Kamifuda

[i] My Experience [/i] I'm always looking for good single-player deckbuilders, especially if they aren't roguelike/lites. I enjoy finding synergies and trying to maximize the effectiveness of whatever "combos" I've been able to put together. Although I haven't historically been drawn to visual novels or games that use an anime art style, I was willing to give [b]Kamifuda[/b] a shot. In the past, I've loved the single-player deckbuilders [b]Etherlords 2[/b], [b]System Crash[/b], and [b]Cardpocalypse[/b]. I've also had a great time playing the deckbuilders [b]Lord of the Rings: Adventure Card Game[/b] and [b]Ironclad Tactics[/b] in co-op. I liked [b]Kamifuda[/b]'s mechanics and was able to draw easy enough comparisons with [b]Magic: The Gathering[/b], the card game that I've spent the most time on by far. The [i]rituals[/i] remind me a bit of planeswalkers, in that they sit out on the board and are damaged separately from your opponent. [i]Instants[/i] are like instants and sorceries in [b]Magic[/b], while [i]sorceries[/i] in [b]Kamifuda[/b] are actually more like creatures. You pull your mana from your health pool each turn, and therefore your health pool is much larger in [b]Kamifuda[/b] than in [b]Magic[/b]. Although the character design didn't appeal to me overmuch, I liked the visual design of Gloamrot University. There's a cryptic and mysterious feel to the location that comes through in the design of the backdrops you see while talking to other students. I thought the line that represented your character's location in the school was appealing and had an eldritch feel to it, and I loved the visual design of the card shop. The card for purchase looks like a pack of sleeves, hung by metal hooks on a pegboard. Although developer Realm Archive was clear about the genre of the game (visual novel), I still must admit that I got a little fatigued with the dialogue. There were choices in the narrative that were likely meant to liven up the proceedings, but I was often ready to just hop into my next [b]Kamifuda[/b] duel. Additionally, I didn't like the way that extra card rewards were presented around the university. The game provides you with three symbols, each corresponding to a different school of magic. Whatever symbol you pick, you're rewarded with cards of that type. I was unable to remember which symbol corresponded to which school of magic, which meant that my pick was usually a shot in the dark. I would much prefer the developer to give each school of magic a name and to use these names, as this would be much easier to remember than some nondescript symbol. A number of the opponents you'll encounter in the game will use a new school of magic that you haven't seen before. After you defeat them, you'll begin to gain access to the cards within this school. While some players likely found it a fun challenge to put together a deck to counter these new mechanics, I often found it frustrating. It seemed to me like the new schools were almost always better than whatever I had access to up until that point. Finally, I ran into an opponent using a new school that I was unable to best. I tried the duel a handful of times, altering my deck in what felt like an adaptive way prior to each attempt, but never found success. At this point, I sort of lost interest in the game. I wasn't particularly excited about the cards that I had access to and wasn't up for making any more subtle changes to my deck in the hopes that I would win. Perhaps [b]Kamifuda[/b] is a bit too challenging for me? It could be more difficult than the deckbuilders I'd played and enjoyed in the past. Maybe if I'd always picked the correct symbol when receiving random rewards I would've had a better card base to pull from. However, I was able to buy a lot of the cards I was looking for at the shop. Either way, something about [b]Kamifuda[/b] didn't quite click for me. If you also find yourself in this boat, perhaps try one of the games I mentioned in the first paragraph. There's room for many different approaches to gameplay within the deckbuilding genre.

The more progress you make the stronger enemies get in an unfair way, there maximum hp gets bigger and there cards get buffed meanwhile your max hp can't increase beyond the default and your cards do not get buffed. Meanwhile it's neat that there are gimmicks opponents use against you but then with the increasing unfairness your build plays against them in order to win instead of having fun playing with your own deck. Take it how ever you want, maybe you would like it that way *shrugs*

This game is 50% visual novel and 50% card game, and somehow, both are good. Most of the negative reviews seem to hate that the enemies have decks with cards that are just straight upgrades of the ones you get, which is true, but it's not that bad. This is not a game where you build a deck that you think is cool and take it all the way to the finish line. Every match in this game is a boss fight, and after the first five or so duels you're going to need to build custom decks to counter every single one of them. Personally, I found this to be a lot of fun--until the last couple of fights, which are bafflingly difficult. Like, die-on-turn-1 difficult. It's almost a different game at that point, and it's one I didn't enjoy nearly as much as the journey leading up to it. That said, the duels are overwhelmingly a ton of fun. And so is the visual novel portion. The plot itself is very thin, with most of the word count being focused on Persona-esque confidant bonds with each of the other characters in 1-on-1s. These are great, all the characters are charming in their own ways and you can really feel the writer putting their soul into the stories about anxiety and depression and putting on a front, etc. I love how intimate all the bonds are, even the non-romantic ones. The protagonist really cares about his friends, and he isn't shy about showing it. it's also a queer game and you can smooch at least one boy let's goooooooooooooo.

