Game Reviews: Age of Ishtaria

Hello everyone! As promised, now it's time for a review of Age of Ishtaria! If you haven't already, be sure to check out my side-by-side comparison of Spirit Stones and Ishtaria as well as last week's review of Spirit Stones.




 As with last week, I'll be giving an overview of the game so you don't have to read through the massive comparison post to know what the game's like. Age of Ishtaria is a card-collecting battle game with a fantasy based storyline. You have two different types of stamina that limit gameplay as well as different types of currency to improve your gameplay, one of which can be bought with real world money. The main aspects of the game are events (of which there are multiple types), battles, quests, and card powering-up and trading. Every week there is a new event and there is a main storyline series of quests as well as event quests and harder quests for big prizes. Since I want to focus more on reviewing the game as opposed to the in-depth details, I'll leave game description at this and we'll move onto what I like about Ishtaria.


 One of my favorite aspects of Age of Ishtaria is collecting all of the cards I can, all of which have beautiful artwork. There are plenty of ways to get cards in the game that don't involve spending real world money, so I have a fairly good sized collection so far, which makes me really happy. Gameplay itself is also very nice and has lovely graphics throughout all aspects, from quests to battles, events to Nightmare Rift, etc. One of the things I like the most about Age of Ishtaria is how responsive and communicative their staff are. While I haven't had to personally contact them, I regularly see posts notifying when updates will be made (usually once a week when the event changes) as well as after detailing what was updated. I also regularly see notifications about typos or glitches that were corrected as well as that an apology gift is being sent out to all players who log in within a certain timeframe, whether they were affected by the problem or not. I really like seeing that so much effort is being put into this game and I love seeing the new cards and events that come out every week (even if it does mean I have even more cards to collect to have a complete collection).


 For dislikes about Ishtaria, I don't really have any. Obviously there are aspects that frustrate me (like a boss that's extremely difficult to defeat or skills not activating as often as wanted), but these are all a part of the game that makes it more challenging and unique. Just like you wouldn't expect GLaDOS to give you cake after the first level, I don't expect every quest in Ishtaria to be super easy (though I do like it when all the stars align and I get a 300% bonus rating). If I had to criticize anything about Age of Ishtaria, it would be that there aren't more details about unions in their in-game FAQ. I'm still figuring out what exactly unions are for as I go along as well as how to obtain the currency that allows you to upgrade the design of your union. Also, I am not a huge fan of everything downloading as you go to use it instead of when the game is first downloaded and installed, but I don't mind it too much as it helps reduce the amount of time to download the game and allows you to choose what you want to download and when, so you can wait to play or view certain aspects until you're connected to Wi-Fi (although it's hard waiting sometimes).


 Overall, I would highly recommend Age of Ishtaria to anyone who likes fantasy or collecting games as well as anime-themed graphics.


Have you played Age of Ishtaria before? Are you thinking of playing it now? Let me know in the comments!




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