Arcanium: Rise of Akhan

I 100% completed this game and its achievements so I wanted to leave a review. Even years after its release it still stands as one of the best of the genres of recent years. A lot of roguelikes and roguelites feel very stale. But somehow this doesn't. With a bunch of unlockable stuff it makes you want to keep playing more. I love how you can't force builds and that you sort of have to pivot away from your original plans sometimes. You might get cards for one character and decide you want to invest energy gain and card draw for them. But later unlock other cards for a different character and decide to pivot. There are so many relics in the game too which make runs feel different every time. There is a bit of roguelite elements but it's done in a really nice way I feel. The only downside I have of the game is some of the characters feel like they weren't built in a way where they can maximize their intended purpose. Celeste for example gains Faith when you use a card on an enemy. It makes for going with shield builds seem a little underwhelming because you can't gain faith from high cost cards and the like. So some of her other builds seem like there's not much to be sought after. There are so few options for things like spirit too, which make it so that stat has to be underutilized. Carrion also feels underwhelming and although his kit is cool conceptually, it doesn't feel like it was executed properly. There's not a lot of things that have combo and echo, which I suppose isn't necessarily a bad thing because it could make for a rare interesting run to benefit from those sort of things. This game is a 10/10. The only other game I can think of that I'd give that to within the past 10 years is Poker Quest. I'm a sucker for unlockables I suppose.

I had this game recommended to me by a friend after we discussed Hearthstone. That I only enjoyed solo adventures and engaged with PvP only to gain enough in-game currency to obtain the adventures without paying money. And I’m really glad I bought Arcanium as it provides exactly what I wanted to play with extra features on top. Plenty of heroes with different playstyles and synergies, adventure and arena mode and all that in very charming artstyle.

I've seen a couple of negative reviews about this game and the more I think about it, the more I feel that I need to explain why I disagree. In short, I think this game is really good most of the time. Interestingly enough, excelling in areas that it's often criticized for. First of all UI: Most of the UI is excellent. The game is very complex, but the UI makes it easy to understand what is going on most of the time. Both feedback to the player as well as transparency (which are the things that most games struggle with) are really well executed... But there are some quirks. Most notably that you can't sort your deck, since the implementation is a stack. (The card that is added last, will be furthest down). It's an unusual implementation for this kind of game, which is annoying enough for some other users to give it a bad review. I agree that it should have been implemented differently, but the rest of UI is so well executed that I still think that it's great overall. Balance: Some other reviews mentions that most of the time it's a cakewalk until you get to a enemy that you can't defeat... And well, yes, it happens. However, it's pretty clear which encounters are difficult, so you know what's coming. The thing is that at the moment of the writing (about 10 hours in if I remove the time I was idling with this game on), I had 4 moments of "Oh s**t, I'm totally screwed!!!", just to realize, that if I only do this, then this, then this, I could make it... just to overcome the original peril. These moments are often what people talks about in highly praised games, and are a sign of excellent balance. When it comes to "cakewalk and random death", mentioned in other reviews... Just as with UI, The game is amazingly well executed most of the time, falling short occasionally, and given negative reviews for those times. And finally aesthetics: Consistently beautiful and cute. Love it.

The game is ok but ultimately is not interesting or fun enough for me to keep playing.

