There are two great joys when it comes to the game of deck building — using a deck that dominates your opponents and making decisions that lead to that apathy. CARD. RPG: Misty Battlefield, a strategic RPG where attacking and being attacked turns to card-based battles, providing a feeling of empowerment as your units destroy enemies in a devastating turn or use a stack of powerful defense cards to fend off monster attacks. Unfortunately, the game's deck-building and combat systems lack the variety needed to keep things fresh and interesting, a flaw that seems more obvious given the basic nature of the game. quests, story and meta progression tree.
First things first: “roguelike-style” deck building is part of CARDS' description of the RPG, but that's a bit misleading. It's true that every time you kill an enemy or interact with a card-giving chest on the battlefield, you can choose a card from several options. However, losing all your units just returns you to the start of the current stage, instead of right at the beginning of the game like a regular roguelike. This is a good thing because playing this game over and over again can drive me a little crazy.
In CARDS RPG, you lead the Clausewitz Battalion, a group of mercenaries who travel to the kingdom of Fahftania to stop the Chimera's deadly experiments. Like many JRPG characters, they are presented on the battlefield in chibi form (enemy proportions are more varied), providing a welcome contrast to the subdued colors and mood of the game. The game also displays units inside gilded portrait frames while moving, and when combined with the top-down 2D levels, I could feel as if I was moving the game pieces. play board chess. This aspect brings charm to the levels, which look nice enough but don't make a memorable impression, even if the current level's setting is a town in flames or a sinister laboratory being covered with purple Karensma.
All eight units of the Clausewitz Battalion — five default and three unlockable — have different passives, ranges and movement/attack types, and number of stats. There is a Luck stat that, like the exact influence of stats on unit performance, remains a mystery to me, although it may be related to the hit chance of units. attack card.
Items are a way to improve their base performance. Cavalry Unit Erik Lapide is an all-rounder with a long horizontal and vertical movement distance that makes it easy for him to engage in combat, so amulets that enhance attack and defense make him I become an even more formidable warrior. With the addition of Blessed Holy Water to heal him after each turn in combat, he gains natural staying power and allows you to preserve some of your precious healing potions. Meanwhile, Scout Seth Arden is not a great fighter, but he has good vision—meaning he can see deeper into the fog of war and reveal the identity of his enemies—which can can be further enhanced by looted jewels.
It would be natural to assume that the deckbuilding aspect would allow you to customize and differentiate these units further, but that is not the case. CARD. RPG made the very strange decision to assign the same deck of up to 50 cards to everyone—not only the same type of deck, but the same choice of cards. The general deck composition is made even more frustrating by the presence of unit-specific cards. I really want to use the Cavalry-specific “Knights Resolve,” which gives your attacks an extra 20 damage and improves your defense for three turns, and I've always been intrigued by the Wizard card Apply a random debuff. Unfortunately, there's no point filling your deck with cards that only one or two units can use, especially since your units' invulnerability can be reversed Just because of a bad card draw or wrong press.
The lack of variety in the overall card selection also affects deck construction. The 106 total cards include one-time and two-time Enhanced versions, so most of the deck's progression comes in the form of linear upgrades—more damage, stronger shields, higher debuff rates , more health is restored. I quickly found a build I felt comfortable with and spent way too much time skipping through card selection screens (a few times, I was forced to skip because of a bug that prevented me from undoing my decision ). My skip count would be even higher if the story campaign didn't force me to discard three cards at the end of each level.
Despite its major hassles, deck building is at least satisfying allowing your mercenaries to grow from weaklings to demigods (just don't let them take direct damage) . At the beginning of the game, killing just one standard enemy is a challenge. You only have three turns against normal enemies (five against bosses) per encounter, and your initial damage output isn't high. However, as your force grows stronger, it becomes much easier to avoid damage and deliver the killing blow in one encounter.
