Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes PC Hands-On Preview

Capital Games has been cooking up a native PC client for Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes that leverages high-end performance and controls to deliver what might be the best possible way to play the gacha game from a galaxy far, far away. Early Access for the Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes PC build kicks off on July 17, and players will be able to link their PC client to their mobile accounts and keep any progress made once it goes into its worldwide launch.

The Best War Games got a hands-on look at the PC build where we were able to effortlessly link our account to the PC client and continue right where we left off on mobile. It's worth noting that Capital Games is using this Early Access period to respond to player feedback and technical issues, so it's possible that some of what we've seen may change for the worldwide launch.

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By  Josh Cotts

Galaxy of Heroes Has Never Looked Better

Of course, the first thing anyone will notice about the PC build is the improved visuals. Galaxy of Heroes' PC client supports up to 4K resolutions and delivers butter-smooth framerates thanks to some extremely lenient system requirements. Despite its age, Galaxy of Heroes has always been a good-looking game thanks to its art style, but seeing the models and textures at a high resolution on a larger screen really made us appreciate each detail. This isn't a complete textures and models overhaul, but it is certainly the best Galaxy of Heroes has looked. Other than screen resolution and a vsync toggle, there are no additional graphics settings to tweak.

The game also benefits from the additional screen real estate from a PC monitor, in particular on the roster screen which now shows over twice as many portraits as on our mobile device. Many other UI elements also enjoy this improvement such as the daily activities and achievements list. Speaking of achievements, the EA app immediately recognized our already-earned achievements and unlocked them for our profile in the app.

Mouse and Keyboard Controls Completely Change the Game

The other major draw for the PC client is mouse and keyboard functionality, with many elements of the game operable with fully customizable hotkeys. By default, each table at the cantina is bound to keyboard keys roughly matching their location in the cantina, such as guilds being all the way to the left on the Q key while the rightmost shard store is bound to the I key.

During gameplay, both the friendly team and enemy team members as well as their abilities are hotkeyed. This leads to some incredibly fast and responsive matches and completely changes the way the game feels, and it's hard to go back to the game on our phone after experiencing this. One slight improvement we appreciated was in-game tooltips being moved to mouseover, which reduces instances of triggering an ability with an accidental double tap when all we wanted to do was check its effects.

There are some missed opportunities for even further keyboard features we'd like to see, such as a bindable key for any "Accept" or "Go" buttons that pop up. We can press Escape to close these windows, but any "Yes I want this" buttons still need to be clicked. It would've also been nice to be able to navigate through mission tiers and nodes with keyboard keys.

Overall though, the native PC client is shaping up to be the definitive way to play Galaxy of Heroes, and players hopefully won't have to rely on third-party emulators to enjoy the game on their PC any longer. Hopefully, the Capital Games team can squeeze in just a few more improvements to bring the client up to the next level before it leaves Early Access.

Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes is free to play on mobile and enters PC Early Access on July 17.