Once Upon a Galaxy

Wow! A free async auto battler without a subscription, $20 for a hero, and no upfront cost of 20-45 bucks? Sign me up!

The problem with this game is that the card pool grows far faster than a free-to-play player can unlock cards. This is because you have to unlock each card for each captain. It felt manageable when the game first came out, if a bit grindy. But, with the number of unlocks (cards for each captain) growing multiplicatively like this, it has become completely unenjoyable without spending a ton of cash.

Been playing for months on mobile, but the recent monetization is a terrible change and I cannot recommend it within the mobile game landscape, certainly not as a PC game. Monthly battle passes to unlock cards early is a pretty expected "not quite a subscription" to games like this, and I'm happy to put some money in for a game I play daily. Add to that paid cosmetics and you've got standard, if still expensive, monetization. They started adding more captains during the month and new 'sets' of captains - both with extra monetization. But generally still unlockable over time and there's enough variety to miss a few. The new change adds one time purchases of $20 rerolls to help you pick a new captain. $20 would be expensive as a single purchase just to have a slightly better deck selection, but its $20 per 'set' - meaning it's $60 today and will continue to increase in price as more sets are added. This is just paywalling a fix to an issue the game is creating, rather than improving the game itself. Such a turnoff for what is fundamentally a good but light game.

The game is beautiful to look out, and card/hero themes are clever and add color to the game. However, sadly there are big problems that make it not live up the glory of it's predecessor (Storybook Brawl). Therefore, I cannot recommend it. And when I say sadly, I mean it. I loved SBB and really felt for the devs for what happened to that gem of a game. Maybe the problems in this game are due to that trauma, because SBB had none of these problems. [h1]Incongruent game design[/h1] Half of the design choices in this game are minimalist and the other half is complex/obscure. This is one of the best ways to create a game where only few players are fully happy about it. 1. The most major offender here is having deck building in an auto battler. This means you need to build a deck for each of the 85 heroes to play optimally. I find this extremely annoying. One of the selling points of auto battlers they skip the deck building hustle. But the combination is even worse! Because in a normal deck builder, after you invest time in building the deck, you can play with it a bunch of times or even tinker with it as you go along. This is impossible with a game where you can't choose your hero. So you end up editing the deck for 1 game! Really bad design choice. 2. Games are too short in the context of how the game is designed. This leads to a feeling the games end "mid build" before you reach the payoffs you were aiming for. 3. You don't have a stash for cards to keep for later. Given how short the game is, maybe this makes sense. But personally I am not a huge fan of this. It is minimalist while at the same time feeling more hard core, as there is less room for error in what you replace. In a way it's the embodiment of the incongruent design of this game - being minimalist and hard core at the same time in all the wrong ways. For me it's just isn't fun- You don't get the casual mindless fun of a casual design or the elaborate depth of a complex design. It just ends up being mildly annoying throughout the game. [h1]UI problems[/h1] 1. Spells have rarities but don't show a colored gem like all the other cards. Why?! A truly baffling choice. You have to click the card and then it shows the rarity in text with no gem either. Rarity gems make learning the game faster. Every time I look at a spell card I get annoyed at this. 2. The bank icon is almost completely invisible. I only discovered it by reading about it. Another extremely bizarre choice. 3. You can't see your enemies in the shop phase. Some rare cards give you a reward based on the enemy you will be facing. But you have no way of checking what enemies are still in the game. It is assumed you will remember that which 99& of players won't. 4. I run into a reward that says if I meet a certain condition I get 4 cards. But it isn't really clear what that means and because the game is so short I didn't get to fins out. Not fun. 5. Some cards with key words have the keywords spelled out on the card negating the whole idea of having keywords in the first place and makes these cards busy for no reason. 6. There are certain words in the text with emphasis, but it is so subtle it hard to see it at all making it useless. 7. Certain bonuses like +1 Fae bonuses are tracked invisibly. There is no place you can look to find where you stand with them. You can see the repeating pattern of having [b] complex design choices combined with a minimalist UI creating an obscure gameplay experience [/b]. 8. You cannot see the base stats of a characters after it has been buffed making it harder to learn the cards because as a noob you don't know if you are looking at a buffed version or not. Especially because shop characters can be buffed too. 9. Overall it looks like this was mostly aimed at mobile leading to the layout not feeling/looking so great on a PC. 10. Even though the game is async you can't stop a run and continue it later like in other async games. WHY?! Did I say baffling already? There are other things that are just not clear enough AND/OR don't feel right. [h1]Game does a bad job of explaining itself[/h1] You basically have to go read the rules to figure it out, and even then some interactions are still unclear. For example buffs are permanent everywhere. Even if you sell a character and get it back later. But it doesn't say so anywhere in game. There were other occasions where things hapend that I just could not explain. I do not know if this is because of interactions I wasn't aware of or due to bugs. At least some case are suspect as bugs, as the behavior made no sense (for example: quest card giving treasure but still have counter on it. Then when counter ended nothing happened) TLDR This game failed to choose if it's a casual low investment game or a hard core "google the best deck" kind of game. For me it ended up failing on both the casual and hard core experience. In addition the UI has many clarity issues that detract from the experience.

