Recent reviews by Eriepio

Overall this game looks very clean but is lacking in several key areas such as card variety, event variety and the majority of what would make this game interesting is locked behind an ungodly amount of grinding.

There are a couple dozen different characters divided up into various classes. These classes determine what cards you have access to while playing as well as a passive associated with the class. Each character also has a passive that helps differentiate how they play. The problem that arises is that the card pool available to each class is very small. About a dozen or so cards, most of which you won't want in your build. This means that there are very few actual different builds for a character. To make matters worse, given how few cards there are and how few cards you actually want to add, it's very quick to get to the end goal for your deck and spend the rest of your run just ignoring card selections which are a non-negligible amount of events you'll encounter.
Many of these classes at least play quite differently and can have their own unique cards and abilities and the characters passives can be quite helpful at giving them a unique play style. But these characters are not all easy to unlock. At nearly 20 hours of playtime I have not unlocked the last character. I have beaten the "campaigns", completed almost every challenge level and also done a fair few loops in endless mode.

And that brings me to my biggest issue with the game. It's just grinding. The play patterns are very repetitive for all of the fights. The events are boring with no real decision decisions. The decks only need a little bit of editing to get to their final state. And all that's left is looping through endless mode for hours on end until the enemies numbers get so high that your character can't keep up.

There are ways to expand what your character can do. You can get a second and third class. This allows your character access to other card sets and passives. This is actually a really interesting way to allow for creativity in your builds and I think is meant to be a core aspect of the game. All you need to do in order to get access to these is grind endless mode until you get enough badges to buy a class book. However after 20 hours in the game I have only just reached the point where I can buy a class book. So far it has allowed me to introduce a nice bit of variety to the character I put it on, but at least for the combination I chose the final deck is still pretty simple and finishes being built within 2 maybe 3 zones of endless.

And the only real reason to do anything in the game is just to see how far you can make it in endless mode. The "campaign"s are all very simple and don't feel like any achievement to beat with a suitably leveled character, providing no real challenge. So it's just endless mode and seeing how high the numbers get. There is no meaningful variety between runs since there are so few events and almost all enemies play identically from the players perspective.

I have some other minor complaints like some wording errors on some of the text that appears, and how there is very little explanation for a lot of things in the game. But even if those things were fixed it wouldn't change my overall opinion of the game.

Was a fun short little game. I lost 104 minutes of my life playing it and I'm okay with that.

Updated Review:

Over the course of the updates made since my first review many points have been addressed and a few are still present. Overall though I would say that the game is GREAT.


Pros: (This section is relatively unchanged from the original review) deck-building and character customization are fun, and the game has a polished look.
- The core of the game, and the reason i imagine most people are interested in playing the game, is the deck building of your heroes. I haven't really seen any rpg that lets you customize your character this way and i think the skill tree system they use in the game is very interesting as well as it allows you to build your own branches so to speak. Equipment also gives you access to cards that are outside of what you might be able to get normally which can open up brand new experiences if you find the right ones.
- There are also some little things that I really appreciated such as how campsites were almost like a mini-game and broke up some of the more monotonous parts while still keeping the card game aspects in tact. I would have appreciated if the chat cards gave a bit more of a dialogue or if the characters had a chance to express themselves a bit more in general but i understand that's not the core of this game.
- I really like how skill challenges are handled in the game with the risk reward for exhausting skill temporarily. I think the events could be a bit more interesting with slightly more depth added to them. This is a mix of rogue-like deckbuilding and a full rpg but i feel this element could benefit from a bit more of the rpg and less of the rogue.
- i would also like to say that the visuals for the game are all well done and I feel that lots of areas of the game have a really nice polished feel to them. Every part looks like some time and thought went into how they wanted it to feel while playing which is something i appreciate.


Cons: The games ease hinders lots of things that could be great about the game.
- Difficulty has been improed, but overall the game is on the easy side even on harder difficulties. I played through on Torment difficulty and completed every node always taking any options to increase difficulty in an area when presented. The game does institute a level limit so that you can't snowball through each act which i think is actually a good thing. I did have to pay more attention to enemy attack patterns in recent updates which has helped make combat feel more involved though i still never payed attention to what i was going to fight before entering a node as it was never something that either needed to be accounted for or could be accounted for.
- I figured since the game allows you to have extra cards sitting around not in your deck, there would be a great opportunity to customize decks between big fights or at least areas, but even when enemies were highly resistant to my damage types I never felt like it was necessary for me to change my strategy. I really was hoping that more choices about deck building would need to be made. This is still true.
- (This section is similiar to the original but the game made large strides to improve this) Many upgrades are lackluster. There was a very large amount of card balances since my original review including making some of the upgrades on cards more useful, however there are still a decent number of cards that feel unreasonable to upgrade as most of your cards damage/effect will come from your attributes once you get past the earliest stages of the game. Upgrading a cards rank provided very minimal bonus to the BASE stats of the card which made most rank ups feel underwhelming unless the card already had amazing base stats or was outside of your characters main attributes. Mastering cards feels much better on many cards than before and is actually an upgrade on the tree to seek out.
- Resources were originally called out as a major issue but in recent updates things have gotten better. Increased difficulties make revival more frequent and a larger drain and there are more items worth buying making the costs feel impactful again. its not amazing but far less of an issue than before.
- Supplies feel better but are hit or miss still. Sometimes it feels like they only exist to force you to walk back to town and spend the minimal 20gp other times i feel like its more of a way of enforcing the adventuring life on the player, showing how they'd need to come and go from town to resupply and sometimes camp out on the road. idk i just don't dislike it as much as i did before. it feels harder to write this mechanic off as i did before.
- Status effects were completely reworked since my original review and my gripes with them are gone.