[h1]6.5/10：牌面的，太牌面的[/h1] 从卡巴拉生命树的符号通路，到寺庙求签的强欲而谦逊之壶，卡牌作为贯穿人类神话传统的触媒，是概率论的神秘学入门，也是贿赂鬼神的博弈论基础。在每次双手合拢的十连里，我们规划起人生数值的运营，祈祷着白驹过隙后的鎏金。将dbg引入视觉小说，Kamifuda有着精巧的设计框架，但囿于独游制作的长周期和商业表现，最终未能保持游戏前中期的优良水准，遗憾成为卡牌与avg爱好者未竟的梦中情游。 在Kamifuda的世界里，魔力源于非人的神圣实体，作为背负力量代价的宣誓者，有着各自侍奉的神明。为了学习如何控制自己的力量，Tarot一边用卡牌训练魔力掌控，一边深入自己与同伴成长史里的创伤。魔法学院Gloamrot修筑于虚空之树上，作为生命之树形象的逆位，宣誓者们的情结往往在乎弥补而非创造。从白垩囚庭保释的罪人Tarot，在这里所做的，正是担任故事的媒介：联结起人与物的，人与神的，以及人与人的关系。决斗是魔法技艺的切磋，也是所供奉的理念的碰撞，作为媒介的卡牌与作为媒介的人类，在对决交互的铭刻里汲取着彼此的力量。牌面幻变的兆象给出了博弈树的无穷可能，硬币掷出了先后手，故事就此展开。 游戏前期的表现很优秀，叙事节奏和卡牌对决相辅相成，角色的性格会反映在各自修习的法术体系和套牌风格上。运用力量的方式即是牌组运转的理念，让决斗对局兼具相性克制的策略性和文本演出的临场感。（[b]以下涉及剧透[/b] ）[spoiler]Trent遇害时的成就是“完成序章”，当时的我欣喜于游戏体量的丰富，却没料到游戏至此已完成1/4。游戏在后半段出现了严重的节奏问题，剧情和数值设计都呈现出比较重大的缺陷。抛开Tri作为真女主事件策划的叙事失格和后期所有个人线对角色创伤的单调重复，本作剧作在前期有大量伏笔无法回收（Shopkeeper的真实身份与动机、Pact的运作机制、Gloamrot的秘密和Famished One的背景、Hands的管理和学院之外的Pact-sworn社会etc.），导致故事线始终受有限信息的掣肘；或者说从Tarot接受Yharam指导开始，剧情的赶工痕迹就明显起来。[/spoiler]而在卡牌对局方面，由于AI不是那么聪明，玩家卡池配件到后期也基本补全，制作组抬高游戏难度的方式是粗暴的堆数值，导致最后几章的对决设计非常缺乏策略性。面对大部分卡片都比玩家持有的版本强力，并且拥有大量生命值资源的对手，前中期的各种打点build几乎全军覆没，玩家只能使用慢速burn或者献祭快攻等有限的策略来counter；即使如此，也必须卡好自己和AI的牌序，如果对面key卡先上手可以直接投了重来[spoiler][strike]（让时之焰净化一切）[/strike][/spoiler]。 当15世纪的意大利工匠绘制出牌面上第一个愚者，是否曾幻想过这从原点到世界的预见之旅？牌面的嬗变见证了人类潜能的繁茂，感觉一个人很厉害，我会说ta有牌面。而媒介始终是媒介，遥远的神或许只是脆弱的永续魔法，就像预言最终需要人去践行：历史的同调、此刻的超量、未来的链接。感觉一个人只是在框定的卡面里绘制自己，我会说ta太有牌面了。一个速就故事的遗憾，是永远隔绝于造物的另一端，连触碰也是牌面的。至于先有Kami还是先有Fuda，是输还是赢，情动之时，从来不是问题。

