HorcruxCollege review - “A gacha game you don’t need to grab”

• Automated combat leaves gameplay lacking
• Gorgeous anime girls to collect
• Poor UI marrs the experience

The fear of artificial intelligence turning against its creators has been portrayed in movies for decades. Recent technological advances in AI have only made the fear represented in films such as The Terminator and The Matrix feel all the more real. The new mobile RPG HorcuxCollege also plays on humanity's fear of an AI uprising.

HorcruxCollege Defends the World From Rogue AI

The year is 2048 and the cyberpunk society of HorcruxCollege has come to rely heavily on AI in everyday life. However, things take a dark turn when the XMAS virus suddenly infects AI, causing it to turn on its human masters and ruthlessly attack. With terrifying AI-powered creatures running amok, a team emerges from the College to combat the AI threat.

There are tons of students for you to summon all of whom are represented as beautiful anime-style women, some of whom are rather scantily clad. Each hero you collect belongs to a distinct faction such as Imaginary, Mimicry and Quantum and has a special ability. While the character art is impressive it's also one of the best things about the game.

You’d think a game that largely revolves around combat would have an enticing battle system. Unfortunately, that’s not the case here. Your character will automatically attack opponents. With each attack, their power gauge will fill up more. Once a power gauge is full, you can tap the character's picture to use their special skill.

Fusing Horcruxes

You can also equip each girl with a Horcrux, and no, I'm not referring to a sliver of Voldemort's soul. In the game, a Horcrux is a creature that you can fuse to a hero. Fusing a Horcrux to a student grants them bonuses such as Ingenious Thoughts, which gives their basic attack a 10 per cent chance to stun the enemy for 1 second, or Solid Sheild, which increases a character's defence by 150.

Battles are fairly quick, but that doesn't make up for the lacklustre combat. It barely feels interactive, and you'll often beat an enemy before your gauges fill up, meaning you really just sit and watch the battle happen.

 At a certain point, you can unlock automatic combat, which automatically deploys special skills when a hero’s gauge is complete, but again, this does nothing but add to the title’s passive experience.

HorcruxCollege: Campus Life

Once you reach Chapters 2-10, you'll be able to access the college campus. From there, you can head to the Dean's Office, where you can upgrade your girls' stats by studying classes.

---

• Skul review - "Playing the other side of the hero's journey"

---

For instance, studying Life Course A increases all students' ATK by 20. Each class has three levels you can study and you'll gain access to more courses by completing the ones above them. Some classes, like _, only affect heroes from a specific faction. 

Horcrux College suffers from a poor user interface. The game features a lot of menus and at times it’s difficult to hit the back button as it sometimes overlaps with another button. Additionally, sometimes there isn’t a clear button for returning to a previous menu so you’ll just have to tap the screen at random until you get the desired result.

To put it simply, HorcruxCollege isn't worth attending. Yes, the characters are beautiful, but that's about where this gacha game's charm ends. Combat is lacklustre and unfulfilling, and the poorly designed UI further mars the experience. The game relies heavily on gacha tactics, and the storyline is confusing at best. There are a lot of great gacha RPGs on the market, but this simply isn’t one of them.