Tales of the Deck Reviews

Gameplay is a little flat. Doesn't feel like choices matter.

It is rare that I am compelled to write a review for a game but for the amount of disappointment I found in this game I feel I want to say my peace. I kinda liked the "8-bit theater" design of the characters and creatures, it reminded me of old NES games and I have played enough RPG Maker games to appreciate that. I find the concept of game somewhat interesting, having a party of characters taking damage rather than a single target as most of these type games do is unique enough to catch my attention. Other than those two things I am hard pressed to find any redeeming qualities of this game. There are some things that can can be written off as "EA" such as the broken tutorial, lack of tool tips, and over-all clunky controls, but most of it is just poor design. the first thing is the deck size, 6 cards for 3 different characters, totaling 18. that is simply too small even if it wasn't divided in 3. you start off with 1/3 your deck in your hand, and with the ability to draw multiple cards on come characters you could end up with half your deck in your hand. This vastly limits any deck's ability to adjust to situations as you have to basically already know what your deck is going to do. To further limit your potential for strategy the 18 cards you get are divided between 3 characters that have very little synergy. The thief, for example, has cards that "do x to a poisoned enemy" some of which can only be played against a poisoned enemy and yet the thief is the only one that can poison an enemy. The fighter has the same thing with protect. I have tried using these and they just aren't viable in combat. first you have to hope you get the right cards in the right order. otherwise you are constantly discarding cards and wasting turns while taking damage and doing very little back. There are cards that give allies extra turns or extra MP which allows for some form of synergy, but even that is more like "let's pick one character to buff up and let him do all the work" The action/mp system is an interesting concept but at this point somewhat poorly designed. in order to gain MP you have to play a card that gains you MP. if you don't pull one in your hand then you don't gain any MP that round. The inverse of that is there are swift cards that allow you to take another action after playing it (basically playing the card for free) while gaining an MP, this is nice but if you do that enough you can end up with a very large amount of MP on a single character which kind of undermines the point of MP requiring some build up to use powerful cards. So my question for this would be is it the actions that is intended to limit the cards played or is the MP supposed to limit it or more so what is the point of having both? Perhaps it's just my failure to understand the intention of MP and Action points but that's what I get from it. In the end you have a game with 3 decks of 6 cards each shuffled together rather than a deck of 18 cards with limited ability to play those cards half the time and made even worse if a character dies because then 1/3 your deck is completely useless. There are other poor things about it too, but most of it I can write off as just being early access, so ignoring all those I feel like there is very little potential with this game as designed.

Currently disappointed, more against Steam This game is fully bugged, impossible to play the campaign. Even the tutorial fails at step 3. This game is clearly not finished, it is said to be in early access, but in fact it is dead since 2020. Perhaps are there funest causes to that, don't know, but Steam should just stop selling this game And it's not the first time it happens Buying a game that does not worth is annoying, but buying a game that is not a game, it's clearly a fraud

Unfortunately, I must agree with Ocean_Of_Memories completely. With this music you just want to stop immediately. But even when I muted it, the game did not help me to love it. It says "RPG" in the tags, but it´s really just a sequence of fights. The only growth your characters experience is the addition of 1 HP after each battle. The whole set up with "Fall in battle, and your story is cut short." is nonsense: There is no story to be cut short. The animations are slow, there is hardly any good explanation in-game of how the game works (the tutorial is not well-designed) and no "taste" of what you will get out of the game if you become better. As I stopped playing after one run, there is a good chance that I missed all the amazing stuff and features that you unlock after victory (?). However, this game fails to set up a first excitement that forgives maybe-EA-errors. If you came here beacuse you loved the opportunities of Slay the Spire: be a more forgiving supporter of unpolished EA-titels that fail to keep their promises than me or turn around and have fun elsewhere.