dont buy this for the deck building gameplay, this might still be an alright visual novel though at this point ive lost all interest in playing it overally even just for the story. hoo boy this is gonna be a stream of consciousness rant because i am frustrated why isnt there a log for the duel dialogue? you implemented one for the vn part it cant be that hard to just put a damn text log of what the characters say in a duel. i accidentally skipped over 2 sentences in the tutorial and thus had no idea how the priority system actually works before restarting. the gameplay speed is too fast in certain phases of the duel to fully tell whats going on. even now i have zero idea how all of the effects that trigger when something about the priority changes actually work because all the animations are instantly over before you can even process it all. ofc there also isnt a gameplay log either i hate that the card drops you get from story progression on the map only tell you what kind/color of magic they belong to before you pick them and you only see afterwards what the exact card you chose is. in retrospect i regretted most of my picks once i got fully stuck (more on that later). because of that i started over and fully lost interest in any of the story and skipped through every single dialogue just to get where i was before. i then seemingly recognized some of the color options and when i picked the same as before i also got the exact same card as before so its not actually random at all? why do you have to obfuscate information then if all of the story progression card drops are predetermined? this just means that (like me) a first time player cant be confident in any of the card choices and a returning player will just look up a progression guide to get the card they actually want. even if that was just insane rng on my part i still dont understand why youd want to hide the cards tho and force people to pick blindly? that still just causes feel bad moments for no apparent reason now onto why i first restarted then quit: i got stuck at the first Luke fight and even now i have genuinely no idea how to beat him. from what i think i understood of all the mechanics i dont see any mechanic that offers counterplay to him spamming shields every turn and then banish card after card from your deck. like...its not like theres any telegraphed mechanic that bypasses shields afaik. no special kinds of direct damage or anything nope its all the same and gets eaten by shield. but thats not all, there are cards which reward you for hitting your opponent directly and you guessed it removing shield doesnt ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ count and as i said theres no mechanic that somehow bypasses shield to damage them regardless so whole mechanics your deck might depend on just dont work here, even worse one of the 3 card types total ingame (rituals) are basically just a progress bar that you need to fill by your opponent being damaged. so yes because shield blocks damage you will maybe resolve a single early ritual in that ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ fight before you just hit a wall. awesome. and no as far as i know even the cards that explicitly say "opponent loses reserve(=life)" dont bypass shield even tho from playing other card games youd assume this exact wording is intended to do exactly that. either it doesnt work or again the game speed is so weirdly fast at points that it wasnt actually properly telegraphed that the damage does indeed go through because you have no time to process any of the effects the game is automatically resolving and again there is no gameplay log to scroll back through to see how much damage you did and in which order effects interact. onto the topic of me even having to grasp at straws to find a way to win here: the game seemingly doesnt actually want you to build your own personal deck of cards you like and play in the way you enjoy because from what ive experienced there is no room for creative counterplay here at all (aside from the fact that you dont get enough card drops at first to switch to a different new strategy you encountered for the first time if you want to, you get like 6 cards total of that color and ofc all different ones to maybe swap out with other cards in your 20 card deck while the remainder of the deck stays exactly the same and if you decided to purposefully pick more cards for that strategy you basically have to neglect all the other i think 8 colors which you probably will regret later like i did). some colors just dont interact at all with the strategy of an opponent so essentially the game forces you to rebuild your deck every fight just to counter the opponent. there seems to be no point in trying to build a solid base deck that can deal with a variety of things like youd do in other deckbuilders or irl competitive card games where you dont know what your opponent will play. here there is no point in trying to improvise on the spot how your deck you like might be able to beat your opponent. you just pick the cards that favourably interact with the enemies gimmick and then if you dont do anything stupid you win. you just see that you opponent is weak to you pressing the green button while the yellow, blue and red one do literally nothing, and so you push the green button and win because the developers intended the green button to specifically beat that enemy. cool. whats the point. yes i know strategically picking cards to counter an opponent is also a thing in the roguelike deckbuilders and irl card games i seem to praise, however this isnt switching a few cards in and out from the deck with a strategy you find fun and some strategies just having favourable matchups. this is pure rock paper scissors with no room for any self expression, if i want to win against scissors i have to pick rock and even with infinite skill paper will still lose because its mechanics have no way to actually beat scissors. this is boring i havent even gotten to a point where i would have any actual opinion on the story, all i can say that some of the world building i have no idea whats going on, other parts seem ridiculous, writing was mostly whatever with some moments that were decently well written while with others the pacing suddenly felt off and the sentences being said come out of nowhere with zero subtlety and buildup: every time a character brings up how important mental health awareness is or similar mentions of real world issues there is such a tonal shift imo, suddenly it feels like all the passable dialogue leading up to it was pure filler because the author wanted to write a character with awareness of how important access to mental healthcare is. and fyi i broadly agree with the things being said, this isnt a "keep politics out of video games!!!!!!!" the writing is just clumsy af in those moments and fails to naturally lead up to those talking points, you can tell which exact sentences the author went over 20x in their head and had written down as notes long before any of the encompassing dialogue was written around it as filler just so that the character can say these lines. its like a switch being flipped and fully takes me out of it, its so blatant. also one of if not the first of those "things the author wanted to say" was about how fake activism to get elected sucks which was so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ on the nose i cant. the author rly drops a line about something being popular with the "LGBT people" before i had even a vague idea whether or not the game takes place in a version of the present or some out of time magical school fantasy setting because of you literally waking up in a medieval style dungeon intended for execution with no backstory given and everything being magical until out of nowhere someone mentiones a phone or something. my suspension of disbelief was almost dead multiple times honestly. tdlr; uhhh dont buy it for the gameplay and the story also wasnt written well enough to motivate me to keep playing

