Is a “clash” of heroes like a “murder” of crows?

Having finished playing M&M:CoH, I now present the following Do’s and Don’ts, which I have compiled in order to apply them to my own game designs; if the reader also benefits from my efforts, so much the better. (note: I have only played the single-player campaign.)

DO apply a simple gameplay mechanic in varying ways throughout the game. The concept of the battle system is very simple, yet it must be applied differently for each character’s units and for each boss battle. For example, Godric’s units are so slow that a defensive strategy is almost a necessity, whereas Fiona’s units are so fast, weak, and expendable, that offense is usually the best defense.
Another example, many of the boss battles require you to hit moving targets, instead of being able to advance across any section of the battlefield — suddenly adding timing and targeting to battle, yet without continually ramping up complexity throughout the game.

DO use your assets in multiple ways. I’m talking specifically about the Puzzle Battles here, which use the same basic battle framework but have completely different goals: instead of trying to reduce your opponent’s health to zero, you have to knock out all of your opponent’s units within a given number of moves. This works well for two reasons. One, it is a completely different challenge, while still being familiar to the player. Two, the lessons learned from these puzzles can be directly applied to the main game. It is similar to advanced combat training in disguise.

DO allow for multiple successful strategies. In general, I tended to choose the fastest units and attempted to maximize bonuses for attacking with many units at the same time; I could have instead chosen to use the more powerful units, been a little more patient, and hit for massive damage in one shot; I’m sure there are many others.

DO allow your players to level grind, without making it a necessity. I wandered around fighting random battles three times, twice to perform sidequests (bounties) and once because I thought I needed to be stronger for the final boss (which, it turned out, I didn’t). All random battles are avoidable simply by pressing the B button.

DO allow players to skip random battles. This is a cool enough feature to be mentioned twice.

DON’T have your least interesting and slowest-playing level be last. Nadia, the last character that you play, has two abilities. One, her “special” ability, is really only useful in the final boss battle — this differs from the other characters, who all have very useful special abilities throughout. Her second ability is not battle prowess; it is not related to kicking ass and taking names; it is the sometimes annoying ability to not die. Her units are exceptionally unuseful when attacking the opponent. They do excel at destroying or otherwise rendering useless the opponent’s units. Anti-unit power MINUS anti-opponent power means that you don’t lose and you don’t win. I submit that there may be strategies one could employ that would provide a different experience, and by the end of Nadia’s campaign I was able to speed up combat a little bit. But it was like eating a box of donuts, where the last donut is the most stale and least enjoyable. I have two thoughts on how this could have been done differently. Instead of “not dying,” Nadia’s units could have been strong in countering other unit’s moves, so that Nadia would have been weak unless played very specifically, in which case, she would be effective. That is already the way her boss battle plays out. Another option would be to allow the player to choose, after Anwen’s campaign, the order in which the character campaigns are played. This could have been done with a slight reorganizing of the script, and may have alleviated some of the frustration due to personal choice: if I reach into a box of chocolates and pull out a Pumpkin Nougat, it’s better than if someone else knew the flavors and chose that one for me.

I enjoyed M&M:CoH and I hope to see more puzzle/RPG* hybrids in the years to come.


*I’m using the colloquial term for “RPG” that might be more appropriately defined as “inventory and experience point management.”