It looks pretty straight forward to begin with. You have a team of three fighters. There are twelve classes when you first get into the game – from fantasy favorites such as the cleric, the paladin, and the rogue, to more esoteric ones such as the stormcaller and the guardian. Each class has two abilities that it can do – a paladin, for instance, can heal and attack – and stats that affect how well it does those, as well as how well it defends against attack and how quickly it attacks.

Each class starts with five people you can choose from in it. Each has slightly different stats. You select your three people and enter the fights.

Each team you fight against is set up similarly. You pick the level of difficulty in the fights – as you get higher in difficulty, you get the chance of unlocking new teams, but also deal with better set-up teams and more coordinated attacks. At the Rookie level, for instance, the enemies attack fairly haphazardly, and occasionally even heal unhurt allies; higher levels don’t make those mistakes.

Play is turn based. Inside the turn, the sequence of attack goes by speed of the character, though that can be affected by things such as stuns, sleep, and injuries. I’ll use an example from a game I just played, at this point, on the “Rookie” level:

My characters were Phaeton, a paladin, Dizz, my favorite rogue, and Trace, a cleric. I’m up against Ragnark, Lokcin, and Avenge. Each class is indicated by an icon, and I look at them to try to see who is what. (I know Ragnark is a stormcaller, but don’t recognize the other two immediately.) Battle begins.

Dizz goes first. I’m a bit frustrated, as the attack dialogue screen covers up the enemies, and therefore I don’t know which one is which on the screen. Avenge looks like a warlock, though, so I’ll go for Lokcin first. Ahh, a hit, but Lokcin is a gladiator. Typically, I go for healers first.

Phaeton follows up by attacking Lokcin as well – keeping the attacks concentrated – while Ragnark attacks my cleric, Trace, and Lokcin goes after Phaeton. Trace debuffs Lokcin, to lower his damage in his next attack, and Avenge follows up with another attack on Phaeton, injuring him.

The next turn Dizz attacks Lokcin again, injuring him, and Phaeton heals himself. From there the battle continues; with two healers, I manage to keep my team up, while Lokcin then Avenge drop to my attacks, despite Ragnark’s occasional shield of physical protection, and from there it’s just time until Ragnark drops. That round done, my team is healed up, and it’s on to the next round.

The game is fairly straight forward, but there’s a lot to remember. It’s important to know what each class can and cannot do, in order to determine who to take down first. Had the opposing team had a cleric, I would’ve gone after him first, as a cleric’s healing ability can make it hard to take down someone else. If there was a mage, he can stun one member of my team, and therefore would deserve a target.

In addition, when setting up your team, it’s worth it to look at their attributes, too. Since the attacks can even up over time, it’s sometimes worth it to take a slower person in order to help determine who to attack, even if it’s just getting a second chance to see what they look like (to help you remember what class they are). The “Strategy” section of the menu screen helps teach you who does what (though on my Sanyo MM-8300 the lines of text can run off the side of the screen).

After you get past “Rookie” level the difficulty jumps up a lot. You’ll also start to run into customized teams that you haven’t seen before – such as Loki, Thor, and Odin pounding on you!

There aren’t any sound effects – which I like in a cell phone game, as it makes it easier to play it in the office or elsewhere. The graphics are reminiscent of older 8 bit Nintendo games – they’re good enough to accurately represent the different classes easily enough.. I do like the stylization used on a lot of the characters.

The classes don’t feel completely balanced to me – there are some I simply don’t see the need for on a 3 man team, and given the random enemies you face, it can be frustrating to have a secondary ability wasted (for example, when you have a Stormcaller who can block physical attacks, but the opposing team has a ninja (ranged attack) and two magical attackers). Also, there does seem to be a clear “best” character in each class, but I try to avoid strictly looking at stats and also include the name of the character. That’s why “Darkpally” rarely makes it on my team, even though I often have a paladin, but if I have a rogue, it has to be “Dizz”.

In short, this is one of the fun cell phone games that can provide a good diversion. I’d love to see a version that allowed you to play someone else with the game, or the ability to save my game during a tournament, but it’s still fun as it is.