I really like the idea of a visual novel that focus on a card game with deck building and card collecting. While this game does deliver on that front, it’s unfortunate that the story is kinda boring. After a while, I found myself just skipping all the dialogue to focus solely on the card game. I do hope we will got more of these, but I want one with more focus on card collecting, one with cards with rarity and condition and such would be really cool. I would give this a Mixed rating if i could, but i cant and since the card game is fun and its a unique approach to a VN, ill leave my review positive. __________________ [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/45534557/]Follow my Curator for more![/url]

Kamifuda is an interesting mix of Lovecraftian-flavored visual novel and deck-building card game. I strongly recommend this game to any fans of any Arkham Horror or Arkham Horror: The Card Game. + Worthy of being called Lovecraftian. The writing is superb, despite a couple of minor translation issues. "Sort-of-speak" instead of so to speak, for instance, but they were hardly an issue for me. + The card game they play named Kamifuda feels pretty rewarding when you take out difficult opponents on the first try. Especially when I dominated them thoroughly. On many occasions I could correctly predict what I'd be facing and change my deck to match them. + The small cast allowed the characters to be fleshed out pretty well. While there aren't a great deal of options, the romance portion was satisfying. There's a gay option, too, and I appreciated the inclusion. + Evy. :) + I got true/good endings on my initial run but I feel like there's a bit more to be uncovered. I'm itching to dive back in and see what gems I can uncover. - The card game is great, and the only opponent I really struggled with was Vix. At the very end of the game, however, I was a bit fed up with the trial-and-error approach to beating the final three Kamifuda games and flipped difficulty to story. I think I now know a correct strategy to beat the final two on Standard, but that last (optional) Vix baffles me. - The word "♥♥♥♥♥♥♥" was a bit overused. Cursing is not a problem for me, however, when overused, its potency wanes. It's similar to the overuse these days of the phrase "toxic workplace", when once that label was considered the kiss of death and a complete dumpster fire of a job has now become a catch-all phrase when someone disagrees with their boss. - Most or all card acquisitions seem to be random. I was missing a lot of cards at endgame and I don't think the Shopkeeper ever had them, either. If I had a full set, maybe I'd have had a better solution to Vix on Standard, who knows. - Anyone expecting voice-overs will be disappointed. I'm actually not sad that they weren't included (better to have no voice acting than bad voice acting in my opinion) but I wanted to throw that out there. Kamifuda is a fairly niche title, but I'm a bit surprised it hasn't received more attention than it has gotten thus far. I definitely feel satisfied for what I paid, and I'd definitely be interested to see more Lovecraft-inspired works from Realm Archive.

enemies will have the exact same cards as you... but upgraded in every way .. a card says loze cards of your deck to play this? nope now its just upsides. the devs know this and claim this is "a feature" as "the player can reload a save" .... so basically reload until you get the perfect and hand the ai doesnt to balance out the cheating .... aside from thet its a weird attempt at visual novel were sometimes you get choices for random stuff that the dev decided is super important like whether you grab a mug with left or right ..... and the only way to know is save scumming

I just couldn't beat the geomancer guy on normal mode and I frankly don't believe the normal mode is offering a "balanced" experience. I could put the game on story mode, but I'd rather just refund it if my choices are between an imbalanced mode that I can't seem to beat and a mode that's designed to be easy. I wanted a fair challenge, and it just doesn't feel fair. The story seems ok. If you want YA eldrich horror this is probably up your alley.