Pentastorm Game Review
League of Legends on your phone. Also has its own Esports scene!
Netmarble Games released “Pentastorm for Kakao” a few weeks ago in South Korea. Similar in design to League of Legends and other 5v5 PVP MOBAs, the mobile game has been released in Korea on both Google Play and iOS. The game has been near the top of the charts on both stores and has been doing well for the past few weeks, with good reviews and critical acclaim!
Pentastorm is originally developed in China by Tencent and TIMIgames, where the game is known as 王者荣耀 (King of Glory). The same game is also released in the US market through a Singaporean-based company known as Proxima Beta (which may be a shell company for Tencent). In the US, the game is known as “Strike of Kings”, with over a million downloads now on Google Play. The different titles for the same game may be affecting the marketing of the game, as each country has its own name for the game. It will be interesting to see if they will eventually consolidate the titles as the popularity of the game keeps increasing.
The design of the game is very similar to League of Legends on the PC. The map is the traditional 3-lane map, with top, mid and bot lanes. There is also a fully populated jungle allowing junglers to also exist and farm. Turtles also roam the rivers and as well as a dragon and Baron. However, the game differs from League of Legends as most games don’t last more than 10 minutes, making dragons and Baron captures rare. Most games are also one sided ‘steam roll’, as the first couple of kills have so much impact since the game is so short.
Pentastorm also currently features over 27 heroes with a new hero being released each week so far. There are 6 classes of heroes available, classified as tankers, warriors, assassins, mages, archers, and supporters, with only 1 assassin and 1 supporter available so far.
Each hero has a passive skill and 3 active skills, including the ultimate. Most skills in the game are auto-aiming and the controls can be changed to suit each player. Most of the hero skills have been designed around an interesting combo system, encouraging each skill to be played in the right order with the right timing to get maximum damage.
One of the most refreshing aspects of Pentastorm is the short length of the matches. Most rounds take less than 10 minutes, where either your team wins swiftly or the enemy team wraps up the game painlessly. Some of the design choices which leads to these quick games are interesting. Players do not need to go back to the base to buy items, as well as the game offering an auto-purchase system, which speeds up the game quite a bit.
Before players start a game, they can customise the items and item order which will be automatically purchased when they have the gold. Players can also collect and place runes to further customise their hero, with most runes being offered as daily login rewards. During a match, players can also choose other items instead of the pre-selected items, to make adjustments to their prior builds.
In my personal opinion, Pentastorm is quite fun. The skills are mostly satisfying and the character designs are great. It is a great game to play when you have more than 10 minutes on the subway or bus on the way to school or work. However, the game doesn’t feel balanced yet. Some characters are far too strong, especially the tanks which can be unstoppable while doing huge auto-attack damage.
Also, most games are one-sided matches, as the first kill and any kills in the first 2 minutes dictate the rest of the game. I haven’t seen many games where the losing team have been able to resist the snowballing enemy, even when the team sticks together.
Pentastorm has been receiving good ratings on both the Android store and the iOS store, with the game in the top ranks on both stores. Also, the latest news from the game states that Batman will be released as a character soon, so it seems like the range of characters will be even more interesting.
Update: It appears On Game Net is sponsoring an Invitational tournament for Pentastorm! The first matches went down on October 27th… and featured an “Esports Legends” with Starcraft illuminaries like Jaedong and Nalra!!
This marketing strategy is crazy and probably deserves an article of its own. Until then, give Day 1 a watch:
