Flame vs Blaze preview: Square Enix’s new mobile MOBA
By Matt Becker
We got our hands dirty with Square Enix’s new fast-paced, 3-on-3 mobile MOBA, FLAME vs BLAZE.
It’s been about a year since Square Enix announced FLAME vs BLAZE, their first foray into the multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) genre. While the game has been playable in Japan for some time, this past week marked FLAME vs BLAZE‘s first closed iOS beta in North America. After interviewing Producer Hironori Okayama at PAX East 2017 about the game, we were excited to finally get our hands on a playable version.
With MOBAs such as Vainglory, Ace of Arenas, and Heroes Evolved already popular on mobile app stores, FLAME vs BLAZE enters a fiercely competitive market. But what sets the game apart, besides its distinctive and colorful art style, is Square Enix’s interesting take on the MOBA genre. FLAME vs BLAZE features a number of unique gameplay elements that both differentiate itself from competition and helps to bring those fast-paced, action packed MOBA brawls right in the palm of your hand.
The basic gameplay loop of FLAME vs BLAZE immediately separates itself from other MOBAs. The game features a single lane map, no minion waves, and no towers or structures – the MOBA-defining concept of “laning” is effectively non-existent. Instead of a core or base, each team has a Reactor, which is basically a huge guardian monster. The Reactor starts as an egg, and each teams’ initial goal is to collect mana to help strengthen their Reactor. After a set time period, both teams’ Reactors awaken and fight in the middle of the battlefield, their health determined by the amount of mana gathered throughout the match. Defeat the opposing team’s Reactor, and you win the match.
Sounds relatively straightforward, right? While the primary goal of a match seems simple enough, the intricacies of this system are actually a lot deeper than expected, especially for a mobile game. Instead of typical tower structures found in many MOBAs, each team instead has three Mana Plants. These periodically feed the Reactor mana: the closer to the Reactor Egg, the more mana it provides. In addition to friendly Mana Plants, mana is collected by killing opposing players, from killing enemy Mana Plants, and from randomly spawned mana clusters.
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Instead of waves of minions in a lane, there are numerous neutral monsters hanging out throughout the map. If your character delivers the killing blow to one of these monsters, they come under your control. Killing smaller Kobalds helps you create your own personal army of monsters, while the larger monsters like Buffleyak and Buflemare attack enemy Mana Plants. Killing any neutral or enemy-controlled monsters or players grants you experience points, which level up your character and increase their stats.
This first (and main) phase of the match results in much more unique and action-packed gameplay compared to other MOBAs. FLAME vs BLAZE almost plays more like a brawler than it does a traditional MOBA. With such a small map, fights will frequently break out while teams work to gather mana. You’ll frequently see enemies all the way on the other side of the map by your own Reactor. With no lane structures limiting player movement, each match is much more of a free-for-all than one might expect from a MOBA-style game.
But like other objective based MOBAs, your success tends to rely on mana management instead of fighting for fighting’s sake. Team communication in FLAME vs BLAZE is limited to relatively unintuitive map pings and emotes, though. At times, it feels like you’re almost playing a team game completely individually. You can’t even see anyone else’s kill-death ratio during or after a match (which at least might help prevent toxic behavior).
Once the Reactors awaken, then the game’s fast-paced action really shines. All six players will be gathered in the same spot, trying to attack the opposing Reactor. The more damage a Reactor takes, the quicker it overheats, increasing its damage taken. Not to mention you can still gather mana during this phase to empower your Reactor’s special attack speed. Naturally, this phase can get insanely hectic as you fight both the enemy team and its reactor all while dodging the Reactors special area of effect abilities.
FLAME vs BLAZE‘s playable characters, called agents, have unique artistic designs but play similarly to other MOBAs. Each agent has one passive trait and three main abilities, which are a mix of AoE, target based, and location based attacks. All twelve of the game’s agents have various strengths and weaknesses, but no hard defined roles such as “healer” or “tank.” Instead, each character has two modes/archetypes, which can be switched between mid-fight. This unique Mode Shift” system allows players to transform their character to a different form, gaining new abilities with completely different playstyles.
This system allows players to reactively counter the enemy team within a match while giving your pre-match choice of agent even more weight. Players can also customize their agents via cards. Core cards have automatic effects at the start of the battle and can be chosen freely right before each match. Subcards make up a three card deck and have either active or passive effects that become available at certain agent levels mid-match. These decks must be set before you queue for a match, and can be different for each agent.
How do you obtain these cards? No, not through loot boxes – scratch-off tickets! After a game, you are awarded a scratch-off ticket with the number of available squares based on your performance. And surprise: you can spend currency to scratch off the rest of them. As a free-to-play mobile game, FLAME vs BLAZE includes your standard set of microtransactions along with three different currencies. The premium currency is Topaz, which is used to buy agents and other items like cards from the shop. FLAME vs BLAZE does at least also include a daily mission and achievement system which rewards both currencies and items at a decent acquisition rate.
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Like most MOBAs, players have access to a rotating list of free heroes that change each week. And from the beta, it looks like it’s not too difficult to at least acquire your first couple of heroes easily. Since the game is still in closed beta, the exact price per Topaz is unclear. But the game seems to employ a run-of-the-mill F2P mobile game model.
This F2P system does give rise to an important issue, however, in regards to cards. Both core and sub cards flat out improve your agent, either with raw stats or with additional active abilities. You can also augment these cards – when you obtain duplicates, you can use them to level up the card’s stats. This ultimately leads FLAME vs BLAZE right down the rocky road of a pay-to-win game. Someone who has invested serious money into the game will flat-out have better stats and stronger abilities than someone who hasn’t. This raises some serious red flags, which is a shame because FLAME vs BLAZE shows lots of promise with its unique mechanics. This type of payment model might work well for other mobile games, but not so much in competitive MOBAs.
The character design and art style are fantastic as well – Gen Kobayashi brings his unique style from The World Ends With You into FLAME vs BLAZE and it looks awesome. The user interface can get a bit cluttered and confusing at times, though, especially the menu screens. The number of loading screens between menus is abnormally high and often times frustrating. Outside of a few framerate drops in-game, which could easily be contributed to the aging phone the game was tested on, the game looks and runs great.
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Probably the biggest area of improvement needed in FLAME vs BLAZE comes with its in-game tutorials. When you start the game for the first time, you play through a series of tutorials that teach you the bare basics. But the problem is that’s all you get – just the bare basics. They leave it up to the player to figure out some of the more intricate details on their own, either just by playing matches or through a textual help menu buried underneath several other menu screens. There were numerous useful tidbits in these help menus that would have made way more sense to explain more clearly through playable tutorials.
From what we’ve seen so far, FLAME vs BLAZE shows promise. Its unique art style and gameplay mechanics differentiate itself enough in the saturated market of MOBAs. FLAME vs BLAZE ‘s short, 10-15 minute games are perfect for mobile gamers. Its inclusion of both casual and competitive ranked play appeals to wide audiences, though most gamers might have trouble figuring out the specifics of the game without a more comprehensive set of tutorials. The possibility of a pay-to-win model raises some alarms, but the currency cost and balancing have yet to be seen in the short time we had playing the game in the closed beta.
A copy of this game was provided to App Trigger for the purpose of this preview.