Breach Wanderers

Breach Wanderers has a number of features that set it aside from the standard StS clone - not only does it have more complex mechanics (mana cards, opportunity attacks, etc.), it also allows the player to choose their starting cards and the pool of cards that will be offered to them during their run. While there is still RNG involved in pathing and battle rewards, this allows different strategies/builds to be constructed for each character. With a good variety of characters, each with multiple viable playstyles, quests to complete, buildings to unlock and so forth, there is a lot of depth to the game and it's quite possible (as I have) to spend many hours doing battle. The downsides include the amount of grind required to unlock all the skills of all the characters and a difficulty spike that is, initially at least, quite offputting - but there is an active Discord and plenty of material available to help you get to grips with the nuances of the game. The main shame is that the game is not to be developed further (though the developer is active on the Discord), though with a large amount of challenging endgame content, this is far from abandonware. Probably my favourite deckbuilder (yes, including that one). PS There are a few reviews that say the game is too easy - judging by their hours, these players have not gone beyond the first couple of depths, which are essentially tutorial level - see the post by the developer on the community page on this topic. There is absolutely challenging gameplay to be had here!

I played for about 60 hours and enjoyed it until the final few hours. Why the negative review? Well, while there is meta progression, you will hit a plateau after your character reaches level 10. You will not get any stronger, you will not really get any better cards (which these is way too many anyway) and you will not unlock any better gear. Your character will stagnate while the game just gets harder and harder. There is no joy after maxing out your character only pain and frustration is left. It is really just too bad because for 50 plus hours, I had a really fun time. At end game, I was left frustrated and had a lack of desire to do any more long runs just to get smacked down by the final boss due to either bad RNG of trinkets or bad RNG of my card pool. I'm not sure how to fix the game other than letting players continue to level up and for your cards to level up as well. That would be preferable to the current mess of the late/end game. If the developer "fixes" the late/end game issues, I will pick it up again. Otherwise, I have a ton of other games to enjoy and this one will get tossed on the trash heap of "almost but not quite".

While it's not bad and it's an interesting evolution on Slay The Spire, the runs are too big and take too long, especially since you can't control your deck size terribly well. So many fights where you're just blasting through every card in your deck without even thinking. The number of cards is also overwhelming. To summarize: Too big for its own good, could use streamlining. Why play this and not Slay The Spire?

