Galaga Wars Review

Galaga is one of my favorite arcade games of all time. For some reason I find the act of using a space ship to shoot down waves of other ships so enjoyable. For the 35th anniversary of this game Bandi Namco has released a new game, titled Galaga Wars on mobile. Is this a great celebration of the series or just another free-to-play garbage game making use of a popular property?

The gameplay of Galaga Wars is to survive waves of enemies and travel through eleven different sectors. You do this by moving the automatically firing at enemy ships as you move your ship with your finger around the screen. When you destroy ships they can drop coins, the ability to fire faster, or one of four different power-ups depending on the ship. The coins are used to buy upgrades to one of the four power-ups and as a way to unlock warping to different sectors. You can also rescue other ships from the enemies and gain a partner to help you fight the waves for a limited amount of time. There are also daily challenges you can do that range from defeating an enemy a certain amount of times or collecting a certain amount of items.

One of the biggest parts of the game is the ships. There are four ships available, the Fighter (Galaga), the Galaxip (Galaxian), the FX-01 (Starblade), and the Solvalou (Xevious). It’s with these ships that the free to play aspect comes in. The game starts off free with the Fighter being unlocked and able to be fully upgradeable. The game in this state does include ads, but you can pay a dollar to get rid of ads and get another ship, the FX-01. I recommend this as it gets rid of ads and gets you another ship along with money. You can also buy the other two ships for a dollar each.

The music is very good, with it inspired by the classic sounds without reusing them or getting rid of them completely. I found it worked well for the game.

Over all the game is a great celebration of Galaga and of its history. It is able to bring its classic gameplay to a new generation and keep it fun. It celebrates its series roots while being accessible (and not overpriced) as a free-to-play game. I enjoyed Galaga Wars and plan to play it for a long while