Elune Saga Review

Elune Saga isn't anything revolutionary, but it is quite fun – assuming you can forgive its many in-app purchases.

Rounding up two of the most popular parts of freemium games of late – turn-based combat and card collecting – you can already guess what to expect of Elune Saga. You work your way through various missions, fighting it out with numerous enemies, in a bid to save the world (probably). Ok, Elune Saga has a story but you probably won't pay much attention to it. You'll be too busy hoping to collect useful cards along the way.

There's a central hub in which you can arrange arena battles, recruit new characters from the inn, buy stuff (especially with real money), and other things. The crux of the game is focused on combat, though. Story progression is broken up into bite-sized chunks so you can easily achieve something in a relatively short space of time.

The issue here is that the combat is fairly simplistic. At its most basic, it's essentially rock, paper, scissors and rarely becomes more in-depth than striking your enemy and keeping your health high. That's fine for bite-sized chunks, but once you've played it for a while you'll start to notice just how shallow it is.

Where Elune Saga improves is when you bind elemental soul cards to characters in order to add special abilities. A glimmer of strategy unlocks here, and a little more thought is required for the most effective solutions.

Elune Saga's most glaring flaw, however, is just how many in-app purchases there are. It's reasonably generous with dishing out freebies, but you're still going to be inundated with temptations. An energy system restricts how many times you can play in a row, while Soulstones are a premium currency that determines a lot as to what you can unlock. Most frustrating of all is that 30 Soulstones buys you a new card but you can only buy them 27 at a time (for $2.99), which is plain annoying.

It might not have as much soul as you'd like but Elune Saga is reasonably fun. Dodge those in-app purchase demands and you can still achieve something. It won't amaze you by any means, but you will still feel quietly pleased when you've gotten to the next stage of the game or unlocked a new card.