Every time this thread is bumped I had this thought and I’m finally going to say it…
Thanks to @Misguided for starting this thread. It is a great read and provides a lot of interesting discussion about deckbuilders. Thanks to all of you who have provided so much interesting information regarding specific deck builders. I really like this genre but I feel like I’m not that good at it so these kinds of discussions have inspired me to put a little more effort into some deck builders and as it turns out I am enjoying them more!
It’s possible @tomchick will decry this topic as too much of a “catch all” bit I think it has provided a great round up and overview of deck builders and I all of the discussion here, even for games I am not actively playing it.
Thank you guys for participating. There are so many of them these days, it’s tough to keep track of them all. The best part is that, especially in the last year, the sheer variety of gameplay mechanics has exploded. At the start, everything felt derivative of Dream Quest, but that’s simply not the case anymore any longer and more ideas get brought to bear.
Do we have a thread for this? I am only seeing the Reborn one. The game looks interesting. I have never looked into the Erannorth games before. It looks a little rough as far as production goes, but potentially a rather unique deckbuilder that is a lot closer to the RPG roots of traditional rogue likes. I watched a few videos and it seems like a mountain of a learning curve though. I did notice @tomchick posted a screenshot of it recently. Any one playing this? Thoughts?
It’s quantity over quality.
Lots of cards, lots of (very samey) battles. Very little else. The “open world” is rudimentary.
The many class/race combinations and the skill system mean there is some assembling fun. Hunting for better cards is enjoyable. There is very little in the semblance of balance, which can be a good thing. You certainly feel the impact of improving your deck and character.
I would describe it as a worse Shandalar with bad combat but still providing some room for card finding and deck tinkering enjoyment.
are you describing reborn or chronicles? I could easily see reborn being described as quantity over quality, but chronicles feels much more streamlined to me. I also don’t find the combat boring or lackluster but that’s definitely a subjective thing.
I was having trouble figuring out some of the math, so I uploaded that screenshot to link it to a question I was going to ask in the Steam forum, where the developer is wonderfully active. But then I figured out the math. So there wasn’t anything particularly special about that image. It was just an example of combat.
But my thoughts are that it’s absolutely nutso, in a good way. I love figuring out complex character builds – I played a ton of Sacred 2 simply because I enjoyed exploring its absurdly intricate systems – and Erannorth Chronicles is a deliciously streamlined context for complex character builds in a deck-builder. Put me down as a big fan, although I’m still in the early honeymoon phase. It sounds like @Therlun is commenting from the far side of that honeymoon phase.
The newer one. Which I have to name-check every time … and it’s Chronicles.
I agree that Chronicles is much more accessible. I never got much into the first one because it was such a mess UI-wise.
Combat completely fails to be engaging to me. In the beginning it requires some thought because you have no energy and your cards are crap. Very soon however all the combats are the same, the differences between the dozens of enemy types are completely irrelevant and every combat plays out without considering their types or actions.
As for quality over quantity the most glaring example is the number of cards. The developer very proudly advertises that the game has 2500 cards. With a single developer and that approach it’s clear that this is as far away from fine-tuned balance as a game can get. As I wrote above that doesn’t need to be bad and can be fun as well.
Those 2500 cards are (unevenly) distributed over dozens of skills, and you only see action cards of skills your character actually has. Yet even just looking at those small subsets I’d say it’s a heavy focus on pure amount of cards and little thought put into the whole.
Most cards have at least one almost exact same copy in their own tree, several copies in several other trees.
Hydromancy for instance has 3-4 cards that basically all do the same with a combination of “multicast, vulnerable, water damage, freeze”.
In my most advanced run I’m a Hydromancer Nymph Sorcerer. I intentionally forsook Pyromancy for flavour reasons and focused on only Hydromancy and Aeromancy. After lv 15 or so I completely broke the game. 20 of my 24 cards are the one card described above. All have multicast (hit the first x targets) and 2-4 of the following: vulnerable, some water/air damage, freeze, stun, some minor extra ability.
I have 200+ cards to choose from within those two schools of magic. But in the end I’m certain the best deck is seven variants of the same card, each three times.
I’m definitely long past the honeymoon phase. The restrictive (in a good way!) skill system and the beginning phases of any run are interesting. The starting climb to improve your deck and character is very neat. But I found I quickly bump against the limitations of the game on all sides.
My main complaint can be summed up pretty easily: The game has a lot of stuff but actually extremely little content.
This completely contradicts what a first look at the game might indicate. Also the very approach the developer himself has on what constitutes content.
75 enemy types that I don’t even look at after the middle stages of a character are not content for me.
Hundreds of cards of which 95% are boring, useless and strictly worse that the best five of the bunch are not a great way to carry a game.
interesting that we have such different experiences. I definitely am constantly having to take into account what the enemies do and are immune to. If you play on lower difficulty or never move to a harder area it’s definitely easy and boring though.
It’s the other way around. It’s only when you are inexperienced with the game and stuck with the starter cards that decisions and actions matter. As you progress and play more your get cards that are so much better that the enemies barely impact your play order any more.
