Beneath Oresa

I like the overall eurojank vibe of this game and its aesthetic, it kind of reminds me of Oban Star Racers in a weird way. But I feel like it's way overtuned in act 3, among other things. I'm no deckbuilder pro but I have like 500 hours across a number of roguelike deckbuilders, and ones that are way more sophisticated than this game, and I've only managed to win 1 out of 7 or 8 runs. Runs are quite lengthy for this type of game so losing is certainly demotivating because of the 1-2 hour time investment. And from reading community posts, this is not a unique experience. The community for this game does seem god awful as well, as is the case with any "difficult" game that didn't manage to take off in popularity (I wonder why), so I recommend you just try to figure out a playstyle that works for you rather than look at vague guides that are out of touch. In fact, I don't recommend the game at all unless you're obsessed with roguelike deckbuilders. It doesn't respect your time and some runs can absolutely be ruined by bad card reward RNG. It's so stupid that you can't even skip card rewards which is insane to me, and card removals are few and far between. Even if you fight all of the elites, which is really manageable in this game, there are too many useless "antiqorums" (relics) that demand a particular deck setup, which I wouldn't mind if I were given a shop to buy and remove cards from the deck so I can at least try to pivot, for example. But because your deck building options are super limited, you end up having to pick antiqorums that are useless, or even detrimental to your deck. It's fine if it was, let's say, a mystery event where you gamble and end up getting a cursed relic, but in this game elite fights are a gamble as to whether you'll just end up wasting time and HP to win a bad relic - this type of game design doesn't exist in Slay the Spire. With prior experience in roguelike deckbuilders, you are going to be beating act 1 and 2 consistently low diff, but act 3 is scandalously difficult for a character like Sora, if you didn't have consistently good card rewards in the previous acts. I can't quite put my finger on why this is wrong, but in StS for example, act 3 is a victory lap for a well built deck, and the enemies are not 3x more powerful than what you had in the previous act, so it's certainly jarring. So you can sort of paint a picture why this game isn't up to par based on the above. I feel that the difficulty is illusory, but "real" enough for enthusiasts to defend the game and tell off any naysayers because "they're too bad at the game to grasp its mechanics", for example. Not that I will stop playing, as I'll probably develop a strong pattern recognition at around 50 to a 100 hours as is usually what happens, and I will start winning on the lower difficulties consistently, but you need to ask yourself if you really want to spend that kind of time on a niche game that's not even all that.

As a card game: The game does not feature a skip option for card rewards. It tries to "balance" this by offering a lot of card removes, but all this does actually is remove choice in reward nodes because you're ALWAYS picking card remove to get rid of basics and lots of common card rewards that are often actively harmful rather than helpful. Doesn't really feel like the mechanics which are built to suggest strategic play are supported by... having a strategy. You kind of just try to faceroll everything with whatever jank you're forced into rather than drafting intelligently, no matter what level of play you are personally at. Speaking of faceroll, block is pretty bad in this game too, so at least you can rest easy knowing that the worst runs are going to get blown up by 40+ incoming damage every turn in act 2 and 3 rather than suffering for too long. As a story/rpg: it kind of felt like the game baits you? The animation and art is pretty top notch, the pitch for Oresa is strong with a cinematic opening at launch, the characters and 3 factions they belong to have some neat lore bits for you to read.... ...and then that's it. There is nothing else. No dialogues, no flavor text on cards, no events, no bosses that make you ponder the nature of the setting, no endings. Nothing. It makes you wonder what the point of the game even was.

I dunno. I've tried this game out a few times now. On the one hand, the combat animations are way better than any other STS-like. It's nice to see attacks actually play out, and I wish there were more fighter sts-likes. For the negatives though, hoo-ee. There's very little choice or planning, you just kinda roll with what you get. The enemy design all look like people pulled out of a trash pile. There's no real cool factor. The ingame terms are all unnecessarily obtuse words that aren't intuitive. I get that you want to distinguish yourself from STS, but it feels like reading one of those fantasy novels where they just make up words and languages to hide the fact that they have no actual original system. Since you can't reject taking cards (or certain relics), you can build around a theme only to be forced to take items/cards that go against that theme. Why? What's the point or fun in this?

This game is one of the best card battlers I have ever played. What drew me in initially is the art style, compared to legendary card battlers like Slay the Spire 1 and 2 this games visuals are far superior. At first I did have an issue with this game, which is that you cant choose to take not card as a crad reward, however after playing more I beleive this was done intentionally by the devs and was a very smart decison. I cannot count how many runs of other card battlers I have won by getting my cards so low i am guarenteed a the best hand everytime or infinite loop with energy gain and card draw. That kind of cheese is not possible in this, and you do get enough card removes to still keep your deck around the size it started it so as long as you are always thinning it doesnt feel like your deck is massive. The game is fun with interesting synergies and play styles. I would argue it is actually well balanced too, except for one thing and this is my only negative with this game. The final boss is too difficult in comparison to the rest of the game. If I lose a run it will be the final boss, it just outputs too much damage to block with most builds and too much health to kill before death. It was my 5th run before I defeated it, which for those who know roguelikes that is actually quick. But in most I'll die in other places, it sort feels like the rest of the game is on a lower difficulty then the final boss. Other than that this game is fantastic and I recommend it to any rougelike or card game enjoyer. Just go in with open mind and enjoy the experience, even if you will probably get wiped by the final boss every run! If the devs were ever to add anything, or make a second game, which would be awesome, I would love a coop mode! I feel this kinda of combat makes for great multiplayer, and if you dont want to have the character overlap if they end fighting the same guy I would suggest just making the players take turns! Edit: I feel in order to show the full experience of this game i have to leave what was written before as almost all of it still stands. I do however, find this game just takes more time to get good at then your average roguelike. I thought the final boss was abnormally hard, even more then games like Hades. Now hades took me longer to complete a run, but it always felt like it was achiveable if you just played a bit better. I no longer support my previous claim that the final boss is too hard, it just requires patience and making sure every turn you are fully reading what all opponents are doing and what passive show up under their health bar. This is a fantastic game and i highly recommend it, it is so satisfying to get good at. If i had any complaint at this point, it would be simply i want multiplayer, but thats not really a complaint and more of a suggestion for the second game!