It's fun to unleash a defense-lowering debuff — an indispensable tool in a game where Enhanced versions of your basic attacks come with it — on your opponent first when going to town with a variety of damage cards, and it's fun to watch a monster struggle to hurt you because of your high shield value or constant stuns. Even the bosses quickly stopped feeling like a threat once I realized I could use shield cards to negate their critical stuns, resulting in a game that's value-added. damage for stun abilities.
The most empowering moments come from bullying melee fighters from afar with Clausewitz's Archer and Magus units. In these cases, friendly ranged units get a turn to attack (ranged enemies only play one attack card, which still hurts a lot) without fear of retaliation. After unlocking additional Costs for ranged units via a meta progression tree filled with very simple stat upgrades (which preserve your earned XP even on failure), just one turn is enough. can destroy most enemies or leave them on the brink of death in the later stages of the game.
However, the fun of combat eventually wears off, and it's not just the deck's fault. Enemies are varied in visual design, but I didn't feel the need to change tactics regardless of whether I was fighting sandworm monsters, wolves, or spearmen. Each stage requires you to find and destroy boss enemies. Level design is uninteresting and often simple, lacking terrain features that have a tactical impact. Terrain props like snow-covered trees and columns in the desert may be beautiful to look at, but they don't change the fact that I spent most of my time advancing semi-cautiously through the Dull layout and take out any enemies in there. road.
Part of the final stage forces me to consider how my forces will advance against ranged enemies guarding the main road and side routes, and sometimes there are enemies constantly pursuing the force. your quality, but moments like this are virtually non-existent in the rest of the game. Setting aside a somewhat maze-like level that was frustrating to navigate due to its walls being hard to distinguish from the ground, the only memorable level was the one that forced my troops into a head-on confrontation in the middle.
CARDS RPG attempts to encourage strategic movement and positioning with the Break mechanic, in which repeated attacks from a unit against a target enemy type will result in stun. There's also Voltage, an additional stat-boosting leveling system that resets its progress at each stage and provides health regeneration when reaching milestones on its bar. This makes me consider keeping a wounded unit hovering near the front lines to simultaneously finish off wounded enemies and level up. They're fun features, but hardly something that can carry a game.
I was hoping that the story would be a small saving grace, but really it's just there to provide light, contextual dressing for each stage rather than immersing you in a story attractive. It's interesting how the final cutscene plays out in a way that assumes the rest of the game has already endeared me to its characters, when in reality I had to read text descriptions to learn the background their.
At the very least, the story sections offer the chance to see life-size scale illustrations of the characters (mostly cutscenes with 2D in-game characters, however) and listen to the actors. voice actors such as Lynn, Chiwa Saito and Nobuhiko Okamoto in addition to battlefield dialogue. The English voice acting is a mixture of not bad to sounding stilted and artificial to the point of seeming intentional, but I switched to the voice acting a few times when the gameplay repetition started makes me lose focus.
After defeating the tedious and boring final boss, the game unlocks the World Map, which is essentially a New Game Plus mode that allows you to replay levels in any order without the gameplay. story. I only use it to test Hard difficulty (which makes enemies stronger) in a particular stage; I appreciate the inclusion of a World Map, but CARDS The RPG's gameplay loop is too repetitive to motivate replay. If I start the game again, it will only be to hear the regal and rousing brass passages of the main menu music, which I rarely miss.
Merging SRPGs and building decks is a good goal, but CARDS RPG is too sketchy and repetitive to do its fusion concept justice. Luckily, I'm currently wanting to try more Japanese tactical SRPGs/RPGs that aren't called Valkyria Chronicles, but it's a shame that CARDS RPG can't be as fun as it is.
Reviewed on: PC (Steam)
Available on: Nintendo Switch, PS5, PS4, Steam
Release date: May 23, 2024
Developer: ACQUIRE Corp.
Reviewer's Notes: CARDS RPG: The Misty Battlefield launches with DLC including five unit packs. This review only covers the base game's content.
