Arcanium: Rise of Akhan Reviews

Verified isn't a whole truth. Really should be "playable". Using the right thumb stick as a mouse movement and the triggers for the mouse buttons barely qualifies as playable. Now this is shelved until my PC is setup again more than a month from now.

I 100% completed this game and its achievements so I wanted to leave a review. Even years after its release it still stands as one of the best of the genres of recent years. A lot of roguelikes and roguelites feel very stale. But somehow this doesn't. With a bunch of unlockable stuff it makes you want to keep playing more. I love how you can't force builds and that you sort of have to pivot away from your original plans sometimes. You might get cards for one character and decide you want to invest energy gain and card draw for them. But later unlock other cards for a different character and decide to pivot. There are so many relics in the game too which make runs feel different every time. There is a bit of roguelite elements but it's done in a really nice way I feel. The only downside I have of the game is some of the characters feel like they weren't built in a way where they can maximize their intended purpose. Celeste for example gains Faith when you use a card on an enemy. It makes for going with shield builds seem a little underwhelming because you can't gain faith from high cost cards and the like. So some of her other builds seem like there's not much to be sought after. There are so few options for things like spirit too, which make it so that stat has to be underutilized. Carrion also feels underwhelming and although his kit is cool conceptually, it doesn't feel like it was executed properly. There's not a lot of things that have combo and echo, which I suppose isn't necessarily a bad thing because it could make for a rare interesting run to benefit from those sort of things. This game is a 10/10. The only other game I can think of that I'd give that to within the past 10 years is Poker Quest. I'm a sucker for unlockables I suppose.

A really underrated card battler. It's the only other card game besides STS and Monster Train that I find myself enjoying. Hopefully more content can be added as well as maybe stuff like Daily Runs.