On one hand this game has amazing combat and brutal mechics ment to encourage you to think outside the box to truly get broken builds and I would say is potentally one of the funnest and intense rouge likes I've ever played. Then on the other hand this game hates you, and I truly dont say that lightly. Has someone whos played and beaten several incredibly hard games on their hardest most brutal settings I can say with certainty this game is just straight up unfair. After 150 hours of this game and countless deaths that were my own fault there have been a few that are just unreasonable. Again speaking as someone who loves hard games it is possibly the most satisfying game when you've achieved a build so broken nothing in the game could even dream of stopping you. You could desolve entire mountains with a single click, take a nuke to the face and be unphased by it, hell omni man and super man could fuse together and use all of their might and not a single attack from them would hurt you. Then you step on a single purple glowing pixel and polymorph into a creature that is instantly killed because someone breathed on them too hard. (there is no way to truly stop polymorph forever) Heed my warning I love this game, save yourself from the pain of falling in love with it too. (also maybe ask the devs very nicely for a perk that prevents polymorphing)
I've played this game from the closed beta. They had always changed up card effects to balance the game better and make duels funner. But what even is this release? We played for months giving feedback and then for the final release they throw everything up into the air and change it. Completely destorying any balancing or knowledge that you had from the preveious version. I can't even tell when you're allowed to redraw at the start of rounds anymore. The game looks better but this is nothing like the gwent in witcher 3 and it's nothing like the game it was just a few days ago. Maybe this update is better than I think but right now I think its only going to be more confusing and less balanced. Which is the reason for beta so that when its put out the game is refined and balanced not to change everything at the last second and restart from square one. Also loot crates in this game are dreadful I'm 90+ hours in and I still haven't unlocked 90% of all gold cards and 50% of the silvers, and even missing some bronzes still. The saddest part is I like animated cards but then I would be buying metor powder rather than stuff that actully affects gameplay, so I end up buying neither. Call me crazy but I would've payed 10-20 dollars to get this game built like an actual game rather than a grindfest.
There's many good things about this game. It's very linear but this can be delt with if the base game is good. Sadly it's not. For a game boasting about being entirely focused on magic it does nothing with it. This is mainly because of the crafting system that the implemented in the game. Although you would think that its not a terrible idea at first, by time you get to the second boss you will relise it absolutly destories this game. At the very start your attacks are missle, lobbed bomb, and ray for your main attack, and thats it, you'll never get any other attack that could be remotely interesting. Aside from your main attack you get an aoe attack and a block. These have no varriation on how the attack effect is like your main attack Even the diffrent types of elements you use can not make up for this. from the very start you get fire which is the best combat type meaning theres litterly no reason to use any other besides to make your fire spell more effective (even though it will kill everyone besides bosses and upgraded enemies easily). Then you have the mixed spells. Whenever I relized that this existed I was ecstatic I thought that this game might not actully be a waste of my money. but even this mechanic is heavily flawed. First off it takes wayyyyyyyy to long to get to this point. (about 4-6 hours) and the pat off is not worth it. In total there are 12 mixed spells. THERE IS ONLY 12 IN A GAME 100% FOCUSED ON BADASS MAGIC. They are also rather generic and uninspired. IMO if you're going to release a game thats based on magic go wild with your imagination. Most people who would buy the game are those who have an itch for magic in games and have already used these basic spells in countless games and they want to see new interesting things. Not a game based around the same 3 generic spells. Lichdom is possibly a good game if they never went with the poorly designed crafting system.
I want to love this game, but it seems like RNG is heavily skewed against you (This is comming from someone whos beaten Darkest Dungeons). Because of this you end up getting massivly frustrated as an enemy will hit you every attack; while all of your guys are wildly swinging at it missing every attack. An example to show how bad it is I once missed a SLEEPING dire rate 5 times in a row. One decent counter to this is that you're allowed to save scum as much as you want! Which is incredibly boring and tedious. Also theres no manual that comes with the game and very few posts are made about this leaving you in the dark about most things. Which is fun sometimes, but in a game where you decide so many important things right at the start (if you make a character) it hinders your ablity to maximize your characters ablities which is something you need. Besides that this game is great and I would give it 5 stars if it wasnt for these 2 massive issues.