Goblinz Publishing в очередной раз доказали, что отбирают для издания только самые оригинальные рогалики. Я бы назвал данную игру карточным Mad Max или Rage 2. Играется свежо, несмотря на то, что игре уже 2.5 года. А ещё невероятно красиво! Но стоит сказать, что нюансов прям со старта очень много, то есть порог вхождения достаточно высокий. Для лучшего понимания правил приходится (как всегда, в общем-то) переключать на английский язык. В минусы запишу малое количество врагов и скудное разнообразие уровней. Но забеги не кажутся однообразными по причине наличия различных симбиозов между героями, которых аж 9 (3 класса). В общем, за 30% рекомендую однозначно. Оценка в жанре : 8,5/10

This is an excellent chill roguelike deckbuilder with fantastic, satisfying presentation. This game is not at all difficult for the genre - I could beat the max difficulty fairly consistently, back at a time I was struggling to get to even A10 in STS1 (which is to say, I was bad). I think it is a shame that for years the review scores have languished at mostly positive from complaints about difficulty. The deckbuilding balance is pretty relaxed. You do need to build up synergy, but most combos you find generally give you a moderate boost, rather than a huge power spike. This gives it a more relaxed progression curve where you're not racing to get combo pieces in place before you die. The companions adds a cool side system to progression. It's not a whole extra dimension, more of a bonus, but it feels well integrated and unconvoluted. They're a little variable in how interesting they are - I found the ones I liked and stuck with them. Not being able to skip cards is a little more controversial, but is another design that makes the game feel chill to me. You never have to worry if adding a or skipping is better - you just pick the card that fits best. There are many cards that exhaust or are removed from the deck after use and card removal is plentiful, so your deck doesn't bloat out of control. I honestly prefer the game being balanced around no skip to everything except fixed decks where new cards replace old ones (like Vault of the Void). The near/far system, enemy mechanics and character/faction mechanics work together to make playing fights out a little spicier than most deckbuilders, without being too taxing. There's a decent amount of card draw and creation in the card pool, so you don't get screwed by missing your interaction cards often. I'd say it's at a sweet spot for feeling satisfying without actually requiring you to think hard. QOL is decent for the genre, there wasn't really anything that really grated on me. I appreciate that the game does not make you wait for animations to finish between each card you play, and slows/speeds time in a way that looks kinda cool. I might be praising an overly obvious feature here, but I've played enough turn based games that get this wrong and it's almost always enough to make me instantly drop them. There's a good amount of variety here, with all the different characters and companion options. The bosses and encounters feel distinct enough to not feel super repetitive (- I particularly like the horde type fights, they're good fun). That said, there's not a massive number of encounters and boss variants, so it's not really endlessly replayable. I beat max difficulty, tried out a bunch of different character/companion combinations, then was done. I haven't played over and over like Vault of the Void (or more recently STS2), but I was satisfied with the value I got. The game is not much on sale these days. It's a bit weird that the characters never talk to each other or anything, but it's better than having them yap constantly. You don't really get any story in this one. It's not really a problem, but it does feel like something is missing when you win a run. I tried the game on Steam Deck - it works great. It ran fine on a potato PC back in 2023 too. Overall, I'd recommend Beneath Oresa if you're looking to play a deckbuilder that plays on the more relaxed or casual side, without being bland or spiceless. You won't get super deep gameplay here, but sometimes you just want to hit a guy with a big sword, make them get shot by their friend, then trigger a counter attack for 100 damage.

The entire game is just an expedient for the camera-gimmick it is based on: at first it's kind of compelling, but as it's soon revealed, even the spectacle is actually very limited, as there is a very limited set of attack animations shared by many cards. Besides that, the game has such a poor enemy variety that with the exception of a few bosses, you'll have encountered most what there's to see after your first run, and the whole thing becomes incredibly repetitive and boring. The game is also entirely devoid of charm, and fails spectacularly at convincingly conveying anything about its worldbuilding: the techno-medieval setting is very "generic" and uninspired at every level. I also disliked the UI in every possible way too: it has a very easy job to represent the few statuses and effects in the game, yet fails spectacularly at both clarity and completeness; additionally the UI does not even support the bare-minimum of accessibility options: a UI-scale setting. Overall, certainly among the worse in genre in my opinion.

Solid until you get to the top levels, then pretty impossible. Would still highly recommend.

The game is not polished enough. I had a thought, that it was in an early access or something. Gets boring after like 10 minutes.