This game was fun and interactive when it came out, however, expansions totally killed its magic. Developers decided to add imbalanced cards and use them to force players into playing expansion-specific deck archetypes. Any element of fun just got lost. The game is no more decided by skillful play and careful consideration of opponents deck, but merely by draw luck, as cards and their specific combinations are so strong that one card drawn card can basically kill an opponent on its own. The game of course not only doesn't offer any counter-action for the most powerful cards, but the developers even went out of their way to ban them (the cards which had the potential to counter some of the most powerful cards) from the game.
It doesn't pay off to create a unique deck and surprise opponents with non-standard cards, because the difference in cards' power-level dictates what cards can you play to be successful.
In other words: I really enjoyed the game up to the expansion Journey to Un'Goro, but afterward, it became an unfocused mess. In my opinion, it's not worth getting into at this point.
"Battlegrounds" is a fun mode, but super luck dependent and the Arena suffers from the same issues as competitive: snowball effect can kill you without having a chance to react.
Update: problems of luck and hyper-powerful cards are increasing every expansion. Your skill and experience don't matter in the slightest. Encountering 12/12 on the third turn against the druid, losing to single cards, opponents generating basically an infinite amount of cards from thin air, and insanely powerful cards which cost 0 mana (meaning there is no limit how many of them you can play during your turn) absolutely soured my experience with Hearthstone. Trash. Not worth the time investment.
It doesn't pay off to create a unique deck and surprise opponents with non-standard cards, because the difference in cards' power-level dictates what cards can you play to be successful.
In other words: I really enjoyed the game up to the expansion Journey to Un'Goro, but afterward, it became an unfocused mess. In my opinion, it's not worth getting into at this point.
"Battlegrounds" is a fun mode, but super luck dependent and the Arena suffers from the same issues as competitive: snowball effect can kill you without having a chance to react.
Update: problems of luck and hyper-powerful cards are increasing every expansion. Your skill and experience don't matter in the slightest. Encountering 12/12 on the third turn against the druid, losing to single cards, opponents generating basically an infinite amount of cards from thin air, and insanely powerful cards which cost 0 mana (meaning there is no limit how many of them you can play during your turn) absolutely soured my experience with Hearthstone. Trash. Not worth the time investment.