After seeing the mobile game a few months ago on Google Play, I finally got around to getting some time to play Duels. I also saw some ads for it on Facebook and Instagram, so it had been on my radar for some time. On playing it, it turned out to be a much different game than I expected, for better or worse.
Overview
Take a look at that image above. What kind of game do you think Duels is?
You're wrong, it's not that.
If you were anything like me, you probably thought it was some kind of action game, possibly a fighting game. It turned out to be a management game, and I was greeted by a literal ass when I started the game.
There doesn't seem to be much of a story, but our friendly equid above shows you the ropes on how to manage your fighter. To make sure you know that this is a management game, the guide character interrupts your experience before you can touch anything:
The formula for the game is simple: at first you fight (or watch?), get loot, equip better loot, repeat. Apart from that, there really isn't much else to actively do. The keyword in that last sentence is actively, so there is an appeal if you like management games. If you're a fan of management games, then Duels actually does a pretty good job of being one.
Presentation/Aesthetics
One thing that this game really excels in is it's visuals. For a simple game, the developer put in effort into making 3D models with some of the most fluid animations I've seen on the mobile platform. The monsters and equipment pieces actually do look cool, and they have a unique, blocky appearance reminiscent of the rebooted Runescape that really hits the nostalgia button.
The maps are really detailed and very nice to look at during the fighting. In one of the modes, the monsters even interact with the stages. There are a large variety of stages, with my personal favourite being the fruit bazaar, and they all make use of perspective a lot.
The menus also look great and they're incredibly easy to navigate. It felt like everything was easy to find, and there were no problems at all doing what I wanted to do. Even without the talking horse, I could figure out what buttons do what.
Audio, on the other hand, was really weird. The sound effects were alright; there was nothing wrong with how they played or how they sounded. The background music was the weird part. It seemed as if something in the programming triggered the music to play from the beginning constantly, so it always sounded like three layers of the same track were playing over each other. There was always a little worry that perhaps the phone I was playing on was running out of memory, but the smoothness of the combat told me otherwise.
Gameplay
It hardly seems necessary to talk about gameplay at all, considering it's already been covered in a single sentence. To reiterate for the sake of presentation: you get your character to fight, you get loot and equip them on your character, and then you send him to fight again.
There isn't much to say about fighting except that you essentially watch him for up to thirty seconds, but you can choose who your character fights. There are four modes to the game: campaign, loot fight, championship, and, after reaching Silver rank in the championship mode, dungeons. Each mode presents you with four methods to giving you loot.
The campaign mode puts your character onto a linear board to face various monsters of increasing difficulty, rewarding you at each victory with equipment and keys. You get two tries per level, and if you fail those two times, you are required to watch an ad every two other tries after. The monsters do eventually get too difficult to beat with just equipment gained from previous monsters, so it does warrant some farming. However, you can't go back to the monsters you that you have already defeated.
Enter loot fight, the seemingly randomized person vs. person mode. To get rewards in this mode, you need to win in streaks of increasing numbers. Your first reward is at one win, then two wins, then three, and so on and so forth. The rewards get more lucrative with each streak, and your streak goal resets after a few hours. If you lose a match, your streak resets, but not your streak tier. For example, if you need to hit a win streak of six and you lose the fifth match, your streak goal would remain at six, but your streak would start at zero.
The mode truly does seem random as you get matched up with other characters that are way out of your league. Fortunately, the game allows you to watch an ad to change the match-up. You can theoretically watch as many ads as you want, but the game does limit you by saying they've run out of ads to show. This probably depends on your internet connection, but that is speculation.
The other immediately available mode is the championship mode. This is a tournament mode which lets you choose who you go up against. Duels has a useful feature in all of the modes which lets you see some of your opponent's more detailed stats, which lets you determine more accurately if you have a chance of winning.
You are placed in a rank, and in each rank there are fifteen other people of varying strengths and weaknesses. You can try to win against these people as many times as you want, but once you win against them and take their medal, you won't be allowed to challenge them again. At the end of forty minutes or so, the server looks at what rank you are on the bracket, and awards one, four, or eight keys. If you are top ranked, or manage to get fifteen medals, you are automatically moved to the next level bracket.
Championship and loot fight both reward you with keys only. These are used to open chests in the store at the highest price of twelve keys. In loot fight, after every win you are given the opportunity to open chests as well at a lower price, although the type of chest varies. These two modes are the primary ways of getting loot, although there is a wheel that you can spin in the shop with chests, keys, or equipment for prizes. The first spin is free, the second requires an ad, and the third requires keys. You can, however, wait twenty-four hours to spin the wheel for free again.
The last mode is the dungeon mode, and is only available once you reach silver rank in championship mode. Dungeon mode puts you against pairs of monsters of a certain theme. The dungeon requires an increasing number of keys the more you succeed, but the higher number of keys allows you to get items of better stats. The main appeal of this mode is the availability of set pieces, which of course match the theme of the dungeon. However, I personally found the dungeon rewards to pale in comparison to the rewards that I could get opening the chests in loot fight mode for a cheaper cost. To me, the only reward from the dungeon is looking cool.
Equipment is the primary method of getting stronger in this game, so how do you equip the gear you've received? Simply, you go to the inventory menu and compare the items you have on your character with the new ones. The game handily allows you to look at both before deciding to equip them.
The old equipment that you no longer want can still be used in the form of experience. When you want to get rid of them, you can switch to "disassemble mode" to get levels and meet requirements for higher-class gear. Leveling up your character through disassembling gear also gives you skill points, which give your character additional perks in your matches.
Final Thoughts
The game itself, being completely different from what I expected, is actually not a bad game. For a management game, it is very easy to play, and the time gates are actually reasonable for the reward they gave. Unlike Warriors of Waterdeep, there were farming opportunities that made it feel like you were progressing, even though you were waiting for timers to finish.
The weakness of this game is actually the inverse of Waterdeep's problem: lack of meaningful content. The moment I unlocked the dungeon mode, it felt as if I had reached the end goal and finished playing the game. Sure, I could aim for the top of the championship leaderboards, but without any active input on how my character does in his fight, there is a lack of emotional investment in the outcome. The game would benefit from either giving the player more interaction with the character, or providing a story in the campaign mode.
That being said, the game is still in early access, so there is plenty of room for improvement for the game. From the weird soundtrack to its gaming content, there is still lots of potential for this game if the developer chooses to strive towards a better game. In the short time I played it, I actually did enjoy playing it until I ran out of things to do.
Thanks for reading!
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