Changing this back to a thumbs up because the Devs actually listened and re-balanced the game. I haven't had a change to play the update yet, but I will return to the game (already re-downloaded) and can hopefully finish it.
--- Original review below
From the Steam achievements we know the number of players that completed each of the 5 'zones' (levels) of the game:
Zone 1 34%
Zone 2 22%
Zone 3 13%
Zone 4 5%
Zone 5 3%
34% of players completing the first level is pretty low, but not catastrophically so. But to then lose a third of those players through level two, and then half of the remaining players each level after that, there is something seriously wrong with game balance and progression.
Most games stabilise at a certain point. If you look at steam achievements you'll often see that whatever percent of the player base (usually around 50% for a decent game) made it past some critical point (usually half way through), the vast majority of those go on to finish it. But this game never gets there, it just sheds it's player base every step along the way.
It doesn't help that the game has some serious QoL issues especially that deck building itself is a real chore. (it's not alone here, most deck building computer games fail hard on this part of the UI) When I finish a session it's not usually because I want to stop playing the game proper, but because I just can't face that deck building screen again today.
Well at level 4.5 I'm giving up, joining the 90% of players who never even made it that far.
It could be argued that 10+ hours of fun (despite 2+ hours of complete frustration) is well worth the price. I don't regret it. But I also think a game should be finishable by a reasonable proportion of the people who buy it. That is clearly not the case here.
This game needed a publisher, someone who could look at it objectively and knock the rough edges off. There is a really good core game here, it looks pretty good and is very satisfying when it all comes together. But I'm changing my rating to a thumbs down because I don't think anyone should be starting something 97% of people were unable to finish, and I can't bring myself to play it anymore.
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Original comments at about the 9 hour mark.
To add insult to injury, stage 3 you unlock abilities which only exacerbate the wave 10 problem. The game gives you a bunch of extra stuff you can do that makes waves 1-9 even more trivial but does not do anything for wave 10. It hides these abilities away in a menu you almost never use, rather than making them part of the main UI. I played several levels before I even remembered they were there, and it took me several minutes to find them.
Also, deck building gets even worse as you get more cards. Desperately needs a way to thumbs up and thumbs down cards to help with sorting, sort by newest acquired, sort by rarity status. At this point I am literally taking a photo of the screen with my phone so I can copy existing decks for modifications. The fact that ever level has a different deck size and you have to have the exact number of cards is just stupid.
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Original review at 5 hour mark
Well I'll give it a thumbs up for now because 4 hours of entertainment for the price is (sadly) above average, but:
Spiking the difficulty every 5 waves in sponsored mode does not make the game fun or challenging. It just makes me feel like I've been wasting my time for 4 waves when I lose. I don't know how much more of that I can take.
Deck management is a pain, as it usually is in these kinds of games. At the very least creating a new deck should copy the current deck. 99.999% of the time you want to modify an existing deck but keep the original for re-use later. Re-building a deck from scratch every time is excruciating and by far the worst part of the game.
Forcing the deck limit during building means you are constantly having to remove a card before you can add one every step of the way. It makes the process unbearably fiddly. Just let me add all the cards I want and I can thin down to the deck limit at the end. This is how I would build a deck in real life. If I had to guess I'd say that the game was play-tested with this turned off because nobody would put up with this if they were playing the game all the time.
Grinding is extremely unrewarding, mainly due to the points above. I don't mind a bit of mindless grindyness in games but you are essentially stuck with the silly choice of doing 5 levels and getting piddly rewards, or trying to stretch to 10 levels, which means cruising through 9 levels and getting creamed in level 10. I get they are trying to add replayability whilst giving you some cools stuff to work towards, but it seems highly unbalanced. This is not some free-to-play game with booster packs and time-skips available via microtransations; It's a pay-for game and progression needs to be reasonable so players can progress through the game they paid for and a reasonable rate.
But regardless, I enjoyed it until I hit the wall and had to start grinding out of necessity instead of doing it as a fun diversion. I'll leave it for awhile and come back. That review may change to a thumbs down unless I can get some meaningful progression next time.