Things I'd like to see:
- I would like to see certain enemies to be much harder but have telegraphed strengths and weaknesses. Tell me the next set of enemies has double hp but weakness to elemental effects. I know this can pop up in a fight, but if this was more pronounced before combat then the ability to change which cards you have in your deck would feel more impactful.
- I would like a few time based events. Ie a "deal with this issue in 3 days" because i feel it would help make things like the supply system have more impact but i don't think the game will suffer for the lack of this inclusion.


My updated review is based off of a brand new run i did of the game starting from Act 1 again. Basic build for context.

Pierre Magic Missles
Catherine Heals
Lucius Finishers

I very much enjoyed my time playing the game. Took about 5 hours to finish my first run through. Might go back to try some other routes or achievements.

There are a few things that stood out to me while playing

overall score 4.5/5 excellent game that i'd recommend to friends.

The Bad:
- I disliked that there was often times not an option to do something that seemed like an obvious option.
- Some of the choices aren't clear what they mean. I have selected an option or two that came out much different than I intended. It usually wasn't terrible but given that the whole game is built on these choices it was a bit annoying.
- The order you talk to people matters a lot more than i'd want it to. Make sure to talk to your agents before talking to the peasants even though you start in the throne room. Also do your best to figure out who you most think you'll need to help. you can't tell someone to wait till you've heard other people.
- Battles were awkward and felt pointless. I will avoid spoilers on anything, but there are times in battle where you are told to go talk to archers and then they fire and they seem to have negligible effect. It also just feels a bit weird given the rest of the game.
- you can't back out of conversations once you started them since most of the time your conversations with people one and done.

The Good:
- Surprisingly amazing music. Like i normally play games on silent or low volume because it's not that important to me, but man is this music killer. I am currently rocking to it as I type. It added a lot to the game and i highly recommend keeping your volume on during your play through.
- surprisingly good story. I wasn't expecting that much honestly but i enjoyed it thoroughly. There were some obvious twists that i'm a bit annoyed that I couldn't call out in character, but alas a king can only do so much.
- The resource management was very simple but felt meaningful and impact at all times.
- I think they did a great job at getting you to become invested in the characters. i'd give examples but it would be difficult to do so without spoilers. but lets just say smudge the real MVP.

Overall 4.5/5 Stars with potential to be 5/5 mostly because there of minor things that might only bother me.

Things i love about the game.
- Deck building that allows you to craft and refine a strategy or playstyle depending on what cards become available to you throughout the course of a run. I love seeing a deck come together after waves of looking for cards, upgrading cards and thinning the excess.
- Fun and Interesting events to add a bit of interesting flair to the world. It adds a bit when you see some of the way the rats are responding to your rule and decisions.
- I enjoy unlocking different leaders and cards as i'm progressing throughout the game. The leaders definitely add something to your play style and they help shape what you do in your run and i think that it's a great way to provide some more replay value.

Things that annoy me, but probably don't ruin the game for most people.
- After the last wall on either side of the palace is broken, you cannot send troops to stop any enemy units. which means unless you have a bomb card or the legendary adviser that destroys enemies when your base is hit, the game is essentially over at that point. however the game does not end at this point. it can take time for the enemy to break any buildings that you have in that section, and if it's the infected that got in this can be particularly slow. which means you have to sit and wait, knowing you have lost until it becomes official.
- The draw animation is slow. out of context it probably doesn't appear that slow. but later in the game waves move fast. I've played several runs where i could infinitely play a few cards and redraw them without cost. example: mining for 200+ gold, 2 copies of steal, +1 other card of choice. with no cards in bag you can cycle through these cards for as much money as you want. using your limitless cash use the other card of choice as many times as you'd like. this sounds like it should basically win you the game. infinite money, infinite uses of whatever cards you want. the problem was that the animation for drawing the cards took so long that i couldn't play cards quickly. Even when not attempting infinite loops, i still felt that i was being held back at times by how slow the drawing was.

Things that i do think are somewhat problematic.
- How successful your run will be feels heavily dependent on what cards you get. There are a lot of cards that i would probably never put in any deck regardless of what strategy i'm going for. it's also fairly frequent that i open up the market, hit the refresh and still not want a single card. i've had games where i bought 3 market buildings because i knew if i wanted to beat wave 30 there are certain cards you basically need.
- Depending on which leader you go with, there aren't a lot of different strategies you can go with that feel like they can actually help get you a win.

Reasons i say potentially 5/5
- There is a beta mode in the game called leader mode plus or something like that. It has many more unique cards added. the cards themselves feel more interesting and special. I felt while playing that there was more variety in the decisions i had to make. Basically if they take what's in this beta version and keep working with it, this game would be a 5/5 without any hesitation.