Various Thoughts

Picked up this game on sale sometime last month, and it turned out to be a pretty good deckbuilding tactical RPG reminiscent of Slay the Spire.

While that game’s a pure randomized roguelike, this has an actual story mode to it that plays out like a conventional tactical rpg. It’s also got tons of characters (each with three different decks to mix and match skills from), a wide variety of equipment (both randomized and static), and a ‘relic’ feature which lets you unlock permanent buffs to use across playthroughs.

Finished the main campaign with a team of Jendaya, Alphonse, and Bertram. Artificer Jenda basically just set things on fire while the golem punched them and wasn’t particularly impressive aside from the Seismic Wave card. Headhunter Alphonse on the other hand is a beast if you go with his Assassin deck; Swift Kill and Assassinate with card draw and a 10-12 card deck results in a non-stop wave of death. I had Bertram go with Artillery, and that seems to have been a mistake. By the time the turrets got a turn Alphonse and the Golem had basically already killed everything.

Some things to keep a look-out for are low level attribute, power, and resistance runes. Once you get to Act III they can be upgraded with Magic Dust (keep an eye out for this as well). Don’t forget about using your various maps to trigger exploration minigames either (visit Kyreal), as that’s basically the only place to find wandering vendors with otherwise rare/inaccessible upgrade items like Soul Sparks and Chromatic Shards. And don’t forget about Camping, since you can get 2 ‘free’ card upgrades per instance.

Only other thing of note is that the last boss is pretty damn nasty. You’ll want to have as many buffs as possible along with high Chaos resistance and/or a bunch of health potions to deal with her waves of damage that trigger every 10 cards you play.

So all-in-all it was an enjoyable experience, even if I did start to get a little burned out at the start of Act II.