Crystal Alliance is an action-strategy game with a weak attempt at a story. The goal is to use your four heroes to defend precious crystals against enemy attack. The enemies are monsters of varying capabilities ranging from small creature to giant wolves. The strategy comes into play when you have to decide on which hero to match up with what enemy to maximize attack strength. The game is presented well, but lacks the intuitive controls and exciting gameplay necessary to make it a real winner.

There does seem to be a story that technically makes the game an RPG. However, this story is silly and weak, adding very little to the overall experience. The main idea is to defeat the enemies trying to attack the town and destroy the magic crystals. You start off with only one hero to fight with and as you progress through the game you will gain more heroes, each with their own special powers. For example, one hero is an expert gunner, while another is a sharpshooter. The gunner is especially effective against only one monster. So, you’ll want to focus his attacks on that particular monster instead of having him attack them all.

There are four spots for the heroes to shoot from on the left side of the screen. The enemies will attack from the right side of the screen and move at a slow pace in either one of the four lanes. You can tap and drag a hero to whatever lane you’d like to shoot from. The gunner needs to be in the same lane as the enemy in order to attack them. However, the sharpshooter can be in any lane, but you’ll need to drag the arrow to whatever lane you’d like her to shoot at. The characters auto-fire their weapons, so you never get a sense that you are actually pulling the trigger to shoot. All you do is drag your characters around to get them to the appropriate lane. These controls work, but are not always very response. Many times, you will accidentally drag a hero to the wrong lane, wasting valuable time.

If the enemy gets to your heroes, your character will lose health until you defeat the enemy. If the lane is empty when an enemy gets to the end of the lane, the crystals will be destroyed and the game will end.

As you defeat enemies you will earn gold that can be used to purchase weapon upgrades and spells from the store. Examples of upgrades are increased damage and attack rate. Spells include slowing the enemy down and bringing back a lost hero. These spells and upgrades will be critical to your advancement. The levels get progressively more difficult and can really become challenging.

The graphics and sound in Crystal Alliance are done very well, especially the music. The art style is excellent and is maintained throughout the game. However, the animations are overly simplistic and take away a bit from the overall experience.

There are two main problems with this game. For one, the controls are not very intuitive. Dragging around the characters to make them shoot really does get annoying after a while and isn’t very fun. You never tap anything to fire a weapon and as a result, you’ll never feel like you’re actually doing much at all. The game is too passive to be an exciting adventure game. I do not recommend purchasing this application.