Grail

[h2]Very Cute... However...[/h2] Reflecting on Grail’s journey from its original, wildly unbalanced demo to its full release, I’m left with mixed feelings. The initial grind, which was requiring 200 trophies to unlock a new character, while earning only 1-6 trophies per hour-long run, felt highly unrewarding. Even with the later shift to a 100-trophy requirement, I still find myself questioning whether the gameplay itself justifies the investment for something I won't wanna play. As an auto-battler, Grail largely plays itself. Your involvement boils down to picking paths and applying stickers or buffs, but these choices rarely feel impactful. The optimal strategy seems to be picking the hardest encounter your build can handle just because it's got the better rewards, then maximizing rewards, and stacking powerful upgrades like the Nature HP bonuses when possible. While there’s some satisfaction in theorycrafting a durable or damage-heavy build, much of that feels detached due to the hands-off gameplay and not being able to really shift the outcome into your favor by playing the right cards at the right minute, so you go out of your way to do something like play 5 (0) cost energy, energy gaining cards that will grant you and extra (5) energy ontop of your (4) base, to play a (9) energy card on turn one, which could very well one shot your opponent or give every other card in your deck +(#) element, damage, shields, boosts, etc. That's thrilling, but getting there is rough. It’s also odd that PvE events don’t affect your health or trophy count, with only the occasional Asyncro PvP (essentially snapshots of anothers builds) having any real consequence. In truth, I found the PvE events more engaging than the fake-PvP, which pales in comparison to what games like Backpack Hero, He Is Coming, and Down With The Ship offer. The automated battles here, while similar, diminish player control fully, it's weird to explain, it just doesn't feel satisfying as it feels like I am only here to press (skip) to get the results page. Maybe it’s just me, but the lack of control and the illusion of competition leave me wanting more from Grail, or in this case, less? I'd be perfectly fine with PvE exclusively, but to want to unlock new costumes for (3) characters, sift through 200+ cards, climb the ranks (there are quite a few) feels pointless in the long run. Very cute design, that's the big highlight, just wish the game itself had more to it. [b]Video Review TBD[/b] [quote] Please consider following my [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/41005226/]Curation page[/url]. I cover a wide range of genres both paid and unpaid, providing unbiased opinions as well as regular giveaway events. [/quote]