Final Stardust: Cosmic Nexus

I recommend this game primarily out of respect for what it represents. It's rare to find a single-player trading card game on Steam that isn't a roguelike, making it a standout in its genre. It brings back nostalgic memories of playing Yu-Gi-Oh! Day of the Duelist and GX Duel Academy on the GBA. While the core gameplay is unique and intriguing, the game suffers from significant progression and balancing issues that detract from the overall experience. [b]Story (3/10)[/b] Almost no plot, just a little twist in the end game. [b]Lore and World Building (2/10)[/b] It's there but not interesting enough. [b]Dialogue (2/10)[/b] Too flat, no emotion or characters. [b]Progression system (4/10)[/b] Feels like playing angry bird where you unlock new stage (NPC) linearly, but with a 5 level difficulty for each of them. Collecting badges from the guardian doesn't feel rewarding. No end game content. [b]Economy Design (6/10)[/b] You can buy booster pack using gold and crafting cards using stardust. And pick a random dark card after battling NPC. The price seems fair enough, but you can easily craft overpowered celestial card or get a random legendary dark card too easily. [b]Combat System (7/10)[/b] It's decent. I like the concept of 5 minute card battle. It's interesting that every lane has certain effect that impacting the card placement strategy. And evolving the plano in the field feels satisfying. What I found lacking is the status effect, one card can only has one status at a time, so inflicting status ailment won't override the other based on its stack count, which make it rather confusing. [b]Visual Style (7/10)[/b] It's good enough. Cool monster and character design. Just lacking in animation and character expression. [b]Interface Design (6/10)[/b] Basic, feels cheap, but works. [b]Control and Interaction (6/10)[/b] No Gamepad support, so it cannot be played on Steam Deck. Cannot skip the after battle result which is time consuming. But, it's a good thing that it has options to turn off some animation and display on the battle scene. [b]Replayability (5/10)[/b] Very low Replayability. Grinding achievements feels like a chore, it should add other achievement or battle restrictions that will encourage player to use different deck and strategies to play which is the main appeal of the game. [b]Balance & Difficulty (4/10)[/b] Despite the advantage of having more than 3 same cards, playing against the CPU impose no challange at all, the game needs most improvement in that area. And the CPU opponent is too dumb, often result in missplay when playing a complex card's effect.

Final Stardust? More Like Final Snoozefest." I really wanted to like Final Stardust: Cosmic Nexus. The concept had all the right ingredients: a card-based strategy system inspired by Yu-Gi-Oh! paired with creature summoning reminiscent of Pokémon. On paper, this should have been my new obsession. But instead, I found myself bored and disappointed within the first hour—something I rarely say, especially about a game with such nostalgic promise. The combat, which should be the core thrill of a card battler, is mind-numbingly dull. Enemy AI seems content to endlessly spam low-level units, removing any semblance of tension or strategy from battles. It never feels like you're being challenged, which turns each encounter into a monotonous grind rather than a tactical experience. Worse yet, the tutorial barely exists. It drops you in with minimal direction, expecting you to piece together systems on your own. Normally I enjoy some discovery, but here it felt like being tossed into a pool with no water—just confusion and frustration. Visually, the game has flair. The Yu-Gi-Oh! homage in the art is obvious and sometimes even charming, but the lack of a clear identity makes it feel more like a tribute game than a confident, original IP. It borrows heavily from games that did it better, and never quite becomes more than the sum of its influences. On the audio side, I’ll give credit where it’s due—the music is surprisingly solid and fits the theme well. But music alone can’t carry a game, especially when every other aspect feels undercooked. If you’re hoping for an engaging card battler with addictive mechanics and fresh design, this unfortunately isn’t it. A great idea buried under boring execution and missed potential.

The fact that this gem of a game is sitting at "mostly positive" while absolute trash is promoted on steam is quite depressing. This is hands down on of the most fun TCGs I've played and boy, have I played all of them, at a competitive level. If you want a lighthearted TCG with focus on gameplay, making broken decks and getting that Duel masters and early Yu-gi-oh nostalgia, this is it. My only complaint is that there isn't more of it. If the developer does decide to make a sequel, I hope a fleshed out single player and perhaps some PVP is available. No scummy micro-transactions, no rougelite ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, just a honest to god single player TCG.

Like others already said, the game is not bad in theory. But being forced to grind out the boringly easy difficulties for EVERY SINGLE opponent first, before you are allowed to play against them where they are using a real deck is killing this game for me.

Fun game, but like...who thought it would be fun to make the player sit through the enemy spamming lv1s over and over for every single npc? Just makes it so repetitive and boring

Ok game but has a serious difficulty issue. It makes no sense to force the player the fight level 1 bots for more than 42 matches, and then another 42 for level 2 bots, and another 42 for level 3 bots while the game only really requires thinking at bot lvl 4+. Tho very good art.

Really wanted to like it but the tutorial isn't enough and the game is just very jank and while I was expecting something like a Yugioh Duel Academy for my Steam Deck, this just isn't it. Plus it seems like support has ended so its unlikely this is going to get better with time.

Saying this is a bit painful, I was a Yu Gi Oh kid and I really want to like this game but I can't recommend it at all... Its mechanics are fun, and I think what it represents as a single player TCG is very valuable these days, since there are hardly any games in this genre. It is clearly inspired by the Yu Gi Oh Tag Force series, which I enjoyed a lot as a kid and which brought back a lot of nostalgia for me. However, I cannot recommend this game. It forces you to fight the same opponents over and over again just to challenge them with their “real” deck. This makes no sense, because at the lower levels they don’t offer any challenge, you can beat them even with the starter deck! The story is almost non existent, and once you understand the basic mechanics of the game, you can build decks that destroy any opponent without much difficulty (I didn’t lose a single match against the strongest characters with their best decks, even though I’d only unlocked a tiny number of cards). The card designs are very poor and the characters are very cliche, with designs that feel cheap even for a B grade anime. I understand this game was made by a single indie developer, but its problems wouldn’t take much effort to fix.

As stated by the other reviews, this game has the worst opening set of levels in history. Imagine if every trainer up to the second gym or so had a team consisting of six metapods. But even beyond that, the game just isn't super interesting. There are no "secondary" card types, like instants, trainer cards, or spells. Just creatures, giving a big "mobile game" vibe. The creatures are quite nicely animated though.

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