Xenotheria Reviews

Pretty nice Card Battler. The Game oozes Character, especially with Norton playing off pretty much everyone. That Goofball is just too likeable. The Battles are pretty decently balanced and the different Characters have interesting synergy between them. Give it a try!

An enjoyable 20 hours of turn based combat. The story line is interesting and the characters do have a little bit of depth. There could be a little bit more lore as they just toss in various species without too much backstory of the overall universe. The leveling up is fairly straight forward but the new and/or unlocked cards don't really bring much more to the game. For the most part, I stuck with the original cards with a few card purchases. The card upgrades were hit or miss. Some upgrades really help while other seemed not to really affect game play much. The game does force you to play all the characters since healing is only really done at level ups. But every character does gain experience whether you use them or not (Thank you!) I had a core of three or four that I mostly ran with but all six are fairly useful. The one exception is the fish-in-a-mech character in which I couldn't figure out how to really gain much flux. It would have been nice to just have a "Gain Flux" card like the "Charge" card that the other character had. This seems to have been a big oversight (or maybe in my run the card just didn't come up). A single run through is enough for me and I will be moving on to something else but I truely enjoyed my time playing the game. The core game play is to first see what the enemy will do, then move your characters accordingly and then proceed to perform your actions. This game loop works really well and if you are fairly tactical, most battles are pretty easily won. I only "died" a handful of time, mostly due to forgetting the first step to just "move out of the way". [spoiler] I did have one major game breaking bug in which I was unable to play the "Final Sever" card due to lack of EP (Energy Points). I had to replay the final boss battle over again (this time making sure I had at least one EP left when the boss was defeated) and I was able to finish the game. [/spoiler]

I am halfway through the game, I think. I like that the game is a linear story and not a roguelike, but I find the power curve is really lacking. Even after upgrading cards to max level, I still feel really weak against more enemies than my max party of 3. The lack of mobility, the small chances of synergies working, and lack of damage compared to the enemy make battles longer and longer as time goes. The game giving unlimited revives is the only way to get through some battles when you don't have a fully healed party at the start of battles. Oh yeah, you rely on health boxes between battles, but they don't fully heal you (5 health, 20 health). The art and story was interesting, but the farther I get into the game, the less I want to play it, as each battle takes longer and longer.