![]() ![]() But it also has a surprising pacing that I grew to love, offering fewer random battles than expected, but always against meaty foes. All of this good stuff features, along with the odd puzzle and maze and a completion meter for each chapter which tells you when you haven't fully sounded out the map. Statuses, items, armour and treasure chests. Plenty of dragons and ghouls and robotic monstrosities, but I also take my hat off to any game which gives the humble slime foe a health-regen move called "moisturise." Yuck. ![]() Man, the characters are fantastic, the perfect fit for a campaign that centres on underdogs taking on a cruel world. ![]() So you're encouraged to think in terms of combos, as with every other card battler, but also in terms of suits, which adds a wonderful element of complexity while also driving home the focus on character which defines the games that this team makes in the first place. But listen: you can be too fixated on chains, particularly since you can kill two cards and replace them each turn, a form of gambling as you wait for the right chain card to emerge, only to find out that it hasn't and you've thrown your best substitute offerings away waiting. Chains can see you whittling enemies down in no time at all, and there's often a sharp pang of recrimination in the Donlan household if I fail to chain at every turn. Each character comes with their signature chain card - laying down extra damage, say, or healing the team, or granting everyone a shield, or even leeching health from the baddies. Taking a leaf from games like Poker, if you play your three cards from the same hero's deck, you'll be granted a fourth card as a chain move. Something bright and rewarding to focus on during starter battles, and to ponder after my first defeats.īut it's not the only thing. Steam cost cards tend to be the most devastating, and so steam management was an early fixation of mine. Other cards with steam costs will slowly become available as you earn enough points to play them. Some cards come with no steam cost, which means that actually allow you to build steam, one point for each card you play. Do you want something from the robot who specialises in flame and frost and electricity? Or do you want the one who sometimes wounds herself as she inflicts pain on her foes? The first layer of complexity comes with the mana system, which is called steam here. Each hero's cards are distinct and they'll all be pleasantly jumbled in your hand. In a move that reminds me of XCOM with its two-actions simplicity, each turn in combat sees you selecting three cards to either deal damage, buff or debuff, or heal. Even from the off, though, they bring wonderfully distinct forms of righteous violence to each encounter. Each hero - I mean this term in the loosest sense - has its own deck, which grows throughout the course of the game as you find new cards or craft them or even upgrade oldies with the materials you find lying around. Selecting a team of three heroes - you can swap them out from a cheerful gaggle whenever you fancy - you rove around beautiful 2D environments taking in glades, grottoes, haunted libraries and the like, and you battle awful beasts and bullies as you work through the various chapters of a surprisingly long and involved campaign. Punchcards, because this is robots we're talking about. ![]() This time we're in the robotic dark ages following a band of knockabout losers on a mission to prove themselves heroes. Previous entries have tackled platformers and turn-based tactics. SteamWorld games take an established genre and fill it with robots and palpable character. Do you need another of these games in your life? When it's from the SteamWorld team, yes you do, I think. Availability: Out on Switch on 25th of AprilĪ card-battling RPG would have felt like a niche concern a while back, but Hearthstone happened, and then Slay the Spire and a dozen more.His deck takes a while to understand, but it is wonderfully brisk and wounding when you get your head around it. The masks change as the moves change, each with its own bonus which lasts to the end of a turn. When he strikes, his rapier shifts from stance to stance, slicing baddies to courtly ribbons. He stands tall and straight, always, seemingly, attentive and yet easy - if that combination is possible. Orik the elegant mystery man with the masks. Another inflicts shrapnel wounds by literally pelting foes with money. One of them hammers with massive fists and heals with boundless love. SteamWorld Quest has heroes instead of classes - a handful of lovable clanking misfits, each of whom bring their own decks and their own focus to the turn-based card battling that makes up the campaign. A card-battling RPG enlivened with wit and character. ![]()
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