Highlights
- Star Wars: Hunters offers a unique free-to-play PvP arena combat experience for mobile and Nintendo Switch players.
- Fans of Overwatch will find similarities in character selection, gameplay, and game modes in Star Wars: Hunters.
- With 13 playable characters and similar game modes to Overwatch 2, Star Wars: Hunters provides a competitive experience for fans.
A lot of eyes in the gaming industry are starting to turn towards Star Wars: Hunters as the game draws closer to its official launch date of June 4. The game, developed by Zynga and hoping to launch on mobile devices and the Nintendo Switch, takes quite a unique approach for a Star Wars video game adaptation, being a free-to-play PvP arena combat experience at its core.
While the premise of squad-based arena combat is fairly unique to the Star Wars franchise, fans are already starting to note the inherent similarities between Star Wars: Hunters and the Overwatch IP. The character selection, core gameplay, and especially game modes of Star Wars: Hunters are very much in-line with the experiences that Overwatch is known for, and fans of the iconic hero shooter may want to check Star Wars: Hunters out to get another fix of high-octane PvP engagements.
Star Wars: Hunters Gets New Cinematic Trailer
The upcoming Star Wars game for the Nintendo Switch drops a new cinematic trailer that showcases the game’s characters and battle arena.
Star Wars: Hunters Takes the Overwatch Experience to Mobile Devices
The full release of Star Wars: Hunters has been a long time coming, with the project taking its first steps in 2018. Zynga, who have had great success in the past through games like Farmville, announced Hunters at 2021’s Nintendo Direct presentation, although the game’s release date has been delayed several times since then.
Despite the delays to its full release, Star Wars: Hunters was launched in a kind of early access state in Australasia in 2021, meaning a lot of the main gameplay elements of the title are already well known. As Star Wars: Legends gets closer to its full worldwide release, the similarities that it shares with Overwatch are becoming even more clear.
Star Wars: Legends’ Modes and Characters Take a Page Out of Overwatch’s Book
Like the Overwatch franchise, Hunters allows players to choose from a wide range of in-game characters, each offering unique combat avenues and abilities. Also like Overwatch, these characters are categorized between damage, tank, and support, with there currently being 13 confirmed playable characters that belong to some of the most famous factions in Star Wars.
Star Wars: Hunters also shares the same compact lobbies as Overwatch 2, with the 2022 sequel famously changing the franchise’s usual 6v6 gameplay for a new 5v5 approach. Hunters features 4v4 lobbies for its team-based game modes, meaning that character choice and team composition are just as important as they are in Overwatch. The game modes of Star Wars: Hunters are another real point of similarity between the mobile game and Overwatch, with the title currently featuring the following modes:
- Squad Brawl
- Dynamic Control
- Power Control
- Trophy Chase
- Escort
The likes of Escort and Control also happen to be two of the major game modes of Overwatch 2, meaning that fans of the Blizzard franchise will feel right at home trying out Star Wars: Legends, if the game meets its intended release date of June 4. The abilities and core combat mechanics of Legends largely follow the same formula as Overwatch, with team composition and character-specific abilities being very important, and the overlapping game modes between the two games make the free-to-play mobile experience one that fans of Overwatch should enjoy checking out.
Star Wars: Hunters
- Released
- June 4, 2024
- ESRB
- T For Teen Due To Violence