Sure, a third of the enemies I encounter are immune to “vulnerable”, but then the greater stun or greater freeze effects on half my cards takes care of them if they aren’t overwhelmed by the basic damage. Same for any other strength or ability they have.
Even actively avoiding breaking the game will not prevent this inverted difficulty curve. Interestingly, getting stronger ALSO gets faster as you play in my experience. Going from lv 1 to lv 10 will likely take longer and be notably more work than going from 10 to 20 because of the powercreep.
I got distracted from the Trials of Fire by Gordian Quest. Since I wanted to merely dip into GQ, my recent experience with ToF led to me try the Realms / Quick Run mode on normal difficulty. Normal and hard difficulty in GQ are nowhere close to ToF. Quick Run took me 10 hours, way outside the promised 0.5 to 3 hours. Unchallenging fights made the campaign mode a bit of a slog. Each act also took about 10 hours. The faster leveling of Realms mode, perhaps pushed by increased enemy levels, makes it seem like the mode that will stick long term. Character progression takes more time to manage than I want. Maybe that goes faster after knowing the classes. It got to where bunching up points was more rewarding for time vs. results.
In contrast to how Trials of Fire encourages a fat deck to avoid piling up exhaustion cards over a fight, Gordian Quest really rewarded a slim deck. Between thinning the deck, increasing card draw, and having some cards that avoid the discard pile, late game sees the same hand every turn, and the same play of the hand. I had to do way more interactive play in Trials of Fire, partly to overcome the difficulty, partly because hands were different, and partly because all characters act together in your own ordering. Now, back to Trials of Fire to continue my planned deep dive.
Steam invite sent from numin. I’m hoping I can see a score closer to the one I landed, and not the outrageous millions at the top of the global community. Those must be hacks. Right?
Since I spent this weekend (oh no, correction, this last week?) on a Gordian Quest detour (30 hours!? more than I’ve played Trials of Fire after it released), I haven’t started a Trials of Fire Cataclysm run. I was thinking in the before-times that I should unlock all of the classes. While I guess that each is roughly equal in individual power, I expect to really climb Cataclysm difficulties it’s going to be team dynamics that I have to exploit. (Wait, is this why business uses “synergize” instead?) And, to unlock at least one, I need more wins. I don’t yet have the humility in me to speed up unlocking by playing on normal. Trying new characters kept hard living up to its name.
The GQ sabbatical does suggest something about my predilections. When I’m playing late at night, it’s nice to claim crushing victories over my foes. It provides the immediate satisfaction of sugar. But it lacks the deeper rewards of mastery that ToF gave for that first win and definitely suggests it has more of. I looked back through the game history that ToF so nicely logs, and I guess I had beaten this same intro Water scenario in the early access period. It took fewer tries back then. I’m left hoping they balanced towards more difficult, not that here’s clear proof of my mental decline over the last half year.
I think the high scores in the millions can be real. I can think of a few ways to near invincible with the right build.
The thing I love about ToF is nothing is hidden from you. Nothing really feels unfair so the wins comes with a satisfaction that is unparalleled in this genre (for me). It took so quite a bit of tries to get pass IX. Then I understood what I was doing wrong/missing. Then I continue to finish IX and X one by one. X is relatively smooth now and my win rate is 60-70%ish on my favorite team. The same thing happened with Cata V.
I personally won’t dwell with the lower Cata and difficulties too much once you can finish them. I feel you learn so much more in the higher Cata. Of course I like learning through pain or I like learning from a… trial by fire.
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The thing I love about ToF is nothing is hidden from you. Nothing really feels unfair so the wins comes with a satisfaction that is unparalleled in this genre (for me). It took so quite a bit of tries to get pass IX. Then I understood what I was doing wrong/missing. Then I continue to finish IX and X one by one. X is relatively smooth now and my win rate is 60-70%ish on my favorite team.
@_aaron and any other deckbuilding players, please add me to your Steam buddies too, love the friendly competition and score comparing :-)
Steam friend code - 66985455
@Hereafter how are you here talking about Trials of Fire? Monster Train will not play itself you know! Aww heck, I just completed the max difficulty using the Prophet in Dark Mist . . . so I probably need to switch back to Trials of Fire and have a go at this new fangled cataclysm thing the cool kids are talking about . . . .
@Lykurgos Friended! Maybe that social element will offset my fickle flitting across these titles. Trials of Fire continues to challenge me at Hard. I’ve added a new rule: don’t take optional hard battles. It’s either that or better damage stacking that boosted the current run into its third phase.
I think I sampled Monster Train when it was too new. I have the impression there’s more depth to the factions and card sets now. So, on the opposite track of you, I expect someday I’ll need to switch back to it.
It is only a 10% discount, but any of y’all who have love for deckbuilding roguelikes who do not already own Meteorfall: Krummit’s Tale need to fix that pronto, so go get. Now, scoot over! Whaddya waiting for?
This is super simple to play, crushingly difficult to master greatness. It can be played casual, or can burn out brain cells. One caveat is that you can, I think, sometimes get screwed by the random elements present, most notably how the cards / tiles, get distributed. That said, the flipside of this is that you are often presented with tough, but very solvable puzzles, and solving those puzzles is surely great for your dopamine levels :-P