I tries to make you sign in with a google account which I would never want to be connected to my Steam account in any way. When you go to use the button to make an account with your Steam account, it says you don't have one. Of course I don't. That is why I am hitting the button to make one there. Why have one to make an account and a button to log in if they both require you to already have an account.

At first I really liked this game. However, the more you play, the more you realize it's largely RNG. You face opponents from some random pool of previous players. Those players were almost always on insanely high roll runs. You will never face an opponent that's having a bad run (in my experience). From there it's a coin flip if you can even compete, let alone win. Now, I'm not saying "it's too hard", "it's not fair", or any other crybaby thing that people will want to put on me. There's just too many things that are completely up to RNG. 1. You get to pick from 2-3 random heroes (not always 3, if you haven't bought the third one). When you play a hero enough and win enough of their cards, you will get a silver portrait, instead of the bronze that you start with. I have never once seen a silver hero available to me during the monthly "tournament". 2. Opponents are picked through some sort of act of God. You just get what the code gives you, and that is never from someone that didn't have a great run. I understand that it sounds like whining about hard opponents, but it's not. It's become like The Bazaar, where the game never picks anyone other than the best. This means that if you start off slow, you're done. You have no chance to recover, because all your foes have high-rolled from turn one. 3. All too often you will have a hero with a card type specific skill. Be it character type, skill type, gold cards, or treasures (etc.), you will often times never see the cards you need. If your hero needs minions with "hunt", you may never see any, completely negating your hero. Again, if this was an uncommon occurrence, then bad luck could be the culprit. At the rate it happens though, it has to be more than that. Keep in mind, this will never happen to anyone you're facing. Unfortunately this game is all or nothing. If you aren't on par for a power build by turn two, you might as well start over. Just my $0.02 on it. I'm not trying to hate the game, but I also cannot recommend it. If you like RNG with choices, go for it.

180 hours of trying to convince myself things will get better. The system is currently set up to tie your hands and rely on pure luck in order to win. Your deck consist of 12 cards and they force you to fish for those 12 cards amongst 126 community cards. If you get what you need you can have a good game. if you get part of what you need you will probably get a top 3. The issue is that you only get what you need maybe 10% of the time. This might not sound THAT bad until you realize their system for your opponents. snapshots of other people who had good games. occasionally you might get an early win here and there, but if you don't, you can bet your sweet tooshy that your opponent after turn 12 will most likely have their perfect hand with all the cards and treasures they could ever want. Then there's the MMR system. Anyone can climb it slowly but surely. in my 2 months i climbed to 2300, but i also played a LOT. the issue is, you get fewer points for a win than you lose for finishing 5th or 6th. " so just don't be bad" right? Well remember the whole needing at least some of your cards to get that top 3? a lot of the times not only do you get nothing you need, your opponents still do get everything they need. it will give you nothing but 1/1-1/3 cards for 5 shops in a row and you are helpless and get forced out on turn 4 or 5 with absolutely nothing you could have done differently to change the outcome. I record everything with medal. i have spent an unhealthy amount of time watching the games thinking it was me messing up. Once you get past the learning curve of knowing situational things to do, the metas everyone plays, and reading enough tips from others, you are just stuck in a loop of winning 30%, getting top 3 30% and getting force lossed 30%, so your MMR creeps up slowly. an illusion to think you are getting better, but at the end of the day you are just helpless to the system. even if you get the perfect draws and make the right plays. you will still lose to some gimmick that only works with tiny chance combination of treasures and abilities. all the treasures are RNG, you can do 3 quests and get nothing but lucky chests, skeleton keys, and villain/hero specific treasures you cant even use. all the spells are RNG. you can go multiple games without ever seeing a shrink tea, midnight, or even a true loves kiss. you can play a villain captain and get nothing but fae. you can play a candy captain and go 20 shops without seeing a candy spell. the whole thing is a giant bundle of chaos, and until there is more consistency and ability to actually play the game mechanically instead of relying on chance, I can't recommend it.

P2W updates ruined the game. Was really fun while it lasted.

RNG garbage. Sincerely just click and watch then pray you get something. Yeah there are synergies, but you won't know until you've had your ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ reamed out a few dozen times. This game is total ass.