Building a deck of deckbuilders

Games
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Ooh, new to me, added to wishlist, thank you!

Also, reporting in with new / changed opinion about Across the Obelisk. I have previously bounced off this after trying out the prologue / demo but I gave it a second pass after it popped up on sale and now feel it is worth a cautious recommendation.

This game is . . . well imagine if you smashed together Slay the Spire and Darkest Dungeon, but with colourful, detailed cartoon like colours and visuals. The mechanics are very similar to Slay-et-al, albeit with a lot more debuffs and buffs going on, but you play as four different characters simultaneously, just like in Darkest Dungeon. Also, like Darkest Dungeon, a big part of the meta-progression is building up a “Town” which you visit at the beginning of each ‘Act’, enabling you to deck build via adding, removing, upgrading cards, and also buying equipment and pets.

It has a lot going on. In addition to the pretty solid deck-building, for which there are lots of ways to add / subtract / upgrade / transform, each hero has experience levels, each one offering a choice of two very different bonuses, and four equipment slots, and these things all combine to enable very different individual builds.

A reason I initially bounced off it is that whilst the mechanics are not hugely more complex than Slay, you get hit with the equivalent of learning 4 different character builds right away. Imagine beginning a Slay run where you were playing as the Watcher, Silent, Ironclad and Defect ALL in the same run, all with their own unique decks. That is how you effectively start out here!

Second caveat is that single combats can turn into a long to and fro battle of the buffs and debuffs. They start out being < 5 minutes but later on a single big battle may take 15, 20 minutes, so the total run time is probably far greater than most comparables.

Still, there seems to be a lot of depth and breadth and having persevered through that initially tough learning curve, I am enjoying it a lot.

Across the Obelisk
Across the Obelisk1000×562 1.03 MB

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Fate Hunters is on sale for $3.74. Any good?

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I am looking at Tainted Grail as being both on sale and a possible Halloween (ish) themed game to play this week. The feelings about that game were pretty solid right? Some of the reviews seem to indicate it lacked content or ended just as it was getting good, but I am thinking that was an early access limitation that is gone now, yeah?

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Those reviews are full of it, imo. Tainted Grail is on par with Monster Train in terms of quality (though VERY different). Not only is it very good as a deckbuilder, but it drips with atmosphere and worldbuilding in a way few games do (think the Failbetter Sunless games)

As @Tortilla mentions, it does have a very deliberate pace. If you want a game that’s moody and atmospheric for the Halloween mood, I think you will like it.

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I want to emphasize that VERY different comment. I loved Monster Train but Tainted Grail bored me with it’s muddy grimdark graphics and slow pace and weak UI. I gave up on Tainted Grail after less than 20 hours of play as it just wasn’t holding interest.

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I can absolutely understand where it would not be everyone’s cup of tea. Added a note above

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I enjoyed it a lot. Once you have unlocked all the characters and most of their gear, which may take around 20-30 hours of play, there is no longer any hook to play it, but there is a solid chunk of challenging but fair deck-building combat to enjoy.

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Lacked content? hehe, I am about 60 hours / 20 or so completed runs in, and I am yet to finish all the quests or even really play some of available hero types. It has oodles of content, and those oodles have oodles.

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Inscryption is a well done experience.
The deckbuilding aspects are intentionally skewed and unbalanced to push you along. Also often quite poorly designed but you shouldn’t get stuck or frustrated for too long as the battling and card game mechanics are not to sole or even main focus of the game.

Great music and sound design.

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I picked it up. So far I am very pleased and consider both Grail and Monster Train to be very good finds this year. And yes, they are very, VERY different. The pacing and the atmosphere of Tainted Grail definitely hit the spot for a Halloween type game.

That said, I am not sure really what the hell is going on. And that is fine. It is part of the appeal really. I do know this, it is sure grim, and something very bad happened. I was just walking around in the Wyrdness, minding my own business, you know, helping crazy people and killing extras from Hellraiser. It all was fine and dandy, or something. That is, until some giant rock monster cratered me into the ground.

I look forward to playing again and hopefully unlocking more characters.

Thanks all.

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It’s the sort of game that unfolds fairly slowly. Happy to help with anything you need/questions. You can win from the first run (I did, but had watched the have played a fair bit). You will unlock things that make stuff easier, but your knowledge will grow considerably…it’s that sort of game.

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FTFY.

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I already fixed that one.

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Have you played act 3? Hard to believe there’s no thread for this one. I didn’t realize they had added an StS-style mode at the beginning of this year.

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Inscryption is an outstanding surprise. When you think you are at the end, it goes down a different path. The mysteries are great as is the game play and atmosphere, saying anything more would be spoilers. Well worth every penny!

Holy crap! I just got into a boss fight much later in the game where it is pulling names and icons of the people on my Steam friends list to name cards.

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Just a question re: Inscryption. Is it a good deckbuilder? I was looking at it and the reviews and it seems like a good game but as a deck builder it seems to be lacking?

I don’t really care about story or other mechanics other than deck building. Would I still like the game?

I tend to get really annoyed when a deck building game have things that don’t add to that core (uncovering maps in Roguebook, the overly long dialogue/story in Giftlands, etc.).

Edit. Just read Therlun’s writeup and it really doesn’t seem like the right game for me.

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Probably not. There’s a lot of “meta” for lack of a better term, in this game. There’s much more to the game as a whole (moreso than the map in Roguebook, certainly). I don’t think it is as poorly designed as some here do, but as a standalone thing, there are much better deckbuilders out there, I think.

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This thread was the only one I got a hit when searching by Last Regiment, so I guess this is a deck builder, I mean it’s got cards in it anyway.

I just wanted to stop in and say I’m about half way thru the tutorial and find this a rather charming game so far.

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Probably not. The core card/deck mechanics are fine, and I enjoyed the process of exploring their possibility space and variations, finding good combos, and making decisions during matches. But they aren’t the primary reason to play Inscryption, and don’t match the level of balance, build variety, and replayability that you can find elsewhere in the genre.