Platform: PC

Developer: Ubisoft Quebec

Publisher: Ubisoft

Release Date: November 7th, 2013

Genre: Collectible Card Game, Strategy, Free-to-play

Nerd Rating: 4/10

As opposed to a traditional review, I have decided that the best course of action for this review is to tell you all a little story. The story is about a game falsely titled Might & Magic: Duel of Champions when the appropriate title should sound much more like Greed & Betrayal: Duel of Micro-transactions. I feel that you will find this story quite interesting, as it follows the tale of a once great game that was destroyed by the developer’s greedy actions and complete, blatant disrespect of the community they have formed. Our story begins in March of 2014, when I came across this free-to-play collectible card game in an attempt to find something that would bring back the fun I had playing the Free Realms Trading-Card Game before the sudden death of Free Realms initiated by Sony Online Entertainment. While Might & Magic: Duel of Champions couldn’t replace the Free Realms Trading-Card Game, it still had its place as a great collectible card game. For me, the game was perfect as it gave me something casual to do while watching Netflix or a Twitch.tv streamer.

Rest in peace, Free Realms.

The gameplay of Might & Magic: Duel of Champions was simple to learn, but difficult to master. The goal of the game is to protect your leader card and kill the enemy’s leader card, which is a card with hit power (HP) of around 15 to 20. Each round the leader card also has the power to draw cards, or add to your might, magic, or destiny. You need certain amounts of might, magic, and destiny to play certain cards, as well as resources that you gain each turn. Overall, my main complaint about gameplay is the fact that you will run out of usable cards in a battle unless you keep drawing cards, which doesn’t guarantee an actual card that can be placed. The campaign has a perfect difficulty that makes you feel like you are playing against a real player, for those times you want the multiplayer experience minus the multiplayer portion. The cards in the game are unique as they are from the Might & Magic universe, and they each belonged to a faction. It is very obvious that the card artists worked very hard on the card, and they are pretty decent looking too. While creating your deck, you could stick to one faction or mix them up in a combination deck. If you only like one card from a certain faction, you simply have to add that card, as deck creation is completely up to you. Like every game, the Might & Magic: Duel of Champions community had a few annoying, or rather ignorant, people but for the most part it was a decent community with many people interested in helping others learn the ropes and become better. The community was active, and it didn’t take long at all to find a game, which is sometimes rare for a free-to-play game. Might & Magic: Duel of Champions was over-all a fun collectible card game, and even though it was free-to-play, it was far from pay-to-win. Everything achievable with real money was also achievable just from playing the game and winning duels. At the time, I would say my biggest complaint was that the game had to be run through Ubisoft’s Uplay client, which was extremely annoying, and for some reason an internet tab would force-open when you open the game. Unhappy that they actually developed a good free-to-play game, Ubisoft released an expansion pack titled Heart of Nightmares as a forced free update. This update was definitely a nightmare, and it definitely did not have any “hearts” as Ubisoft showed its true greedy colors and its lack of love for its fans. Basically what Heart of Nightmares did was remove every item that could be bought with in-game money, except for the starter packs for each faction, thus leaving only the real money options. Every decent card now requires you throwing cash at Ubisoft, and the only people who won’t complain about this update are the people who spent hundreds of hours putting together a good deck pre-update. I did my own research on the Steam forums for Might & Magic: Duel of Champions to see how the community felt about this update, and you can read the replies here! This concludes our story about Ubisoft and their game Greed & Betrayal: Duels of Micro-transactions, err, I mean Might & Magic: Duel of Champions. Feel free to talk about your own experiences and opinions about this game, Uplay, and Ubisoft in the comment section below. I apologize if I offended you with this review, but just because you are too oblivious to see Ubisoft’s greedy sales tactic of pulling us in then changing the game completely to a pay-to-win game, that doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened.

Written by Nerd Bacon