Summon Masters review: very little summoning

I was excited to download Korean developer Bicore’s Summon Masters because I was expecting some serious summoning action. I wanted some monsters, heroes and all that good, classic summoning stuff.

Unfortunately Summon Masters has but a single summoning feature which you can use to summon heroes. If it were renamed “Fantasy Adventurer Recruiting Agency,” I would probably be more inclined to give it a better score.

Summon Masters is a fantasy RPG with a heavy focus on grinding battles, finding weapons, and recruiting new heroes for your guild. There’s a large social element in Summon Masters, which even contains a chat function on the main screen, and it’s a game that demands both your time and attention. Five minute gaming sessions every few hours is not enough to make progress in Summon Masters.

Beautiful, simple and strategic combat.

The combat in Summon Masters is an easy-to-learn, difficult-to-master affair. You can take up to seven heroes into battle, each with their own unique ability as well as a standard attack with base damage. Your characters fight automatically, so your job is to chose when they use their abilities.

Abilities can raise a hero’s defense, cure an individual hero or the whole party, cast a fireball, or poison enemies. The longer you wait before using an attack, the more powerful it becomes. Sometimes it’s in your best interest to take extra damage in order unleash an enemy-destroying fireball. This is a simple combat mechanic, but using it deftly takes some practice.

(See: Darkrima first impressions: the game is masturbating)

In the early stages of the game, you can let your heroes attack and select special abilities as they come up. However things become more complicated when you go into the “world boss” mode.

In world boss mode, you are trying to last as long as possible and deal as much damage as possible to a massive demonic entity. Other players are doing the same, and your damage is cumulative. You get rewarded for dealing the most damage, so you must time abilities well to avoid destruction.

Giant skeletons are scary!