Runs can be quick and gameplay makes me want to keep playing

[h1][b] TLDR: A promising deck and card pool building system wasted on uninspiring characters, mobile-feeling UI, and a roguelite loop too shallow to stand out in an already crowded genre. [/b] [/h1] [h1]PROS: [/h1] ➕Can build your deck you start with AND the pool of cards you encounter during a run [h1]NEUTRALS: [/h1] 🔹Poor Steam Deck controls [h1]CONS: [/h1] ➖Poor UI/look and feel ➖Abandoned ➖None of the characters I’ve tried felt fun ➖Very grindy [h1] [b] Content (Game world/Narrative) – [4/10] [/b] [/h1] The game world consists of three different areas - a hub, the zone map, and the battle area. For the sake of simplicity, there doesn’t seem to be anything different between the zone maps and the battle areas other than background wallpaper, and the hub doesn’t change. It’s obviously similar to Slay the Spire and does nothing to improve upon the already established maps. There is a small narrative in the background that is simply doing quests or goals as you progress, not really worth mentioning. [h1][b] Gameplay (Mechanics/Difficulty) – [5/10] [/b] [/h1] The gameplay loop is similar to Slay the Spire - pick a character, pick a route, and then progress through the area. Where the game differs most from Slay the Spire is in the deck building components, by far Breach Wanderer’s best mechanic. You can build your deck out before you go on a run, and furthermore, you can affect what cards appear within the pool of card drops as you complete fights and gain loot. This is awesome. Otherwise, the cards themselves and the characters are pretty boring and one-dimensional. Most of the characters are based entirely around applying a status effect or some gimmicky version of stealth. There’s about ~10 characters, but it’s a massive grind to unlock them. The first 3 aren’t bad, 1 is given from doing quests, and the remaining 6 or so will take dozens of hours of grinding currency to unlock, currency that you would have to spend on characters instead of on other roguelite aspects, like gear. The difficulty is ridiculously easy at first, another big change coming from Slay the Spire. I beat the game multiple times on the lowest setting, with the difficulty only becoming a challenge when you add in the 2nd area. There appears to be 3 zones in total, but you gradually unlock them as you complete quests. [h1] [b] Technical (Graphics/Performance) – [4/10] [/b] [/h1] The graphical fidelity appears fine, if a bit simplistic. I’d say it's around PS2-era fidelity. The negative things here for me is the art style, to me, it’s simply not good. Another thing is the UI. It seems very mobile-like and not great for the desktop. Performance wise, the game ran fine for me, there were slight issues with outside applications when running in borderless fullscreen and lag. I didn’t notice any bugs, but I was confused on more than one occasion why some cards weren’t working. The game explains a lot of the card effects, but there’s still some questionable things on activation. 1440p @ 240hz | installed on SSD [h1] [b] Audio – [4/10] [/b] [/h1] Nothing noteworthy for music. I didn't notice anything good. No voice acting. [h1] [b] Replay Factor (Longevity) – [4/10] [/b] [/h1] As far as content goes, there’s some decent replay value. I played about ~10 games with about 7 of those being repeat character runs. I didn’t notice many different or exciting events, making each run barely different. Also, there is a ton of grinding involved. Based on the amount of gold I was getting from zone 2 completion, it would take me about 5 or 6 runs to get enough gold for some of the higher priced characters. By spending gold there, you’re also taking longer to unlock stat upgrades as they cost the same. [h1] [b] Final Verdict – [4/10] [/b] [/h1] Breach Wanderers (BW) is a rogueLITE CCG game that takes many mechanics from Slay the Spire (StS), while adding its own flavor to the gameplay. However, I would say that given the dozens of games to copy the roguelike formula that StS created, BW doesn’t do enough to differentiate itself and stand on its own. By far the best part of BW is the ability to not only create your own deck, but also create the pool of cards that your card drops draw from. To me, this is HUGE, as I have fond memories back in the day of building decks in Magic and Yu-Gi-Oh!. Creating decks and the upgrade system does move BW more into the roguelite territory, but that’s not a negative, just an observation. Unfortunately for me, that’s where the good of BW ends. Of the multiple runs I did, the multiple characters I tried, there wasn’t anything exciting to aim towards. As cool as the building your deck function is, it does somewhat take the surprise out of the roguelike/lite randomness. I personally think that the pool option should be able to be turned off, instead of only being able to turn off both deck and pool option. I think creating a starting deck helps to set the foundations of a build, but organizing the random pool takes the fun out of it. And even ignoring that part, the cards and characters I tried were simply uninspiring and unfun. It mostly felt like multiple variations of a builder/spender deck, just with different statuses. Instead of having 10 boring characters with minimal mechanics, there should have been 3 or 5 characters with much deeper, more intricate mechanics. Aside from that, I can even complain about the superficial aspects - the look and feel of the game are not the best. The art style is uninspiring and the UI reeks of a mobile port. Overall, I can’t recommend BW. In the oversaturated market of roguelike CCG games, it ends up being a forgettable and vapid experience. [h1] [b] Recommend? (Price) [Y/N] [/b] [/h1] [h1] [/h1] $15 is a decent price, but I’d still suggest waiting on a sale. $5 is much better. You can find my curator page here: https://steamcommunity.com/groups/Synik_GR

Score: 2/5 Bland, slow, repetitive, inferior Slay the Spire-like. Small pool of enemies and enemy comps, sometimes getting the same enemy comp 3 times in a row. Long battles, 50-100% longer than enjoyable. Slow grind for limited unlocks, with only the one starting character to choose from in 3 hours of play time and a very limited amount of viable deck strategies. Most animations are lacking. About a quarter or third of the art is bad, with the rest being between passable and good. SFX's are good. Music/soundtrack is okay.

前二十个小时流程很舒服，成长曲线平滑，难度适中，有主线任务 但是我三十个小时还在打主线是怎么回事，无语了,主线就是找个理由重复打，重复打就算了，干嘛打到一半，到中途任务点打完任务怪就给我退出来了呢？好玩吗 Ygn:7/10

Good Game, seems easy at first, but than it gets very complex with LOTS of mechanics! Recommended for deckbuilding lovers!

It's just very run of the mill. It's average in every single department, why settle for mediocrity if you can have anything else really?