When comparing Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft vs Minecraft - Pocket Edition, the Slant community recommends Minecraft - Pocket Edition for most people. In the question“What are the best cross-platform PC/Android games?” Minecraft - Pocket Edition is ranked 6th while Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft is ranked 8th. The most important reason people chose Minecraft - Pocket Edition is:
Each new world a player starts is randomly generated, making for a different experience every time a new world is started. There are 38 biomes - snowy, cold, medium/lush, dry/warm, and neutral biomes, each with numerous sub-biomes (such as mountainous, rivers, forested, swamp, beach and more). These biomes each have their own set of blocks and configurations, and each frozen river biome will be different from the next frozen fiver biome you see.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Active community
It has a lot of players due to Blizzard's fanbase which means finding multiplayer matches is not all that difficult.
Pro Polished overall aesthetic
Possibly the most polished user Interface of digital CCGs. Unified and fun art style and flavor text.
Pro Great even for casual players
Hearthstone has a friendly learning curve that makes picking it up and getting started easy for people who don't want to spend a lot of time learning rules and tricks.
Pro Multi-platform
Available on PC and on mobile. Makes a great commute companion (provided you have internet).
Pro Familiar characters from Warcraft 3 and World of warcraft
The characters used in Hearthstone are all from the lore of the Warcraft series, making for a familiar universe for fans of the series.
Pro Brawl events, that don't require you to follow "the meta"
You can take advantage of weekly brawl events that give you a certain set of cards (so no need to pay to stay competitive). It keeps the game fresh, fun and fairly "casual".
Pro Entertaining Voice Acting
The voice work really adds to the game and makes it entertaining to play.
Pro Card Balances and Game Updates Often
The Hearthstone team is always looking at their data and community reaction towards cards and the state of the game, and they have made many card and game changes/updates to balance and improve the game for all players.
Pro You won't be cursed at in the chat.
Interaction with opponent limited to simple pre-made phrases, so you don't have to see how many 1337 gamers had their way with you or your mother. Or deal with the spam about free decks, new hacks etc.
Pro Near-perfect balance between going first or second
There's no significant first-turn or second-turn advantage in Hearthstone. The player going second gets an extra card from his deck as well as "The Coin", a card that gives one extra mana crystal for one turn. This subverts the advantage that would be gained otherwise by the player going first.
Pro Free to play that doesn't exploit
Yes it's free to play, but it's designed to easily continue to play and have fun without having to feel like you HAVE to pay. At the same time, after playing a while you'll probably want to.
Pro Great if you don't take it too seriously
HS is meant to be fun, lighthearted, and generally casual. It requires a lot of time and money investment if you wish to play seriously.
Pro Completely new experience with each generated world keeps the game fresh
Each new world a player starts is randomly generated, making for a different experience every time a new world is started. There are 38 biomes - snowy, cold, medium/lush, dry/warm, and neutral biomes, each with numerous sub-biomes (such as mountainous, rivers, forested, swamp, beach and more). These biomes each have their own set of blocks and configurations, and each frozen river biome will be different from the next frozen fiver biome you see.
Pro Great freedom of expression thanks to the sandbox gameplay
In Minecraft you can really do whatever you want. If exploring different landscapes is your thing, creative mode lets you do that. Building castles or villages, or even sculptures, computers (complete with redstone logic), or unique builds can be done such as roller coasters or replicas of objects like the Enterprise from Star Trek.
For more combat focused gameplay, enter survivor mode and you can fight monsters, gather resources, craft weapons, build traps and farms and much more.
Pro Local multiplayer option for when there is no internet connection
Minecraft can be played with other people locally over Wi-Fi. This is great for those that have friends or family they would like to play with locally, or when there is no way to connect the device to the internet.
Pro Plenty of fun customizable skins for those interested in customizing their look
Minecraft for Android offers player skins, so users can customize their avatar's look. While some of the skins are free, there are others that cost money through in-app-purchases offered as skin packs. All skin packs are $0.99 a piece.
Pro Active development means plenty of new features and fixed bugs
There are updates to the game all the time, new features do get added at a good pace, which means that not only do bugs get fixed but that the game will constantly be growing as the platform grows with it, which allows more demanding features to be added with time.
