I've always been a fan of card games but their digital counterparts never gripped me. Magic the Gathering, Hearthstone, and even Legends of Runeterra, they're all great, don't get me wrong, but I have never felt the pull to play them more than a handful of times, especially on my phone. That's changed with Marvel Snap. I think it's the best digital card game on the market.
However, it comes bundled with one of the most horrendously overpriced and BS microtransaction stores I have ever seen. You have the option to buy card packs for upwards of $80 USD. That's nuts. Seasons cost $10 USD, and last only a month, and there's no way to use in-game currency to renew them, so to play every season in a year, you're paying over 120$ yearly. It is absolutely atrocious, and I condemn it with every fiber of my being.
Despite that, I keep coming back. I keep playing. I mostly play on my phone, where I greatly appreciate the game being created for portrait mode (which, thank heavens, people besides me finally realized it's THE best aspect ratio for card games on mobile). I've played 3 or 4 seasons, and have been playing since Android beta, up through the launch of the native PC app, and I'm still going. Been around a while. Still, keep coming back.
What makes it great is that battles are quite quick, just a few short minutes. Can easily shove a few games into your spare minutes throughout the day to try and complete tasks that give you currency and upgrades. Because of the smaller deck size, it's also really simple and fun to craft different decks of cards, something I have not bothered to do in any other digital card game. It's all so approachable, yet the strategy you can employ has the capacity to run quite deep.
Despite their greedy and pure evil microtransaction prices, you can collect every card in the game without paying a dime. Microtransactions can speed up that process for sure, but it's not difficult to collect cards and bolster your collection with fun combos of cards and abilities. The card drops are slightly random, in that you blindly pull from "pools" of cards, and as you collect more cards from the lower pools, your chances of higher-tier pool cards become greater. So the longer you play, the more rare cards you will collect, adequately rewarding your time.
Collecting new cards comes from increasing your "Collection" level, which is done by making cards in your collection look cooler (making the art pop out of the frame, giving it a 3D parallax effect, among other things). These actions require character boosters and credits, which you can earn from winning (or losing) matches, and weekly challenge markers. Each "upgrade" on your cards adds to your collection level, and every couple of levels will net you rewards, or the chance at a new card from one of your card pools mentioned earlier.
In play, cards interact with each other with about 5 variating keywords that determine their effects, and cards also have a cost and a power number. In any given match, the goal is to try and take two of the 3 locations on the board by having the most power at them after the final turn. Locations have their own set of effects, and on top of that, there is a TON of them. Some locations will do nothing. Others practically determine the winner the moment they're revealed. How cards interact with each other, on top of how they interact with locations, is what makes every match feel fresh and unique. It's the variance that'll let you play hundreds of matches in a day and not feel any fatigue. It's crazy fun.
So if you think you're a hot shot at any given point during a match you can "Snap" to double the rewards of winning from 2 to 4 "cubes"(?). Your opponent can choose to keep playing or forfeit half of the winning amount of cubes. Or they can double down and make the winnings double from 4 to 8 cubes. On win, your cubes are added to a meter, which increases your competitive level (reset every season). You can earn various unique rewards for reaching various level thresholds. I think it's a good system and gives me good motivation to win, or retreat and lose less than a full defeat.
On top of this, you have friendly matches you can play with your friends, conquest mode, and a few other things that will certainly keep you occupied anytime you boot it up. Plus it's in active development, so even if you're not playing the season, you can still experience the new locations or some of the new cards (vicariously through your opponent). So things are always changing and evolving and I hope it just keeps on going.
Overall, like I mentioned before, I've never been so hooked on a digital card game. Matches as fast, cards and their effects are cool and have excellent combos, and it always feels fresh to play. I highly recommend it to anyone.
However, it comes bundled with one of the most horrendously overpriced and BS microtransaction stores I have ever seen. You have the option to buy card packs for upwards of $80 USD. That's nuts. Seasons cost $10 USD, and last only a month, and there's no way to use in-game currency to renew them, so to play every season in a year, you're paying over 120$ yearly. It is absolutely atrocious, and I condemn it with every fiber of my being.
Despite that, I keep coming back. I keep playing. I mostly play on my phone, where I greatly appreciate the game being created for portrait mode (which, thank heavens, people besides me finally realized it's THE best aspect ratio for card games on mobile). I've played 3 or 4 seasons, and have been playing since Android beta, up through the launch of the native PC app, and I'm still going. Been around a while. Still, keep coming back.
What makes it great is that battles are quite quick, just a few short minutes. Can easily shove a few games into your spare minutes throughout the day to try and complete tasks that give you currency and upgrades. Because of the smaller deck size, it's also really simple and fun to craft different decks of cards, something I have not bothered to do in any other digital card game. It's all so approachable, yet the strategy you can employ has the capacity to run quite deep.
Despite their greedy and pure evil microtransaction prices, you can collect every card in the game without paying a dime. Microtransactions can speed up that process for sure, but it's not difficult to collect cards and bolster your collection with fun combos of cards and abilities. The card drops are slightly random, in that you blindly pull from "pools" of cards, and as you collect more cards from the lower pools, your chances of higher-tier pool cards become greater. So the longer you play, the more rare cards you will collect, adequately rewarding your time.
Collecting new cards comes from increasing your "Collection" level, which is done by making cards in your collection look cooler (making the art pop out of the frame, giving it a 3D parallax effect, among other things). These actions require character boosters and credits, which you can earn from winning (or losing) matches, and weekly challenge markers. Each "upgrade" on your cards adds to your collection level, and every couple of levels will net you rewards, or the chance at a new card from one of your card pools mentioned earlier.
In play, cards interact with each other with about 5 variating keywords that determine their effects, and cards also have a cost and a power number. In any given match, the goal is to try and take two of the 3 locations on the board by having the most power at them after the final turn. Locations have their own set of effects, and on top of that, there is a TON of them. Some locations will do nothing. Others practically determine the winner the moment they're revealed. How cards interact with each other, on top of how they interact with locations, is what makes every match feel fresh and unique. It's the variance that'll let you play hundreds of matches in a day and not feel any fatigue. It's crazy fun.
So if you think you're a hot shot at any given point during a match you can "Snap" to double the rewards of winning from 2 to 4 "cubes"(?). Your opponent can choose to keep playing or forfeit half of the winning amount of cubes. Or they can double down and make the winnings double from 4 to 8 cubes. On win, your cubes are added to a meter, which increases your competitive level (reset every season). You can earn various unique rewards for reaching various level thresholds. I think it's a good system and gives me good motivation to win, or retreat and lose less than a full defeat.
On top of this, you have friendly matches you can play with your friends, conquest mode, and a few other things that will certainly keep you occupied anytime you boot it up. Plus it's in active development, so even if you're not playing the season, you can still experience the new locations or some of the new cards (vicariously through your opponent). So things are always changing and evolving and I hope it just keeps on going.
Overall, like I mentioned before, I've never been so hooked on a digital card game. Matches as fast, cards and their effects are cool and have excellent combos, and it always feels fresh to play. I highly recommend it to anyone.