3/5 I have completed both chapters. It took me about 10 hours to do so. The reason for the 3/5 rating is that there aren’t many consistent strategies in the game. That means even if you play perfectly, whether you succeed largely depends on whether you've rolled the few "Essential cards" early or not.
Just a warning: by the late game, the final boss has 40,000 HP (without any difficulty modifiers). This means you need cards that can receive permanent buffs or permanent damage increases and push them to the max, or you need a strategy that can burn a lot of cards (which means you need cards that can spawn other cards). Ideally, you have both permanent buff cards and spawner cards in a single run.
The problem is that very few cards can gain permanent damage increases, and even fewer cards that can spawn other cards, and the ways to increase damage are all high-risk, low-reward scenarios. You’re constantly risking a card’s death for the chance to gain a small permanent damage boost. But the game only has one way to revive cards, and the card it revived is"random.” At best, you’ll encounter 3–4 revival points in a run, which means if a "buffed halfway" card dies during the run, you’re basically guaranteed to never see it again. If you aren’t careful, your "buffed halfway" cards can die instantly, and the run is 100% ruined without any chance of saving it.
Basically, if you roll those four or five critical cards early enough, you can guarantee a win. If you don’t get them early, the run is effectively over. You might struggle a bit further, but eventually there’s no way you can beat 40,000 HP.
You really have to think, what strategies can produce 40,000 damage? The answer is not many. In the end, this game feels similar to Luck Be a Landlord or Crop Rotation, but in a worse way. Those games are fast-paced, whereas this is a slow grind, and even then, you can barely beat the final boss without difficulty modifiers. The power creep is just too steep in the late game to be enjoyable.
I’d put this game in the same category as Wildfrost as being "very easy to get into, very easy to sweep through enemies in the early floors, but you eventually realize there are only a handful of actual winning strategies. The final boss’s sudden power spike is jarring and outright unpleasant."
I prefer a game where, if you play your hand right, every seed should be winnable (not necessarily without SL, but at least theoretically possible if you know how to pivot strategies).
But in this game (and Wildfrost) at least 80%+ of seeds have no chance of winning in the first place. You’re just hoping you landed in that 10-15% of seeds that can win.
And yes, you may think about 80% of the seed in "Luck Be a Landlord" is also not winnable, but that game balances the low chance with the fast pace. Each run in "Luck Be a Landlord" only lasts 5 to 10 minutes at best. But this game lasts much longer for each single run, and in the end you run into the same problem.
I have completed both chapters. It took me about 10 hours to do so. The reason for the 3/5 rating is that there aren’t many consistent strategies in the game. That means even if you play perfectly, whether you succeed largely depends on whether you've rolled the few "Essential cards" early or not.
Just a warning: by the late game, the final boss has 40,000 HP (without any difficulty modifiers). This means you need cards that can receive permanent buffs or permanent damage increases and push them to the max, or you need a strategy that can burn a lot of cards (which means you need cards that can spawn other cards). Ideally, you have both permanent buff cards and spawner cards in a single run.
The problem is that very few cards can gain permanent damage increases, and even fewer cards that can spawn other cards, and the ways to increase damage are all high-risk, low-reward scenarios. You’re constantly risking a card’s death for the chance to gain a small permanent damage boost. But the game only has one way to revive cards, and the card it revived is"random.” At best, you’ll encounter 3–4 revival points in a run, which means if a "buffed halfway" card dies during the run, you’re basically guaranteed to never see it again. If you aren’t careful, your "buffed halfway" cards can die instantly, and the run is 100% ruined without any chance of saving it.
Basically, if you roll those four or five critical cards early enough, you can guarantee a win. If you don’t get them early, the run is effectively over. You might struggle a bit further, but eventually there’s no way you can beat 40,000 HP.
You really have to think, what strategies can produce 40,000 damage? The answer is not many. In the end, this game feels similar to Luck Be a Landlord or Crop Rotation, but in a worse way. Those games are fast-paced, whereas this is a slow grind, and even then, you can barely beat the final boss without difficulty modifiers. The power creep is just too steep in the late game to be enjoyable.
I’d put this game in the same category as Wildfrost as being "very easy to get into, very easy to sweep through enemies in the early floors, but you eventually realize there are only a handful of actual winning strategies. The final boss’s sudden power spike is jarring and outright unpleasant."
I prefer a game where, if you play your hand right, every seed should be winnable (not necessarily without SL, but at least theoretically possible if you know how to pivot strategies).
But in this game (and Wildfrost) at least 80%+ of seeds have no chance of winning in the first place. You’re just hoping you landed in that 10-15% of seeds that can win.
And yes, you may think about 80% of the seed in "Luck Be a Landlord" is also not winnable, but that game balances the low chance with the fast pace. Each run in "Luck Be a Landlord" only lasts 5 to 10 minutes at best. But this game lasts much longer for each single run, and in the end you run into the same problem.