Voice of Cards is a really cool game, and a very fitting change from Yoko Taro's last few creative endeavours. As you can tell from a glance, everything in Voice of Cards is told and depicted through the medium of cards. The entire map (including dungeons,) every character, and all story beats are shown this way making for a vastly different gaming experience than anything I had been accustomed to. This gives VoC a great deal of charm, setting the short 10-15 hour experience apart from the rest of the RPG sphere. Even though cards are the focal point of this game, it is not a deckbuilder like one might presume, rather the cards fit themselves into player's inventory like active/passive abilites. You have "cards" that are normal basic attacks, some that heal (depending on character,) some that use certain ability types, and many more at your aresenal. Combat is not necessarily difficult (until the final boss,) yet to be routinely victorious the player must be careful and plan their turn accordingly. It's an easy JRPG if you let it be, but can be difficult if you aren't employing the proper strategies necessary.
VoC feels like D&D with a Yoko Taro twist, and I love it. I'll get into the story more below, but the standard fantasy setting, intermingled with a combat game board, and a single narrator being the entire voice of the game made it feel like a Dungeons and Dragons campaign more than a JRPG. Seemless transitions from encounter to combat with a game board populating with your characters and the enemy was awesome. The aforementioned narrator felt like a Dungeon Master (DM) reading out every detail in the world from conversation to plot, making for a cozy experience all fed to you from a single source.
Storywise this is the most grounded Yoko Taro game I've played (I have not jumped into Drakengard, only Nier.) It's more of a standard fantasy plot with a big bad dragon and nefarious authority ruling over the land in which moral dilemma is a key focus. There is less in the way of philosophy and ambiguous themes, which makes the shorter game fairly easy to parse through and digest. You go from location to location with a clear reason as to why, and meet memorable characters along the way. Some of my favorites (for their impact) were: The toned bodybuilder Bruno and his dad Aureo, Sherwyn, and Ridis. You have a reason to care for the characters in your party as there is a great deal of inter-party dialogue and funny quips throughout. Your protagonist says quite a lot and has an attitude of himself, which in the JRPG sphere is oddly rare. In all, the story does what it needs to, and that's what matters.
Keiichi Okabe does another standup job in the soundtrack department, providing both traditional medieval sounds as well as his trademark lovely mystical piano and nonsensical vocal ballads. The character artist, whose work I'm previously unfamiliar with, also demonstrated some of the most captivating character art in a game that I've played in some time.
The main detractions I have with this game are twofold: the excessively ramped up and surprising difficulty of the final boss and the annoying dungeon design of the last two chapters. There were moments where I had gotten fairly frustrated because the dungeons were really wonky in the way they wanted you to move about them and how much movement was penalized outside of the expected direction. I fixed this issue by grinding a few hours to be max level for the final boss, which felt like a cakewalk after doing so.
VoC feels like D&D with a Yoko Taro twist, and I love it. I'll get into the story more below, but the standard fantasy setting, intermingled with a combat game board, and a single narrator being the entire voice of the game made it feel like a Dungeons and Dragons campaign more than a JRPG. Seemless transitions from encounter to combat with a game board populating with your characters and the enemy was awesome. The aforementioned narrator felt like a Dungeon Master (DM) reading out every detail in the world from conversation to plot, making for a cozy experience all fed to you from a single source.
Storywise this is the most grounded Yoko Taro game I've played (I have not jumped into Drakengard, only Nier.) It's more of a standard fantasy plot with a big bad dragon and nefarious authority ruling over the land in which moral dilemma is a key focus. There is less in the way of philosophy and ambiguous themes, which makes the shorter game fairly easy to parse through and digest. You go from location to location with a clear reason as to why, and meet memorable characters along the way. Some of my favorites (for their impact) were: The toned bodybuilder Bruno and his dad Aureo, Sherwyn, and Ridis. You have a reason to care for the characters in your party as there is a great deal of inter-party dialogue and funny quips throughout. Your protagonist says quite a lot and has an attitude of himself, which in the JRPG sphere is oddly rare. In all, the story does what it needs to, and that's what matters.
Keiichi Okabe does another standup job in the soundtrack department, providing both traditional medieval sounds as well as his trademark lovely mystical piano and nonsensical vocal ballads. The character artist, whose work I'm previously unfamiliar with, also demonstrated some of the most captivating character art in a game that I've played in some time.
The main detractions I have with this game are twofold: the excessively ramped up and surprising difficulty of the final boss and the annoying dungeon design of the last two chapters. There were moments where I had gotten fairly frustrated because the dungeons were really wonky in the way they wanted you to move about them and how much movement was penalized outside of the expected direction. I fixed this issue by grinding a few hours to be max level for the final boss, which felt like a cakewalk after doing so.