[h3] Bad. 2/5 [/h3]
[i] On my scale, a 2/5 game is disappointing, unfun, or otherwise not worth the purchase price. There are definitely better alternatives, and I highly recommend you consider finding one of those. [/i]
Maybe this just isn’t my type of game. I’m not a huge fan of autobattlers, although I have come to “enjoy” TFT and the like. And, as with any game I try, I aim to be as open minded as I can and find enjoyment in whatever experience I’m trying out.
The game is just not fun. There is no real or comprehensive tutorial, and no real no explanation of what is going on or what the mechanics are or what the synergies are. In fact, it’s not immediately clear that the game is really [i] multiplayer only [/i]. There is maybe one line at the very bottom of the store page that indicates that you are playing real people rather than the computer, but that’s a far stretch.
Even from that point of view, the game is somewhat nonsensical. You don’t have matchmaking, and you have a “scaling” tournament format where you are kinda going-through a roguelike competition and your opponents are scaling alongside you. It’s a very interesting concept, but because it’s so poorly signposted and explained, it actually becomes a detriment to the game.
When I booted up the game and loaded in, the first thing I noticed was that only 4 people were on the daily leaderboard. Ok, whatever, I cannot imagine a lot of people are playing this. But then I make my little loadout and hit find opponent, and it spits one out so fast I was like “oh this is a single player game.” But after losing my first tournament, I was convinced there was no way a dev team was coming up with those usernames by themselves.
I timed it. Every single match loads in at the exact same pace. Which means I’m playing against bots. Or am I playing a snapshot of another player’s build at that moment in time? It really matters, because if I’m just playing against snapshots or bots or whatever, why couldn’t this just have been a single-player roguelike? And if I’m playing against real people in real time, how the ♥♥♥♥ does the matchmaking work? In TFT you’re playing against 7 other people who you’ve matched with up front. But in this game you’re doing a “tournament” you can play at your own pace. So how does this work??
If you’re using snapshots or including my steam username in a database of possible names other people can match with, I’d rather know that up front. Otherwise, it’s a privacy issue. (And if they’re doing this, what else are they collecting and keeping without telling you?) So for this alone, I say bad.
But I am open-minded and I am here writing this, and like a certain NSFW game I’ve previously reviewed, the question of how this stacks up as a game in its genre does matter. And the answer is: also bad.
It has some key QOL issues. First, and probably most importantly, is that there is no way to see what the evolution of a card does [i] before [/i] you evolve it. So unless you’re willing to commit the evolutions to memory, you will probably try to evolve something and it’ll be useless. This would be easily solved by letting the player inspect the potential evolution, and is REALLY important if the only way to evolve something is by playing a round with it. It’s just such a poorly implemented idea that could’ve been ok, but really sucks.
Not only that, you may accidentally evolve things you really don’t want to. In fact, I had just the thing happen, where I didn’t notice my shark carry was going to evolve with the filler nature essence I had next to it and it completely assassinated my build. The reason for this is because you can only see what might evolve if you mouse over each individual component. If you just move stuff around and miss the faint blue line, which may or may not be a very similar color as the water and wind elements, you might miss an unintended evolution pairing.
So not only are you evolving things blindly as a new player, hoping something will be good, certain evolutions completely change the entire usage of the card. It’s not as straightforward as “this monster gets better” which is what any reasonable human would expect. No no no, evolution for some monsters is a buff to the same mechanic but to others completely changes everything about it and makes it a new monster. That’s how my shark turned into a swamp turtle and became useless.
It’s just poorly telegraphed and explained; lazy and sloppy and bad. In most autobattlers you get to really see what does what, but in this game nothing is really clear enough for you to make an easy judgement on what worked and what didn’t. You just set to x3 speed, take the W and/or L, and move onto the shop. There is no weight, no consequence, no opportunity to really learn. At least with a game like TFT I can see that the highly upgraded unit with 3 items roasted my cheeks; in this game I see ♥♥♥♥-bumpkis.
I have no idea what it’s doing on a multiplayer level, and the core gameplay just kinda sucks. It’s boring. Such a decent idea for a backpack pokemon rogue-like/lite, and instead they chase the multiplayer slop format. If they had made this a single player combination creature collector with Slay the Spire-esque progression, it probably would’ve been very satisfying. A shame such potential is instead such disappointment.
AND they have the audacity to charge $12? For this? Bark bark. I got this as a part of a bundle but I feel offended by the price tag nonetheless. Avoid.