Pro Plenty of expansive mods available if the core game gets too boring
Minecraft can be modded in order to bring extended functionality to the game. Using mods created by the community, users are able to theme the game to their liking, such as theming the game to look like Grand Theft Auto or adding extra crafting objects.
Pro Addictive gameplay makes the title difficult to put down
There is always one more thing that the player can get done before turning off the game. Building a structure and wanting to complete it - oh but you ran out of materials. Well you will therefore need to go down into the caves again. Oh you died in a cave and need to go back before your items disappear - better get down there again. And so it continues. There is always one more thing to do before you are "done", which is the underlying appeal of the game, never wanting to stop playing.
Pro Monika
This is cool!!
Pro Good controller and button mapping support allows the game to be easily played with many different controllers
For those who would like to play with a controller, support was added in July 2015. Anyone with a HID supported controller can easily connect through Bluetooth. They can then go into the games settings to map which buttons they want to use. This customizability means that you can now adjust the controller to your liking when using an HID controller.
Pro Do not log
Cons
Con Huge Money Sink
Although you can "technically" play for free, Hearthstone is very stingy on rewards. To get the limit of 100 paltry coins free a day, you have to win 30 games vs mostly players who have much better cards than you. It can take a new player 6 to 8(or more) hours to accomplish this. And after all this you get a pack of 5 cards that are often completely worthless to any viable deck. It's possible to get cards like "Angry Chicken"(worthless card) as the "Rare" card several times. You can also get a bunch of cards you already have a lot of.
Con Many mechanics based on random numbers
Random effects in the game use a random number generator, which causes an uncertainty of all outcomes. This causes one or both players to be frustrated because they can lose an already won game despite playing to the best of their ability.
Con The reward system is not significant enough
Hearthstone's reward system is very lackluster, providing little to nothing of significance to the casual or excessive player. There will be times when you feel heavily rewarded by the game, but these times are few and far between and if you are driven by rewards you will likely lose attraction to this game quickly.
Con Lacking a lot of depth found in better TCGs
Con Crafting is expensive
In lieu of trading cards, this game uses a disenchanting/crafting system to handle duplicate copies in your collection and being able to obtain the cards you want. Many cards disenchant for paltry amounts, and the best cards cost lots of "dust" to be able to play with.
Con Luck is more rewarding than skill.
When you lose a game in Hearthstone you don't learn anything because you generally can't play around most of the cards, most of the cards have random effects you have no control over it whatsoever.
Con Additional "Cards" must be paid for if not earned by continuously playing
There is a bit of a grind in earning new cards, so for those that do not want to spend the large amount of time needed to earn quality cards they will need to be purchased, which can get expensive.
Con Dependent on Battle.net infrastructure, not playable offline
The game requires a connection with Battle.net servers from the developers, and thus can't be played offline.
Con Ridiculously bloated
Over 4 GB data installed on ones device. Which is quite a lot of room, something many might not have to spare.
Con No trading with other players
Con The discover mechanic alone ruined this game
Luck tends to be more important than skill: there are numerous RNG-based cards in this game. Players that care about skill are better of playing other games, like Magic.
Con Simplistic and unintuitive card design
Very little mechanical depth, most of the complexity is based on random numbers.
Con Sometimes unfair matchmaking
Sometimes players will be matched up with people who clearly have been playing longer.
Con Poor port
Plays much better on PC. Sluggish and crashes often on mobile, sometimes connections can be difficult to make as well.
Con Chinese money > Freedom of speech
Blizzard WILL sell your soul to the chinese overlords for a couple sheckels. DO NOT play this game if you care about freedom of any kind. There are many other CCG out there. Have some dignity and principles.
Con Laggy multiplayer gameplay
Depending on the speed of your device and graphics quality, this game tends to lag and load slowly when using the multiplayer function.
Con Not as deep as other versions
Minecraft - Pocket Edition does not have as much content as other versions due to the app needing a limited size for mobile devices and their small storage. This means there is missing content in the mobile version over the PC or console versions. It is getting comparative better, but still is lacking due to the platform.