A little over a month ago Transformers: Forged to Fight went up on the Play Store as a pre-registration game. Well, today is the day, you can finally download the title in order to check it out in all of its Cybertronian glory.

As you can see from the trailer, this is a fighting game at its core but like all fighting games their enjoyment comes down to the controls. Something I am glad to report, the touchscreen controls actually work quite well. They are swipe based wherein you use both sides of your screen to control the action. The left side allows for blocking and movement. The right side allows for a few different maneuvers such as light strikes, medium strikes, and a power move. There is also a button for a special move that requires energy that gets built up during play. Overall the controls are intuitive and responsive which really helps to keep the gameplay accessible.

On top of the fighting gameplay, there is also a long-term goal to keep mind of. You will be tasked with building a base that you will obviously need to protect. This is where the gacha mechanics come into play as you will inevitably be collecting as many Transformers as possible. You can, of course, upgrade them for fighting, but you can also set them up as defenses for your base. This way your bot collections usefulness is twofold, which helps to keep your collection in rotation at all times.

Something to keep in mind is that this base protection aspect is multiplayer focused. Sadly this is where the free-to-play mechanics favor those that pay the most money. Obviously, if someone has purchased enough high tier draws for their bots, they will have a stronger team to beat you senseless with.

It is also worth noting that I have experienced quite a lot of lag playing this today. Movement from screen to screen is pretty slow with some overly long load times mixed in to boot. A definite downside to a server-based game, especially when you consider that this is mostly a single player experience.

The last thing I would like to cover are of course the in-app purchases. To no one's surprise, they go as high as $99.99. The IAPs are for purchasing the in-game currency of Energon Cubes as well as two different starter packs. The Energon Cubes will allow you to purchase things like Crystals, which are then used to purchase gacha draws for the bots. So yeah, it is the same convoluted two-tier currency system that we have all seen before.

Overall, Transformers: Forged to Fight is pretty much what you would expect. This is mostly a clone of Marvel: Contest of Champions with a few new additions and a bit of polishing. Sure, there may be some fun to be had for the first few hours but eventually, you will hit the grind.