Asterix & Obelix: Heroes test – Spread your cards!

The last few Asterix games have personally not been to my liking. It’s sad because I really like the adventures of Gallic characters, so Slap Them All! I’m also sitting on pins and needles waiting for the second act of beat’em up coming at the end of November. Interestingly, however, Asterix recently returned not as a crawling adventure game, but in Asterix & Obelix: Heroes, this time cards play the main role. This genre has become more and more popular in recent years anyway, why would they be left out of it?

Unsurprisingly, the story remained the usual “they want to conquer the village, then we’ll fight back well” plot. We clean up across six regions while making our way from our noisy village to Rome. On the way, we have to overcome a lot of Roman soldiers, Vikings, Haramias, wild animals, and even crocodiles and lions. There are 150 cards in the game, of which 30 and 20 more support cards can be used to build the deck. One card can appear more than once, such as the basic attack and shield cards. There are 24 characters in the stuff, you can unlock them bit by bit: to get some characters, you have to clear a region 100%.

The program distinguishes between fighter and support figures. 3 of the former and only 1 of the latter can be in the party at the same time. There is also a small RPG vein in the gameplay, as everyone has different skills, and after collecting enough figure cards, the given hero can level up. Each region consists of an average of 8 tracks, these maps can be viewed before the battles. In this case, you can see which person should be brought to overcome the obstacles set up or to visit the secret location. Thus, it is necessary to use and develop heroes that we would definitely not take with us by default. Of course, it is not mandatory, but many routes and chests with valuable cards can only be obtained in this way.

The course of the battles takes place in the same way in all cases. We take turns with our counter-legs, and we can manage from 3 action points. Each card has a value (0-3 points), so you can even play more than one hero. We can see exactly who the opposing units are going to attack or what they are preparing for, so we will also have time to defend ourselves depending on the occasion. A lot of cards also have status variables, so you can put good curses on the Romans. Later, they will also have supporters who will also spread the curses. Unfortunately, we cannot harm this type of unit, we can only mute it for a while.

Most of the time, the battles are fast-paced, but there are some annoying fights and game elements. One of these is invisibility, which the character becomes untouchable for 1-2 rounds. It’s very frustrating when there’s only 1 delinquent left, who wouldn’t cause any trouble, but forces you to constantly pass rounds with his condition. Anyway, the types of opponents are quite varied, and the visual world is also nicely depicted, everyone is recognizable. However, the sound engineer must have messed something up, because what we can hear is not very sweet, a lot is missing. The whole thing was as if I had orchestrated a silent film myself to my liking. All in all, however, I had fun with Asterix & Obelix: Heroes, I progressed a little every day, it became a kind of routine.

Asterix & Obelix: Heroes seems more like a more expensive mobile game, but at least it was able to keep me engaged for an hour or so. It won’t change the world, but fans of Gallic figures will definitely like it.

The test copy was provided by the game publisher.