Vikings: War of Clans Review for iPhone

Vikings: War of Clans is an MMORTS from developer Plarium. True to its genre Vikings: War of Clans is a strategy game tasking the players to build, gather resources, train troops, joining a clan, and managing your city.

Vikings: War of Clans has a lot of micromanaging and not much action. PvP is an essential part of the game, but it’s not very climactic. This is rather disappointing. Battle consists of sending your troops out to attack the city of another player and then there is just the proverbial roll of the dice. Sending your troops to attack doesn’t mean they teleport to the location. The soldiers are forced to march across the game’s global map. Cities are located on tiles of the global map. Certain areas of the map mean the city will yield a higher percentage of resources. This causes higher level players to fight for positions on the map. The downside of this, of course, is the fact that players who are willing to spend money will undoubtedly win every time. That doesn’t mean it’s impossible to play without spending money because you can choose where you want to set up shop. Setting up shop on a low resource tile means more powerful players are less likely to attack you.

Resources consist of food, lumber, iron, stone, silver, and gold. Food feeds your troops, lumber builds more buildings, iron makes weapons, etc. Attacking resource rich points on the map is another way to gain resources. The most common way is protecting your cities’ buildings from attacking players so that your buildings will continue production.

Being a member of a clan is the best part of the game. Sending reinforcements to your clan-mates, and receiving additional resources from them always feels rewarding. It’s also possible for them to reduce the time it takes for your city buildings to be built. The teamwork aspect of Vikings: War of Clans really shines when clans war against each other. Success will send your clan into higher levels for greater competition, and losing will do the opposite.

An RPG-like level system for your city exists via a hero. The hero has skills that affect the speed of resource gathering, city defenses, and offensive capabilities. Using the forge will craft weapons and armor for your hero that increase their battle capabilities. This combined with the constant development of your city, and the fighting for strategic positions on the global map make for very satisfying progression. There is always something to do, even if it is just tapping and scrolling with your thumbs.

The presentation is top-notch. Everything has been influenced greatly by the Viking culture. Every time an upgrade for a building is finished two mugs of mead are clashed together. The cities are teeming with an art style only the Viking culture can portray. The heroes look like they were pulled from a Viking art book. Even the in-game directions are presented in a quasi-Viking language.

Just like all the other games in this genre Vikings: War of Clans is plagued by its lucrative pay-to-win formula. However, it does seem to counter-act this formula with its global map. There has been a lot of backlash in the gaming community for pay-to-win and micro-transactions, but there is no doubt it is here to stay. This game doesn’t shy away from using it, but it’s good to see that there are ways to limit its effect so that gamers with less disposable income can still enjoy games like this. Vikings: War of Clans is a really good game. It’s such a good game that it deserves an 8 out of 10.

If you would like to give this game a try, then you can find it in the Apple App Store, Google Play, or visit the official Vikings: War of Clans website by Plarium at https://www.vikingswarofclans.com/

Matthew Davis

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I was born and raised in a town so small there were more cows than people. I joined the USAF as soon as I could, and I currently reside in San Antonio. I am a singer/songwriter on the side, but I've been a gamer since birth. I grew up with PlayStation and Nintendo, though, I don't discriminate between consoles and PC. I have a PC with a 3080, Steam Deck, and a PS5.

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