Clash Royale Review (Gionee Marathon M5 Mini): Arcade Meets Strategy and Some Addictive Multiplayer Action (Video)

You’ve all heard about Clash of Clans, but when Clash Royale came out of nowhere, people were suspicious about it. Was it a strategy title? Some sort of arcade 3 vs 3 action game? A weird new hybrid? It was a hit, that’s what it was and Google acknowledged it by awarding it with the Play Store Best Game of 2016 distinction. And we review it below.

We played it on the Allview P8 Energy Mini and had a blast. It’s a free game, of course and it comes from Supercell. It features some of the units from Clash of Clans, like giants and archers, that can be summoned by spending purple points from a bar that’s loading at the bottom of the screen. Those points turn playing cards into units, that will duke it out on the battlefield.

You control 3 towers and have to conquer the foe’s other 3 towers. Once one of the two sub towers is down there’s a bigger area to spawn your units and once the main tower falls, it’s game over. The concept is rather simple and battles last 3 minutes. The last 60 seconds are sort of a rush mode, with the purple bar loading unusually fast.

Aside from summoning units, you can also throw fire balls or arrows towards the towers and enemy units. You’ll summon archers, dragons, goblins, skeletons, knights and more. There are chests to get every once in a while, with more cards to fit into your deck. You have to know by hear the attack power and HP of your units, in order to spend the purple points correctly and not get beaten.

This is a multiplayer exclusive game, so there’s no campaign or AI bots to beat. You’ll only meet human opponents and in the case of a tie, there’s a sudden death time period to finish the battle. Match making was rather good when I played the game, so I can’t complain about that. I’m going to go ahead and give it a 9.1 out of 10 and you can download it here.