Guardian Chronicle R is the revamped version of the original Guardian Chronicle game from two years ago and features a similar tower defense gameplay with some major improvements across the board and additional content.
In Guardian Chronicle R, players will need to defend their bases and prevent enemy waves from reaching the end by placing hero units around the predetermined path.
The main highlight of Guardian Chronicle R is the puzzle-like element to it with the ability to fuse duplicate units together in the battlefield, upgrading them to the higher tiered level combining them into one unit. But there’s a catch, placing units, as well as upgrading them are all randomized from your deck of five, so there is a Tetris feel to it when it comes to the anticipation of the heroes that will be initially deployed or spawned as a result of a fuse. It’s all a satisfying balancing act of having to find the perfect balance between quality of quantity, with regards to resource consumption and fusing of heroes.
The game offers a wide variety of units and heroes with unique abilities and attacks that players can deploy on the battlefield. Each unit and hero has different strengths and weaknesses, allowing for strategic gameplay and team composition. Players can grind and use some gacha luck to collect and upgrade units and heroes to improve their effectiveness in battle.
The whole system is pretty intuitive, you can drag duplicate units into each other to fuse them, or double tap a specific unit to auto-combine it with another close by if applicable. The latter is faster, but a riskier maneuver as there is no control on what hero unit will be consumed. And finally, the most clear cut improvement from the original Guardian Chronicle game is the hero tiers now have clear numbers and colors displayed below the units, making it visually easy to identify hero types and tiers.
Guardian Chronicle R features both single-player and multiplayer modes. In single-player mode, players can progress through a campaign, facing increasingly challenging levels and bosses. Multiplayer mode allows players to team up with others in cooperative battles or compete against them in PvP matches with a ranking system.
As part of being a live-service free-to-play game, it has all the hallmarks of being one. Login bonuses, gachas, premium currency, but fortunately there is no energy system in place to limit play. As a free-to-play experience, the game is perfectly enjoyable, especially if your focus is on the PvP element. My minor gripes with the game, it lacks get all or claim all buttons for many of the rewards and bonus pages, requiring you to click on each of them. As well as the lack of the players for other game modes when matchmaking. However, these gripes are only minor and doesn't take away the fact that Guardian Chronicle R is a fun tower defense game to play.