The prize for most weekly events is a new Transformer character, and the events are a mix of co-operative (with your Alliance, the term used for clans in “Transformers: Earth Wars”) and solo events. There are also competitive events, with Alliances battling to see who can get the highest score, in addition to the actual event itself, so that you’re still going to be challenged even if you’ve been playing since Day 1.
Letdowns
Many many bugs and crashes
Unfortunately, even with the latest update, “Transformers: Earth Wars” is prone to many errors. The game can crash right after a battle, causing you to lose your loot but still having expended the necessary energy to take part in a battle. It frequently crashes after you’ve played it for too long, forcing you to reload it again and again, especially if you’re fighting many battles in a row.
Slow load times
The game takes forever to boot up, and to get into fights. This problem is compounded by the frequent crashes, so if you play a few times a day, get ready to spend a lot of time waiting for it to load because it crashed again. It’s not a game that’s designed for long play times.
Lottery system for gaining new Transformers
The worst part about “Transformers: Earth Wars” is that if you pay to play, you aren’t guaranteed of a new Transformer. Instead, what you can purchase are lottery chances to get a new Transformer, which are known as crystals in the in-game terminology. The problem is that the game will package it in such a way that you pay X dollars to buy 10 attempts to win Grimlock, a popular character, but it doesn’t say what is the percentage of success for each attempt.
Therefore it’s possible to buy 10 attempts to win a character but not actually win the said character at all! Imagine spending $29.98 for 10 attempts to win Grimlock, and getting nothing at all for your efforts. The game periodically releases such packs, like a Ratchet pack or Jetfire pack, for you to win new Transformers.
Personally, I’ve spent money on 3 different character packs, and not once did I get the character that was promised. I’d advocate that you don’t spend money on the character packs, simply because the chance of getting the character could be close to zero for all you know.
“Transformers: Earth Wars” is a great game and if you’ve ever liked Transformers, you should give it a try. But don’t spend money on character packs until they’ve improved the success rates.
Check out Transformers: Earth Wars at their official site.
Download Transformers: Earth Wars from iTunes for iOS.
Download Transformers: Earth Wars from Google Play for Android.
Marcus Goh is a Singapore television scriptwriter. He’s also a Transformers enthusiast and avid pop culture scholar. He Tweets/Instagrams at Optimarcus and writes at marcusgohmarcusgoh.com.
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It sucks badly. If you enjoy terrible graphics, waiting for months to build a single building. Or fixed crystals. This is the game for you !
No, Earth Wars is the worst game I ever played. A total letdown and crap. You know, what….Jurassic World The Game and Transformers Forged to Fight are 1000000 times better. They have reasonable and rewarding gameplay. You can create an Indominus if you want at Level 35 (that’s not the best hybrid BTW, there are more powerful ones only able to unlock in higher levels) but here 9 months and no Combiner. This game sucks and I don’t know how people find interest in it. Global players are very rude. This may appeal to you at first due to the graphics but seriously that’s the only thing this game has. 9 months and you are still stuck at the same level. And no Cyber Coins after some time. No daily login rewards or anything. Sorry not worth it. Robots in Disguise is also better than this piece of bloody game.
I have to agree – I stopped playing Transformers: Earth Wars after it became optimised for pure commercialisation, rather than fun gameplay. One of the most egregious examples would be the promise of the Combiners, like you mentioned – it fails to keep that promise by randomising the Transformers you get at such terrible odds that you feel cheated by it.
It has everything which a typical mobile game always had pay2 win system even the game gets pretty boring cause of too much high building construction and bot recharge time and the devs don’t care about the game at all they rarely update the game and only when there’s a new transformers show or movie coming so they just add the characters from them to promote the show/movie they never try to fix the game to be honest forged to fight more enjoyable and less p2win than earth wars