Empires & Allies Review

[Running an army can be tough work. If you need a little help, check out our Tips & Tricks guide]

Sharing the same name as a Facebook game from Zynga, that’s roughly where the similarities end for Empires & Allies. It’ll seem quite familiar to those of us used to Clash of Clans et al, but there’s a bit more going for it than just that.

Your main aim is to establish a base and become the strongest army out there. That’s a typical ambition and things start out just as typical. You place storage silos, production areas, and also try to remember to establish some secure defenses. Recruitment of troops is imperative to your success too, as much is made of the game’s single player campaign, as well as your ability to attack other players.

For a change, deploying troops doesn’t automatically condemn them to mysteriously vanishing afterwards. Instead, any surviving troops can be reused later on, making a significant change to your usual strategies. Such troops are fairly varied after a time too, meaning there’s actually a point to planning out what should work out best during a particular battle. You start out with ground troops, but soon enough, tanks and planes become available too.

Destroying buildings also provide you with points which can be used to deploy special attacks, such as a gunship or missiles. These are expendable, vanishing after a battle, but ensure you keep an eye on what unfolds. Plus, some of them are fairly interactive, such as the missile that you can drag around with your finger.

As usual, there’s a fair supply of timers that require you to wait things out, but you can join alliances to give you something to do, as well as share resources amongst others. The key for Empires & Allies is in its refinements. It’s a similar format to many, but it does a fairly good job of being a better version of what we’ve seen elsewhere. That’s what’s going to keep you coming back for more.