Hero Wars: Dominion Era

What you are actually playing

Hero Wars is a hero collector wearing the clothes of an RPG. You do not steer anybody in a fight. You build a team of five, you decide the order they stand in, and then you watch the fight happen and press an ultimate when the bar under a hero fills. Everything that decides whether you win was settled before the fight started: who is in the team, what level they are, what gear they are wearing, and which of them counters the thing in front of you.

That sounds passive and it is not. The interesting part of the genre was never the clicking; it is the roster. You are asked, twenty times an evening, whether to spend a limited resource on the healer you already have or the tank you have half of, and the wrong answer costs you a week. If that question bores you, no amount of animation will fix it. If it interests you, this is a good version of it.

The first hour

Most games in this genre open with a menu and a currency you have not earned yet. This one opens with a fight you can lose, hands you five heroes, and lets the campaign teach the rest. By minute ten there is a hero worth levelling and a reason to care which one, which is the only thing the first hour of a free game has to achieve.

The tutorial ends before it outstays its welcome. You are through the guided part of the campaign in about twenty minutes, and the next forty are yours: chapter two, the first proper wall, and the discovery that the answer to that wall is in the roster you already own rather than in the shop. That is a deliberately good hour, and it is worth knowing that it is designed rather than accidental.

How progression works

Three tracks run in parallel and they do not advance at the same speed. Heroes gain levels from experience potions, which are plentiful. They gain stars from soul stones, which are not, and which drop from specific campaign chapters, so the hero you want decides which chapter you grind. They gain power from gear, which comes from the same chapters in pieces, and which is the reason people replay stages they have already cleared.

The consequence is that your account has a shape. Spreading soul stones across ten heroes leaves you with ten heroes who lose. Everyone who plays this game for a month arrives at the same conclusion: pick five, feed them, and treat everybody else as a bench. The game does not tell you this in the tutorial, and it is the single most useful thing to know on day one.

Above the campaign sit the modes that keep the account moving once the story stalls. The arena and grand arena against other players' defences, guild raids, the titan roster that is an entire second collection with its own resources, and a tower that resets. None of them are urgent in week one. All of them matter by month two.

Where the money appears

Around hour six the energy runs out in the middle of a chapter, and the shop appears with an answer. This is the honest moment in every game of this kind, and what matters is what happens if you say no. Here, saying no costs you time rather than the account: energy refills on its own, the campaign is still there tomorrow, and the guild covers the gap in the modes that need bodies rather than power.

What money buys is speed and the top of the roster: the specific hero at the specific star level, months earlier than the free path would deliver it. In the arena, against people who have paid, that gap is visible. In the campaign, in the guild, and in everything that is not a leaderboard, it mostly is not. Whether that is acceptable is a judgement about which part of the game you intend to live in.

Playing with other people

The guild is the difference between a game that lasts a fortnight and one that lasts a year. Guild activities hand out the currency for the shop that sells the soul stones you cannot farm, and matchmaking put us in an active guild on the first day. If nobody in your guild speaks, leave it in week one rather than month three; the game will let you sit in a dead guild indefinitely and it will quietly cost you the best resource line in the game.

How it runs

It opens in a browser tab, keeps your account in the cloud, and picks up on another machine without a launcher. On a laptop with integrated graphics it runs at a steady frame rate because there is nothing demanding on screen: two teams, a background and some particles. Battery drain is modest by the standards of the category. The mobile build is the same account, which matters more than it sounds. The ten minutes on a phone at lunch and the hour at a desk are the same progress.

What it does better than the rest

• Opens in a tab, saves in the cloud, and picks up on another machine without a launcher.
• A wall is usually a team problem rather than a wallet problem. The counter is normally a hero already sitting in your roster.
• The first hour hands you a real team instead of a menu and a currency.
• Ten minutes is a complete session. Nothing is lost by not logging in until tomorrow.
• Nothing behind the paywall is unavailable to a patient player.

Where it falls short

• The arena leaderboard is where paid accounts live, and no amount of patience closes that gap while the season is running.
• Daily tasks are a checklist, and the game is happiest when you treat it as one.
• The interface adds a new currency roughly every chapter, and by month two there are more of them than anybody can hold in their head.

Your first week, in five moves

• Pick five heroes by the end of day two and stop spreading resources. A tank, a healer, and three that do damage in different ways.
• Join a guild that talks. Leave one that does not, immediately.
• Spend energy on the chapter that drops soul stones for your five, not on the chapter you have not cleared yet.
• Do the free daily openings every day even when you cannot play, because the roster grows while you are not there.
• Do not buy anything in week one. The offers get better once the game knows you are staying, and the free path is generous enough to see chapter ten.

Who it is for

People who want ten minutes at a time rather than a whole evening, and who would rather solve a team than drill a build order. It rewards the kind of player who enjoys reading a roster and deciding what to feed. It is not for anyone who wants to control a fight while it is happening, and it is not for anyone who intends to compete at the top of a leaderboard without spending. That is a different game with the same interface.

The verdict

Hero Wars is the best version of the thing it is: a roster puzzle you can hold in ten minutes a day, with a first hour that respects you and a paywall that asks rather than demands. It takes the top of our list because it is the game we would send someone who has never played one of these and does not want to install anything to find out.

Questions people ask

Is Hero Wars free to play?

Yes, and it is playable for months without paying. Money buys speed and the top of the roster, not access. The campaign, the guild modes and the titan track are all open to a free account.

Can I play Hero Wars in a browser?

Yes. It runs in a browser tab with no download, and the same account continues on a phone. That is why it is on this list: nothing to install, and nothing lost when you change machine.

How long is a session?

Ten minutes clears the daily list. An evening is optional and mostly goes into the campaign or the arena. It is designed to be picked up rather than sat down with.

Which heroes should a new player level?

Whichever five the campaign has already given you, as long as one heals and one takes damage. The specific names change with balance patches; the rule that five fed heroes beat fifteen hungry ones does not.

Is it pay to win?

At the top of the arena, yes. Everywhere else, no. The campaign, the guild and the titans are paced for a free account, and the counter to most walls is a hero you already own.