A port of Neoverse
NEOVERSE is a time-warping multiverse game consisting of thrilling adventures that are packed with great and exciting challenges; combining rogue-lite, deck building, strategy gameplay all in one. It puts your skills to the test. Set off on an adventure with unique heroes to save the living realms regardless of time and space.
Reviews View More
I want to love this game, but it's just too short and easy! The game itself is a roguelite deckbuilder obviously inspired by Slay The Spire, with a few notable differences that I think makes it both more fun and far too easy. This is a case of the developers over-engineering their game with too many good ideas that end up breaking any diifficulty.
The primary aspect that sets this game apart from Spire is the fact that armor sticks between hands, which means that you don't have to deal with Spire's problem with the far too common situation where you draw nothing but defensive cards on the enemy's defensive turn, which just leads to that hand being null and void. It's the primary reason I don't like Spire very much and I loved seeing that this is fixed in Neoverse, and this game also proves that maintained armor in and of itself doesn't make the game too easy. Just have the enemies do more damage later on and you're set, which is how Neoverse solves it. Keeping 16 damage from last turn really doesn't matter all that much when the enemy's about to do 96 damage and it just makes the game more fun.
However, the other features that make Neoverse more fun are also what breaks the game. There is both the combo meter and the precision attack system. The combo meter gives you double damage on the next attack after a completed combo, and you complete a combo by playing cards in the order presented by a little bar. So, you play two defense cards, an offensive card and then an instant card and now your next attack does double damage. This adds a lot of fun and makes every play engaging, since you'r always thinking about how to stay on combo or when you bail on the combo because you need more defense, or whatever, during a given situation, and in itself, the combo meter doesn't break the game. This is where things start to get shakier as we look at the precision attack system, which gives you a cash bonus for dealing the exact right amount of damage needed to defeat an opponent. So, they have 5 HP and you do exactly 5 damage and that nets you a bonus that is surprisingly generous. It is, in fact, so generous that it seems like the idea must be for you to do precision kills every once in a while, but they've made it far too easy to do it every single time. All you do is bash away at them while they're at high health and then once they hit below 10 HP, you start using your cards and character skills to make sure that you do the exact amount of damage, which results in you having too much money and being too free to buy whatever cards and perks you want.
And that's the next problem. Most perks are trash and the good ones are far too strong, which just results in you always buying the same perks and ignoring most of the perk board. Which one will you pick, the one that gets you more energy (oddly called mana even though you don't actually perform magic in this game) every turn for the rest of the game, or the perk that gets you 1 HP for killing an enemy (which is an absolutely pathetic amount)? You're going to pick the +mana perk every single time, and it's going to make every run significantly easier. It doesn't help that you can beat the whole game with your starting deck and you really only need to add a few b onuses that makes it faster and easier. As long as you combo and precision kill, you will likely only buy 3-4 cards throughout the run, carefully selected ones that make your little deck ev en tighter. And as soon as you figure out these mechanics, you will never lose a run again.
It doesn't help that, on top of being too easy, there are som strange glitches littering the game. I was just allowed to equip the special story item that is supposed to take up all inventory slots, but if you equip it in the third slot, it just goes in and you can still keep the other equipment. There are also cards called hindrance cards, which the opponents sneak into your deck to force you to play them, and it's just totally random which of these break your card combo and which doesn't. It's just some do and some don't and the card text says nothing about it. I've also had the game perform some fuckery with the amount of mana, where I should have one bonus mana from my equipped item, one from the Hunter Mode purchase and one from a card my deck had, but I was only getting two bonus mana per turn during that match. There are other small issues that aren't exactly glitches, but suck some of the fun out, like how the only counter they could come up with for Constant cards was to allow enemies to simply permanently remove their effects, which doesn't seem fun or fair for a card effect that's meant to be permanent (for that match) and that you're only allowed to play once. The enemy effect should be to disable your effect for X turns to feel fair, it shouldn't just permanently strip an effect you can't get back.
It's unfortunate that the game is marred with so many problems, because this could've really been a major challenger to Slay The Spire, and a game that helps keeps the genre alive, but it's just too easy, has a few frustrating glitches and, while it doesn't bother me too much, I would assume that for some people, an asian game where you can unlock softcore porn costumes just doesn't feel very current year. Every character has an unlockable costume where you, uh, have to be pretty generous to call what they're wearing clothing and it just feels outdated in a way that roguelite deckbuilders, a fairly new genre, shouldn't. But mostly the problem is that low difficulty, how easy the game is to conquer and the few but irritating glitches. I will probably give it another few shots since I'd like to beat see what challenge mode is about, but this game won't be surviving very long on my harddrive.
