Vambrace: Dungeon Monarch

I see the vision, but it's not executed well. # Mechanically First: It takes like 20+ minutes to play the game AT ALL. There are two separate tutorials, one "simple" tutorial which is essentially drag and drop 2 things then read through the story for the next 15+ minutes. The tutorial is just... It's not designed into the game, but feels like an afterthought. A good tutorial should introduce you to mechanics as they're needed while allowing the player to practice the previous mechanics BEFORE introducing more complicated stuff. For a deck builder in particular, things should begin feeling simple and slowly increase as mechanics are introduced naturally through the game. This isn't the feeling here. Instead, everything feels incredibly rushed and all-at-once. As a new player I get no time to figure out what's going on, how anything works, etc. I get told 'use your cards, press tab to switch things, you can only use these cards when your monarch is descended' and then just left to hopefully figure it out. There are so many units right out of the gate with so many different effects and synergies to figure out that I can't focus on building my understanding of the base mechanics. I think this could be good, but it's WAY too complicated with everything thrown at the player right away -- it's overwhelming and not fun. # Story I hate "start at the end" style stories. The fact it's a time-loop thing makes it worse in this case... I don't know who any of these people are. I don't care about them. Why are they doing whatever it is they're doing? No clue. What ARE they even doing? No idea. Why should I care? I don't. I'm just annoyed that instead of a 'tutorial' I'm clicking through the third act of a visual novel. # Final Thoughts The story interrupts the game-play and the game-play doesn't enhance the story. They're entirely disconnected entities and both are incredibly rough and heavy handed. I was excited to try this game and hoped I'd love it. The art style is my jam, I love both deck builders and tower defense games, dark fantasy is always cool... It has all the elements to seem cool, but it's just an overwhelming beginner experience and I 100% don't have the inclination to force myself through a rough on-boarding in order to experience the "good part". There are so, so, so many games which I will be instantly hooked into from the start, so why would I slog through a painful beginning in the hopes it's better later? Devs, if you're reading... I'd recommend checking out literature on invisible/integrated tutorials for the onboarding and maybe just cut the current VN "tutorial" section entirely. It's just confusing and overwhelming.

Sideways thumb. The writing it absolutely awful but the gameplay is alright with an interesting mix of deckbuilder for spells and a kind-of 'lane' autobattler. Thankfully you can just skip the story beats every time they come up and it's not too painful. What stopped me playing however is that the UI is unbearably bad: for a game where synergies matter, not knowing what creatures die round to round so you can replace that exact one is.. frustrating. And that frustration spills over into every interaction you have with managing your field. To put it simply, the UI is functional but antagonistic towards playing well. If you can get past that, there's a fun enough game below. For me it was a bit too much of a hurdle. 5/10

I found this game's plot....weirdly compelling. (it is at times very poorly translated, and the philosophical parts of the character development I thought were weak, but the espionage plot threads were very fun) Also the mechanical mish mash of a long-form roguelike auto-battler deck builder was really interesting, if at times slightly grating. There are a couple of significant UI issues, and I have experienced a few critical bugs in the free play mode. But overall solid. Worth it at full price, super worth it on sale, deserves much better than a mixed review score. If you like weird quirky games doing interesting things, this one's for you. If you like super polished experiences with no bugs, good writing, and well explained balanced gameplay, maybe take a skip on this one.

汉化就是机翻，怪物的拖动非常困难，组件卡组的引导一坨稀烂，一直提醒我不能携带超过15张非激活卡，问题是什么是非激活卡，又什么是激活卡，完全没有说明

I had a lot of fun with this game. The synergy system is fun; leveling up your factions and fortifying the dungeon allows for a feeling of constant progress that drives things forward. The story had its ups & downs, but I genuinely liked the main characters and was interested in what was going to happen. The art style was charming. That said, there are a number of bugs, translation issues, and the interface is a bit cumbersome. Nothing that kept me from being excited for the next round, and nothing critical. Contrary to what some of the other posts mention: the cutscenes are all skipable if you're not into the story. 25 hours at sale price made for a lot of fun. People had a lot of mixed things to say about Vambrace: Cold Soul, too, but I think this developer has some unique ideas and wrapped up in a charming aesthetic/world. I would be keen to see more.

