Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft

It's overflowing with character and imagination, feeds off and fuels a vibrant community of players and performers, and it only stands to improve as Blizzard introduces new features, an iPad version and expansions. And now it's finally finished! I can't wait to see where it goes next. Job's done.

It’s easy to learn, easy to get into matches and play, and it’s fun. It’s led me to check out other digital card games — and I’m again surprised at how much I enjoy these.

When Blizzard announced they were making a digital CCG, we all expected it to look and sound beautiful, and there was little doubt that it would be well-balanced, but I don’t think anyone anticipated this level of sophistication and subtle brilliance.

A gem that combines a great PC franchise with simple gameplay and a reasonable Free to Play business model. [June 2014, p.54]

Hearthstone, the newest card game from Blizzard, will keep you hooked for hours thanks to the amazing presentation and the tactical, deep gameplay. This is free to play done right.

With bags of depth to tap into, this deserves to be recognised as one of the genre's finest. [June 2014, p.72]

A beautifully designed game, as gratifying and addictive as anything Blizzard has ever done. [June 2014, p.72]

It has, through painstaking effort, upgraded the card duel into a thoroughly modern form. It has resisted the dark lures of free-to-play, and has made deep systems simple to parse without neutering them. In short, Hearthstone is borderline alchemy, turning physical systems into digital gold.

Hearthstone is addictive, highly strategic, and chock-full of fun collectible card battling; the fact that it's totally free (if you want it to be) makes it one of the best values in gaming today. This is your new obsession; embrace it.

Blizzard's first Free to Play-game offers depth without becoming complex. It takes players seriously and is very playable without spending (a lot of) money. Atmosphere, speed and great sound effects make for fast yet satisfying games, where luck and tactics go hand in hand.

Hearthstone is thoughtful and complex, but at the same time welcoming and almost irresistible. It may just be a card game, but it often feels like so much more.

Blizzard's team has done about everything right with Hearthstone. They took tried and tested pieces from other card games, found clever mechanisms to take away their weak spots and other frustrations and offer a strong and addictive free-to-play experience.

Blizzard has put its imprimatur onto another genre, and it looks poised to succeed in CCGs with Hearthstone as it has with MMOs in World of Warcraft.

Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft is the best digital collectible card game for everyone. Easy to learn and difficult to master. The musical score and sounds are just like the Warcraft Universe. But if you are a Magic: The Gathering player, you definitely won't like it.

Hearthstone seems a good fit for tablets, and if Blizzard can maintain the quality of the animations, it will become a serious phenomenon.

An amazing classic card game that surprises for its attention to detail and highly addictive gameplay.

Hearthstone is the best digital collectible card game around and an excellent “real” game as well, where the formula “easy to learn, difficult to master” really comes to life.

Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft is an idea as good as Magic: The Gathering was. It's very similar to Magic cards and that's great. Although it's very accessible and visual, perfect for new players and experts. Blizzard has returned to work magic.

Hearthstone might not fully scratch the strategy itch of the most advanced CCG/TCG players, but it makes an impressive attempt. The rules are simple, so anybody can get the hang of it, but there are enough deck variations available that only skilled deck builders and players will make it high in the ranks.

Accessible, addictive and fun, Blizzard brings us a very interesting free-to-play, very well balanced game, that everyone interested in the Warcraft universe should try.

Hearthstone is a wonderful game. Nostalgic, simple and best of all: fun. This is the best online collectible card game you can play. Just be careful how much you spend in it.

The elegant simplicity of Hearthstone’s rules, its impressive attention to detail and personality, and the true viability of playing completely for free make it easy to fall under its spell and get blissfully lost in the depths of its strategic possibilities.

If you’ve ever been curious about collectible card games but didn’t know where to begin, Hearthstone is the place to start.

A simple game if compared to Magic, nonetheless the Blizzard CCG delivers a fair amount of depth for the average player. There is a little shade of pay-to-win, but is perfectly possible to have fun without spending a dime.

On a more personal level, Hearthstone is solid enough that if it gets its hooks in you, they will dig deep. The game takes on a Civilization-like level of addictiveness where instead of one more turn, you’ll often tell yourself “just one more game”. That one more game can quickly become five, or ten, or more depending on how much time you have to spend and I imagine this is going to only be amplified once the mobile versions of the game come online.

Simple rules, high production values, low system requirements and huge tactical freedom make Hearthstone one of the best card games available. And if you take into account the free-to-play model – it’s the best one. [05/2014, p.62]

A fine example of a great free-to-play game. Hearthstone is not only an addictive and well designed card game, but absolutely fair with gamers that do not wish to spend money on it.

Hearthstone is a polished, stylish and friendly collectible card game which offers tons of fun and challenge at no cost. It's still not very balanced - and probably will never be - and it lacks a trading system, but Blizzard managed to appeal both newcomers and veterans to the genre.

Hearthstone is currently the best card game in circulation when you consider its target audience. With easy-to-learn gameplay, this game is still able to provide a lot of satisfaction even to the most experienced players.

It’s this level of polish and accessibility that Blizzard have infused into Hearthstone that make it a great success, no matter how you feel about card games.

One of the best free-to-play games on the market because you can actually play this one for free and have a good time while doing so. It is easy to learn and fun to master. [Apr 2014]

Hearthstone wants to be a fast paced and entertaining card game for beginners and experts alike - and it achieves this goal with flying colors.

Video gamers may wonder why they would play a card game when their medium has moved beyond such limitations; tabletop gamers may bemoan the fact that people are getting excited about the wrong card game. But if you fall awkwardly between those two groups, Hearthstone will keep you hooked for some time.

For now, Hearthstone is very much a triumph, and with a mobile client rolling out there’s a sense that we’re at the beginning of a phenomenon rather than in the midst of one. Yet again, Blizzard seems to have played its cards absolutely right.

A fast, deep and exciting card game let down by its business model. Great when you're on a roll, rough when you're not. [Apr 2014, p.84]

Brilliantly accessible, yet incredibly deep. Blizzard dominates the virtual gaming card genre, but a tournament mode would have made it even better.

If any developer's good at weeding out the chaff of more robust games in a particular genre, surely it's Blizzard.

This first attempt from Blizzard on the free to play market is a success. You don't have to pay to win in this card game that looks really nice and is as interesting as addictive to play.

While it may not be as complicated as an actual collectible card game, or have the appeal of showing off your collection to your friends, it is a great videogame that has minimal issues and is in a neat package, so it would be foolish to try to compare it to something it’s not trying to be.

It's difficult to resist the charms of HearthStone: Heroes of WarCraft, which stacks up qualities. Easily manageable by any gamer, highly addictive, and made with an artistic touch, this game fully uses the rich Warcraft universe and its fame. The price to pay is having to make due with classic card game gameplay, not a revolution in the card collecting game genre...and it can prove tiresome at some point if you don't go hunting for the rare cards. Strangely, the interface needs improvement, and some bugs still persists. But since the game is free and really fun, there is no reason to not give it a try.