The primary aspect that sets this game apart from Spire is the fact that armor sticks between hands, which means that you don't have to deal with Spire's problem with the far too common situation where you draw nothing but defensive cards on the enemy's defensive turn, which just leads to that hand being null and void. It's the primary reason I don't like Spire very much and I loved seeing that this is fixed in Neoverse, and this game also proves that maintained armor in and of itself doesn't make the game too easy. Just have the enemies do more damage later on and you're set, which is how Neoverse solves it. Keeping 16 damage from last turn really doesn't matter all that much when the enemy's about to do 96 damage and it just makes the game more fun.
However, the other features that make Neoverse more fun are also what breaks the game. There is both the combo meter and the precision attack system. The combo meter gives you double damage on the next attack after a completed combo, and you complete a combo by playing cards in the order presented by a little bar. So, you play two defense cards, an offensive card and then an instant card and now your next attack does double damage. This adds a lot of fun and makes every play engaging, since you'r always thinking about how to stay on combo or when you bail on the combo because you need more defense, or whatever, during a given situation, and in itself, the combo meter doesn't break the game. This is where things start to get shakier as we look at the precision attack system, which gives you a cash bonus for dealing the exact right amount of damage needed to defeat an opponent. So, they have 5 HP and you do exactly 5 damage and that nets you a bonus that is surprisingly generous. It is, in fact, so generous that it seems like the idea must be for you to do precision kills every once in a while, but they've made it far too easy to do it every single time. All you do is bash away at them while they're at high health and then once they hit below 10 HP, you start using your cards and character skills to make sure that you do the exact amount of damage, which results in you having too much money and being too free to buy whatever cards and perks you want.
And that's the next problem. Most perks are trash and the good ones are far too strong, which just results in you always buying the same perks and ignoring most of the perk board. Which one will you pick, the one that gets you more energy (oddly called mana even though you don't actually perform magic in this game) every turn for the rest of the game, or the perk that gets you 1 HP for killing an enemy (which is an absolutely pathetic amount)? You're going to pick the +mana perk every single time, and it's going to make every run significantly easier. It doesn't help that you can beat the whole game with your starting deck and you really only need to add a few b onuses that makes it faster and easier. As long as you combo and precision kill, you will likely only buy 3-4 cards throughout the run, carefully selected ones that make your little deck ev en tighter. And as soon as you figure out these mechanics, you will never lose a run again.
It doesn't help that, on top of being too easy, there are som strange glitches littering the game. I was just allowed to equip the special story item that is supposed to take up all inventory slots, but if you equip it in the third slot, it just goes in and you can still keep the other equipment. There are also cards called hindrance cards, which the opponents sneak into your deck to force you to play them, and it's just totally random which of these break your card combo and which doesn't. It's just some do and some don't and the card text says nothing about it. I've also had the game perform some fuckery with the amount of mana, where I should have one bonus mana from my equipped item, one from the Hunter Mode purchase and one from a card my deck had, but I was only getting two bonus mana per turn during that match. There are other small issues that aren't exactly glitches, but suck some of the fun out, like how the only counter they could come up with for Constant cards was to allow enemies to simply permanently remove their effects, which doesn't seem fun or fair for a card effect that's meant to be permanent (for that match) and that you're only allowed to play once. The enemy effect should be to disable your effect for X turns to feel fair, it shouldn't just permanently strip an effect you can't get back.
It's unfortunate that the game is marred with so many problems, because this could've really been a major challenger to Slay The Spire, and a game that helps keeps the genre alive, but it's just too easy, has a few frustrating glitches and, while it doesn't bother me too much, I would assume that for some people, an asian game where you can unlock softcore porn costumes just doesn't feel very current year. Every character has an unlockable costume where you, uh, have to be pretty generous to call what they're wearing clothing and it just feels outdated in a way that roguelite deckbuilders, a fairly new genre, shouldn't. But mostly the problem is that low difficulty, how easy the game is to conquer and the few but irritating glitches. I will probably give it another few shots since I'd like to beat see what challenge mode is about, but this game won't be surviving very long on my harddrive.