Trans-Galactic Tournament (PlayStation 4) Review

Right off the bat, the game begins with a tutorial designed to teach newcomers the ins and outs of the game, and the gameplay is extremely simple. It's a 4v4 affair presented in the bird's-eye view, where players control a single hero. The characters control like a twin-stick shooter. The left stick controls movement, while the right controls the aim. The four shoulder buttons are mapped to each of the four abilities that each character has, and they each contain their own cool down periods, depending on the strength of the ability. The abilities vary from area of effect attacks to temporary statistic buffs for friendly characters. However, for the most part, there does not seem to be any real differences to the moves. Most of the characters play in the same way, with little else separating them apart.

During play, the characters do not level up at all. Instead, in between games, the characters can train in order to get stat boosts as well as the ability to equip different weapons. While this does mildly affect the performance of the fighters, there is no real deep character building here that one may find in various other RPGs. Simple as it may be though, it does feel gratifying when a slow character becomes one of the fastest movers on the map, or when a character is obliterating enemies in a shorter period.

Trans-Galactic Tournament has three different modes of play: a 'Capture the Flag'-styled game titled 'Plunderball', 'Conquest', where captured nodes will increase a team's score in the race for a hundred points, and 'Annihilation', which is a team deathmatch. While they are meant to be different modes of sorts, every game just feels like another deathmatch, where the combatants seem more occupied with getting the most kills instead of actually working as a team to win the match objective. However, the matches themselves are not that long, and are over quickly, thus the modes never quite outstay their welcome.

Three characters are unlocked from the outset, with the rest of the cast locked behind a pay wall of in-game money. Unlike some MOBAs, where the grind of unlocking new characters is enormous, Trans-Galactic Tournament actually makes it quite easy to accumulate money in order to gain control of new characters. There is also a rotating roster of two fighters that can be controlled, similar to what League of Legends employs, which is a great feature to have. The rotating roster is employed well, because any buffs that have been put on those characters are retained for when they make a return to the rotation slot, or when they have been purchased.

Training the characters to boost their stats does cost in-game currency, however, the game does deliver quite a lot of money to the winners of the matches. Sometimes it seems a bit too generous, but that is not a complaint. There are daily challenges, which add replay value to the game, and the coin bonuses for completing these challenges can be quite high. The challenges are not overly difficult to complete, and are a nice way to welcome newcomers to the MOBA universe.