Is Summoners War one of a kind?

With a launch date going back all the way to 2014, Com2uS and its evergreen RPG Summoners War made its first appearance on the smartphone games library. Summoners War is one of the earliest mobile gacha-focused RPGs that made a huge splash outside of the East Asian communities. The game is currently considered one of the few games to have generated over $1 billion in its lifetime. But, what exactly makes Summoners War so successful and enjoyable?

Summoners War

Summoners War is by no means a unique game. In fact, there have been several other titles with similar gacha-fusion gameplay, allowing for quick and auto-playable battles. Needless to say, however, Summoners War has easily been the most influential title in the Western community. Summoners War introduced a new style of gameplay to smartphone users, which emphasized unique RPG elements and also finding the right balance for integrating a gacha-system. Summoners War: Sky Arena has so much to do that you’ll often find yourself overwhelmed by the amount of content it offers.
However, to further understand if the game is one of a kind, let’s take a deeper look into similar titles and their gacha-system.

Raid: Shadow Legends

RAID is a western-stylized, gritty and dark-themed RPG with amazing visuals, character models, and environment. The game, as mentioned before, is a gacha game with certain RPG elements and unique combat mechanics and visuals. RAID features a turn-based combat system with a party of characters who perform one or more actions each turn.

Taking a look at the game’s gacha, you’ll find nothing unique to its format. But though the game’s mechanics may not differ, RAID certainly does not hold back when it comes to the spectacular visuals and art direction. The top-notch visuals are good enough to create an awesome new perspective for gacha games.

Dragon Champions

Although you may not have heard of this title, Dragon Champion is quite a popular game. It has amassed an impressive fan-following, with a user rating of 4.5 stars on Google Play Store, while 4.9 stars on the App Store. Dragon Champions comes with some impressive mobile RPG elements, narrative, as well as decent graphics.

At first glance, Dragon Champions will come off as an old-school CPU MMORPG, mimicking some of the features while refining them for today’s audience as well. The game is jam-packed with tactical battles for both PvP and PvE modes. The battles mainly take place between dragons and demons, allowing players to summon their champions to the fray as well. It goes without saying, the gacha element is tied to the champions you can get.

Summoners Glory

A new, epic and rather unique take on the champion-collection genre, Summoners glory brings the turn-based combat system to the MMORPG genre. Summoners Glory: Eternal Fire was made available to all smartphone users on October 18^th, 2020, and was welcomed with overwhelmingly positive reviews. The game is full of quests and other features, so much so that some players may find the game rather overwhelming.

The selling point for Summoners Glory has to be its gacha-styled champion collection system. Players are enable to summon and evolve a wide-variety of heroes and champions from the gacha, having them engage in combat as your allies, or in other words, phantoms. Each of the phantoms/heroes come with a unique set of skills and traits. Therefore, the game allows players to create and experiment with different teams of phantoms, providing the players the opportunity to make their own unique builds.

Marvel Strike Force

Marvel Strike Force is another free-to-play squad-based mobile RPG from FoxNext, borrowing the same mechanics from similar games. Apart from Strike Force’s addicting combat, all free games must have lootboxes or a gacha system. And in Marvel Strike Force, this is known as the Orb system.

The game features various orbs, each programmed to drop different sets of rewards. Furthermore, each orb is known to drop three items. The cheaper orbs, for instance, will drop random items such as shards, gear items, and gold, while the more expensive ones often guarantee character shard drops. Needless to say, some orbs also provide gold, training modules, and ability materials. Either way, Strike Force may seem fascinating on paper, however, it lacks the proper balance for making a game succeed on its own. The huge success of the game can obviously be traced back to the Marvel Cinematics Universe.