Overall a great experience, the combat is pretty nice and being able to affect directly the tide with the Monarc's abilities was fun. The only boss fight that I truly didn't enjoy was the one with the map-wide reflect damage buff hah! But other than that building armies and optimizing synergies was pretty nice! The story was great with a interesting twist on illusions and dreams. One thing that really stands out for me tho is the art work! Characters are truly unique and you can tell a lot of love went into the design! All in all a solid buy for the price.

카드 사용할때 키워드 설명이 너무 없네요... 따로 튜토리얼이나 문서가 있는것도 아니고, 오버레이되는것도 아니고... 키워드만 있고 설명이 없어서 정확히 어떤 조건에 어떤 효과가 있는지 알수가없네요.

Определённо стоит к ознакомлению если нравится авточесс или кки. Не любитель авточесс но приправленные кки жанром играются очень весело. Разумется не обошлось без багов\откровенно недоделанных или абсолютно нелогичных\имбалансных картах или юнитах но ввиду огромного разнообразия это не сильно чувствуется. p.s. Please fix the prison bug

For positives on the gameplay, I was hesitant about this game because their previous entry in this series had different gameplay mechanics but I thought they did a good job with combining the deck builder + unit defense game. The best way I can describe this game is that its Teamfight tactics deck building. There are many different units / factions in this game so its fun to mix and match to figure out what type of comp you enjoy. I enjoyed resetting the comp and trying out different factions so once you hone in on a mix that you like then there is a mechanic that allows you to sacrifice other units to make your faction stronger. This by itself is a simple gameplay loop but what really makes it fun is you can place your global unit across different tiles and use the deck that you've been building to make your faction on board even stronger. The capture system was also a fun tool to try and get my deck to utilize. Near the end it was an awesome RP feeling to send my enemy's units against their leader. As for the negatives for gameplay, while the gameloop was satisfying when it worked - there were a lot of times where I couldn't play everything due to the mana system. In the beginning it felt good because I had to strategize between playing defensive or offensive cards but near the late game it felt pointless to have spent a lot of time in deck building when I was restricted by the same amount of mana that I had in the beginning. I know there are some cards that give you extra mana but I was hoping that the sacrifice system would improve the mana pool and be more than just a stat numbers increased. The sacrifice system is basically just a stat increase for all of the factions, there are unique abilities that occur from having a large amount of the same faction units but it still felt disappointing to use. It was a short and sweet story, there were some things I wished turned out differently and expanded upon but I feel like the developers left a satisfying end. I enjoyed talking to the characters outside of combat and exploring all of their dialogue options. I wish we had more dialogue options to explore either their backstory or just more details about the loyalty aspect of the story. I hope in the future that the developers can add in random npc/units from your dungeon or at least units from the highest affinity faction that you can interact with. While you can talk to the named characters about the story, I wish I could have talked to the demons/units and see what they felt about the situation. I imagine they didn't do it because that would have a ton of more work just due to the number of units available. Aside from that, I hope they eventually add voice acting all of the story lines but since its a small game its understandable that they wouldn't If you enjoyed the art from the previous entry then you will not be disappointed, they continue using the same art style from before. Continuing from the npc/unit aspect, I hope in the future that the devs can add in more areas to explore outside of combat. There is a main hub area but I would have liked to see what the day to day demons lived in or interacted with them in like a mess hall, armory, or infirmary. There are a lot of unique units but you can only see their models in the small tile based compact, I hoped there would have been dialogue opportunities with the units so I could have seen their art in more detail / bigger aspect. Overall the game is enjoyable and has a short but sweet story. I hope they continue to expand upon this series even if its in form of different media or gameplay mechanics, regardless I will be excited for the next project that Dvora Studios work on!

Story : 4/5 A good story, arround 15h to finish Graphic : 4/5 Nice, simple but good Gameplay : 2.5/5 Lack QoL, you can't build properly, too random, not equilibrated, too funky, still cool & simple, but need to be improved Sound / Music : 3.5 Music are ok, some are good, but lack a lot of sounds Globaly a good game (mostly for the story), but wich need to be polish and have some rework. 10 bucks is a good price.