HirsuteNewt
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Played in 2024
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Insane perfect brain juice here. Solves my big problem with most deckbuilders that playing out the hand is boring and procedural by making it GAMBLING. The prices are very well tuned to make buying and selling different jokers worth it through a run so you don't tend to settle into one rut for an entire run based on early draw (unless it's totally busted) which keeps the build crafting fresh throughout.
Really great mechanics. So fun to swing around and find routes. Hits a great balance between solutions feeling planned and feeling like you're kind of cheating. The logs and letters were surprisingly good though the plot was straightforward. The thing holding the game back for me was that I finished feeling unsatisfied by the challenge. I could have done with some optional challenges throughout to test my understanding. Some of the gimmick mechanics of each chapter were a bit similar to each other as well.
This review contains spoilers
This game is an absolute triumph of reactivity at all levels. The combat plays out in a crazy variety of interactions. The quests split and rejoin and come back to themselves in later acts. The dialogue presents choices going from role play expression to betrayals to derailing whole plots. What this really achieved for me is that plays of this game can be described in the same way that a ttrpg session can be. I don't think any other crpg comes close in this regard and I really can't overstate how magical it is to play when it all comes together to this end.
Now for the bad stuff. The combat mechanics struggle massively as you reach higher levels - far too many abilities to read easily, far too much range in power of classes, rapidly declining effectiveness of the most fun environment based strategies. The encounter design stays strong but doesn't often force you out of old reliables like hasting a multiattacker (this is fixed only on the hames highest difficulty). Some of this is that the game is simply too long. The tone of dialogue and story beats can vary wildly in short order and it didn't always land for me - the writing is at its best with characters like lae'zel and Raphael who understand the heightened camp that marries these things together. There are specifics of the later plot beats I hate that I can't be bothered to get into the detail of but suffice to say that the final villains are all disappointingly underdeveloped - though the side quest conclusions are all great. The story issues feel particularly egregious in the field of crpgs where the norm is that the story makes getting through rough mechanics worth it. The dnd setting sucks and they don't grapple with potentially interesting parts of it or indulge in enough of its excesses to be unique. What this meant for me is that the more I think about the story and discuss it the worse it becomes. Now despite all these issues I still only considered bringing the game down to 4 stars and I couldn't even do that so please let that imply how much the uniqueness of the reactivity elevates the whole thing.
Now for the bad stuff. The combat mechanics struggle massively as you reach higher levels - far too many abilities to read easily, far too much range in power of classes, rapidly declining effectiveness of the most fun environment based strategies. The encounter design stays strong but doesn't often force you out of old reliables like hasting a multiattacker (this is fixed only on the hames highest difficulty). Some of this is that the game is simply too long. The tone of dialogue and story beats can vary wildly in short order and it didn't always land for me - the writing is at its best with characters like lae'zel and Raphael who understand the heightened camp that marries these things together. There are specifics of the later plot beats I hate that I can't be bothered to get into the detail of but suffice to say that the final villains are all disappointingly underdeveloped - though the side quest conclusions are all great. The story issues feel particularly egregious in the field of crpgs where the norm is that the story makes getting through rough mechanics worth it. The dnd setting sucks and they don't grapple with potentially interesting parts of it or indulge in enough of its excesses to be unique. What this meant for me is that the more I think about the story and discuss it the worse it becomes. Now despite all these issues I still only considered bringing the game down to 4 stars and I couldn't even do that so please let that imply how much the uniqueness of the reactivity elevates the whole thing.