REVIEW: Astro Boy: Edge of Time


Title	Astro Boy: Edge of Time
Developer	Project Atom
Publisher	Active Gaming Media Inc.
Release Date	June 20th, 2017
Genre	CCG Free to Play
Platform	Steam
Age Rating	N/A
Official Website

I haven’t checked out a CCG or Collectible Card Game in a long time, in fact the last one I played was Eternal Destiny. When I saw that Astro Boy: Edge of Time was coming to Steam I thought this would be a good one to take another chance on. This would be the first time I’ve reviewed a game with a free to play model, so I thought it would be a good idea to let you folks know if it was worth your time, or simply another pay to win CCG. Let’s find out!

The story begins as the world has been torn asunder by dark forces. The few survivors of this world find themselves teleported to “The Sprawl” a city that exist outside of the normal flow of space time. Humans and robots settle into a peaceful existence here, until Goa, the King of Darkness, arrives. Astro Boy and many other heroes take up the fight against Goa in order to restore peace to this city. This battle soon becomes more fierce as new heroes called “Summoners” arrive. They could create light clones of those they had met and use them on the battlefield. This battled raged so hard that Astro Boy has fallen into a deep sleep at the core of the city. You, the protagonist, now awaken to find yourself in the city as the battle against the forces of Goa continues.

While I don’t think this is the deepest nor the most emotionally moving story ever told, the presentation is top notch. The story is told in comic style panels with some nice looking artwork, and I felt like it had a lot of style. This is also one of those “Do robot have human rights?” kind of stories at times and I always feel as though that treads some interesting ground when the writing is good, and it’s pretty great here actually.

The music in this one is a mix of techno and dubstep. It certainly fits the cyberpunk nature of the game and is quite good, for a little while. There’s just not enough tracks here and you hear the same songs over and over again. After a short while you find yourself muting the game audio and finding a playlist of your own choosing to play with. The story mode has some voice acting and while it can seem a little campy at times, I think it is quite well done and fitting for this title.

The artwork on the cards is certainly a point of contention for long time fans of Astro Boy. It uses a completely cyberpunk style, and while I can certainly understand longtime fans having issues with this, personally I think most of the artwork is very well done and fits in with the overall theme of the game nicely. There are tons of robots, cyber humans, mutants and many other items depicted on the cards, and I was excited to see what would be on the next set of cards I acquired.

Each player will begin the game with 25 life points and who draws and plays first is determined by a coin toss. There are two basic zones you can summon heroes in. The one closest to your enemy is the Attack Zone while the one in the back the Guardian Zone. If you have a hero summoned in the Guardian Zone your life points cannot be attacked directly, but heroes in that zone can only defend. Heroes summoned into the attack zone can attack the next round after they are summoned. Attack damage between heroes is dealt at the same time, much like in Magic the Gathering.

Each round players are given an increasing number of Quantum to spend. This will allow you to summon heroes or Gear Cards for instant effects and hero stat buffs. The number of Quantum needed to use each card will be displayed on the top left of each card. Heroes attack and defense numbers are at the bottom of the card with the left being attack and the right being defense. Any special abilities the card has will be listed in the bottom box. These can range from cards having flash, which allows them to be used as soon as they enter play, to getting various stat buffs for attacking and defending. Some or the bigger heroes will have two or three abilities depending on the card.

The variety of cards makes it easy for anyone to craft a deck to fit their play style. This in part is because of the four factions found in within the game. These include the 9Kings, Feather, Ministry, and Gearworks. Creating a deck based on each of these factions will grant you a faction skill. These can really save your bacon in a tight jam and include such things as trading a currently held card for instant damage dagger or for extra Quantum to summon out that truly amazing hero just a bit sooner, but these are but one of many things you can build your deck around.

While I think the core game here is good, there are some balancing issues that need to be addressed. The team has been doing constant updates on this one and it seems to be getting better by the day. The pricing structure here seems good and the game gives you plenty of chances with tournament play, story mode, and player matches to earn Prisma for free card packs as well. I do like the fact you can outright purchase rare cards for cash instead of using the luck of the draw to acquire them. The story mode is actually quite nice and worth the 6 or so hours it will take you to finish it. I think my biggest issue with this one is there’s no real hook here. It functions well and the artwork is nice but there’s nothing here that inspires me to play it each day. I think down the line if the developers can do something make this on stand out they will have a real winner on their hands, but as it stands its just your average free to play CCG.