Interesting gameplay, its like slay the spire in 3d :-) Nice music that creates atmosphere of real tough fight. Minimalistic and, at the same time, stylish graphics. First few levels are easy, but in the end of the game big difficulty spike awaits you in order to ruin all positive impressions game made before and make you rage quit it. At least it happends with me.
I selected the easiest level of difficulty but that does not help at all. Fights in tight spaces has the same issue that Othercide has with its difficulty curve. Its just so dissapointing that for me it was impossible to complete the very last level of the last mission. And I do not wish to start over a new game just to try build proper deck for the last level of the game or try replay the last level for the 20th time
It's a pretty good strategy game. However, there is only one saved game. You can't work multiple characters at a time. If you want to try something different, all your previous progress is deleted. So you can't switch between multiple decks of cards without doing all the same levels all over again.
Fun concept but sluggish and drawn out gameplay holds it down. It's like a combination of Into the Breach and Slay the Spire except this game made me wish I was playing either instead.
The game structure is similar to other deckbuiler roguelikes (attack with cards, paths with choices, card rewards after each fight, boss at the end of each layer).
However, the gameplay is much more reminiscent of Into the Breach.
Turn based tactical grid combat with Enemy attacks patterns telegraphed beforehand to allow you to move or manipulate the enemies to avoid damage or even get them to hit each other.
And similarly it is VERY much expecting you to mostly prefect avoid or block them.
Even halfway, enemies can hit 1/3 of your max hp per attack and healing is not common.
Despite many other reviews complaining about the difficulty, I uh... beat it first try.
Had one restart due to getting cornered in a boss fight but otherwise never felt really challenged. However, I can easily see a bad hand or position instantly ending a run due to the high damage and small boards. Additionally, many of the rewards are locked behind (beat in X turns) making it a strong get stronger kind of deal.
Still overall, if you liked Into the Breach, I would highly recommend this.
But I never felt I wanted to go for "just one more run" or grind to max to see all the cards. TBF I didn't do that for Into the Breach either.
There's also a number of minor flaws and issues that prevent me from giving it a perfect score.
The art is very stylish but I found it got kinda dull by the end of a run. Same with the music.
There's good enemy variety and most of them have unique profiles that are easy to see what they are and what direction they are looking at. Most - as some of them, especially a couple mafia are basically the same besides their weapon which can be missed.
You often need to constantly check on unit descriptions. esp bosses, to see what its range is. I've had multiple surprises when I realized a boss was 2 range despite being melee.
Nodes could use better tooltips on what bonus objectives and their rewards are.
Abilities could use better wording at times (ie. attacks that ignore counter still can trigger auto attack. But defensive cards often don't, blocks sometimes prevent special effects but not always)
Lots of strategies are pretty RNG on getting you the right cards.
Difficulty can randomly spike at times. I got layer 3 and 4 enemies on a layer 1 event. Turning it into one of the longer and harder fights.