tl;dr Extremely worth it when on sale. Still worth it full price. Could have used a bit more polish but still a great game. Pros: -Battles feel great. Some roguelike deckbuilders feel more like engine builders where turns are on autopilot. In Arcanium, I found myself thinking about how to pilot the three characters all the time. -The cast. Speaking of characters, the cast in this game is spectacular. There's an enormous roster, and almost all of them are fun to play. Not only that, but they all have 3 different ultimates which roughly guide 3 different playstyles. Don't worry though, you wont be able to completely force a build every time. You will still have to adapt to what is given to you, which makes the deckbuilding fun. -The deckbuilding. I'm a big fan of the approach here where each character generally sticks to a 14 card deck. If you want to create a streamlined 5 card deck, this is NOT for you. Its fun to sideboard cards before a fight which makes deckbuilding feel much more fluid. -Position matters. I loved the positioning puzzle this game offers, and is a big aspect of what sets its apart from other StS clones. Setting up your positioning a turn in advance to enable a big swing feels very satisfying. -Solving the energy/draw problem. Most deckbuilders require you to get lucky in order to get mandatory energy/draw increasing upgrades. Not so here. After every fight you gain 'essence' and after 5 essence you get to pick a draw or energy upgrade for a single character. This decision is really engaging and allows you to feel stronger more consistently. Not only that, but harder fights reward more essence, allowing a nice risk/reward aspect. -Two game modes. Im 78hrs in and still havent touched the arena mode yet. Excited to see what it has to offer. Cons: -On the easier side. The difficulty in this game was pretty low. I didnt start to lose until the 2nd to last difficulty. However. The entire time I was blitzing through the numerous difficulty levels, I was having fun and did feel the difficulty (slowly) ramping up. It was nice to unlock stuff during this time and get to learn the characters. -Final boss. The final boss is...fine. I like that it has 5 different aspects which mix up the gameplay and you dont know what you'll be getting until the fight. However, it wasn't spectacular. -The 'one more update' problem. Feels like this game could've used one more major update to push it over the edge. Feels like there should be 1-2 more regions such that you dont have the same 3 every time. Similarly, the final act seems a little rushed/unfinished.

This is like if Hearthstone and Slay the Spire had a baby, in all the good ways.

A really underrated card battler. It's the only other card game besides STS and Monster Train that I find myself enjoying. Hopefully more content can be added as well as maybe stuff like Daily Runs.

Verified isn't a whole truth. Really should be "playable". Using the right thumb stick as a mouse movement and the triggers for the mouse buttons barely qualifies as playable. Now this is shelved until my PC is setup again more than a month from now.

When I try out a new deckbuilding roguelike, I'm always hoping for a long-term challenge. The great games in this genre will always keep surprising you and forcing you to try out new builds because circumstances demand it. And well, Arcanium isn't of them. But it's still a fine game, and I had a decent time with it, although the grind for achievements was a little much. My main disappointment with this game is the amount of false depth in it. There are 16 different characters you can play, which is huge. But, unsurprisingly, their card pool is quite limited, and there's honestly a build and half you can go for on every one of them, on average. Also, interesting wrinkle : as opposed to the usual system, where the option to remove cards from your deck is limited, this game lets you add cards to your collection and exchange them at will. This does sound like a cool mechanic, that will let you non-committally build combos and stuff, without ever struggling with bloat. That being said, the narrow range of cards worth pursuing for each character, and the dramatically low, 9-card minimum for each character's deck limits this mechanic's potential a lot, as you most likely will just replace stuff with "the same thing but better" whenever you get a chance, and honestly, not much else, which ultimately makes it less "constant reflexion about deckbuilding", and more of "simple wish-fulfillment for people who don't want to engage with this type of games in a flexible enough way". It's ok, though! No reason to gatekeep people out of a whole genre just because they didn't spend thousands of hours grinding Ascension 20 on StS. And if you're the type of player that doesn't enjoy adding bits and pieces to your build as you go while trying to keep it coherent, and would rather choose what you want to play from the moment you pick your characters, and just tunnel-vision into it, this game will let you do exactly that. There's also a respectable amount of statuses and effects you can play around, and unique effects on bosses, that make for an overall enjoyable experience. It can get a bit stale, though, as viable strategies usually revolve around going all-in on either DoT or multi-hits, but at least, every character does that in its own slightly different way, and trying it all out will easily take 30 to 40 hours, which I'm pretty sure many people will be happy with. In a nutshell, this game isn't a masterpiece by any standards, but a fun ride nonetheless.

You know a game is balanced well when you stomp the entire run but the final boss kills you not because your strategy failed but because you cannot execute your strategy. 4 cost cards? Can't play them because the boss removed 2 AP (you gain 3 per turn). Dealt 60 damage to the boss? He's immune to damage the rest of the turn. These are not interactive mechanics. The game dev might as well tell me, "You cannot play the game anymore this turn." I don't know of any other card game that does this and for good reason. The UI is terrible. Artifacts won't tell you won't they do hovering over them. You can't find them in the list. The card upgrade screen is a complete travesty showing every single card you own for all three characters whether the card is equipped or not. The mechanics are extremely basic. There's no twisting of dials or turning of levers. You can manipulate almost nothing. The interplay between characters is non-existant. Garbage.