Soldiers Inc: Mobile Warfare Review – Tedious War

Soldiers Inc: Mobile Warfare is perfectly fine. Absolutely, utterly run-of-the-mill fine. If you’re a fan of things like Game of War, you’ll probably like Soldiers Inc: Mobile Warfare. It’ll appeal to your urge to achieve something without actually doing much. …

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Soldiers Inc: Mobile Warfare is perfectly fine. Absolutely, utterly run-of-the-mill fine. If you’re a fan of things like Game of War, you’ll probably like Soldiers Inc: Mobile Warfare. It’ll appeal to your urge to achieve something without actually doing much. And that’s the thing — it’s a very hands-off game, meaning it’s really quite soulless. But hey, you’ll still achieve…something.

Set in 2037, the future is bleak and pretty evil. The world has declared war on the Phoenix Corporation, which happens to own the only source of a lifesaving serum. That makes it sound like there’s an end game involved, but in reality, Soldiers Inc: Mobile Warfare is all about building up your resources and becoming stronger than everyone else. Like so many other titles within this genre, you’re working towards placing new buildings, upgrading existing structures, and accruing an army to defend your area.

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Soldiers Inc: Mobile Warfare constantly throws objectives at you. Not a second goes by without you having a new mission to participate in. At first, it’s almost addictive. It’ll certainly momentarily appeal to those who love to have a purpose while gaming. Each task is typically hands-off, though. They are things like “upgrade something” or “recruit some troops.” In each case, you tap on the objective, then tap on the relevant button, and the game does the rest. Sometimes you’ll find yourself having to upgrade the same building multiple times in quick succession. That’s a particularly thankless task, being really quite dull, as you can’t queue up upgrades.

Soldiers Inc: Mobile Warfare has a ridiculous amount of timers, as is frequently the way with such games, but you can skip some of these. If the time is only fairly brief, you can hit the ‘free’ button and skip ahead, sort of leaving you wondering why it even bothers with a timer in the first place.

The longer you play and the more you progress, the lengthier the timers become. And that’s also where you can buy boosts to skip them. For a price, obviously. That means, eventually, you’ll end up sitting around waiting for things to finish up, making you feel even more out of control.

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At least you can participate in some PvE missions, as well as join up with other players via alliances. The global and alliance chat goes some way to making you feel more of a part of something, but it’s not enough. Instead, you’ll simply be logging on to complete a few tasks before getting bored and stepping away.

In its defense, there is a weird sense of satisfaction to feeling like you’ve achieved something — either by watching your base flourish or by completing yet another objective. It’s still not really enough, though. It’s not long before you realize those upgrades are coming slower than they were at the start, and your attention starts to wane. That’s also around when Soldiers Inc: Mobile Warfare tries to lure you in with some expensive in-app purchases. Sure they’ll help, but do you really want to pay up so much for something you’re not even really playing?

A little too hands-off for comfort, Soldiers Inc: Mobile Warfare lacks some all important personality when it comes to drawing you in. It’s yet another paint by numbers empire building game that’s all too keen to take your money, rather than compel you to play.

The good

  • Neverending supply of missions to complete
  • Ideal for those with limited hands-on time
  • Alliance system is useful

The bad

  • You've played it all before
  • Really quite tedious
  • All too hands-off
40 out of 100
Jennifer is a UK-based freelance writer. Her work has featured at multiple outlets, including Gamasutra, 148apps, Paste, TechRadar, Wareable, and MyM magazine. In her spare time, she tries to teach her guinea pigs tricks, and enjoys losing hours to Netflix.