Dragon Evo Reviews

No.

What is this? Merely the tutorial is on another level, enough to close the game amidst it in less than 5 minutes. Maybe it's for others but unfortunately, not for me. Next time, maybe try to make a shorter seamless tutorial a little bit, with a piece of background music.

I really wanna play but I can't even get the very first round of the tutorial to initialize. It just hangs

There was a minor issue when the game first came out but it seems to have been fixed quickly and the game is quite fun now that i have gotten into it. Tentative thumbs up right now.

Yes potentially, fun, however No on the lack of attack-cost balance with too many regressive late cards. Better featured and more completed than "Destiny or Fate" however not on the same tactical balance level as "Monster Sanctuary". I wanted to enjoy a strategic card genre outside of "Slay the Spire" however the number of victorious options is limited by certain deficits as of the time that this review is written: 01: HighWinds faction has superiority with cost-effective attacks from 3rd-tier soldiers. 02: Rutai faction is far too expensive to launch attacks with the limited amount of space for economists. 03: Hologev faction would be amazing if their economists made sufficient funds to pay for attacks. 04: Too many late-game pointless card costs. Too many errors on higher costs not updated in the album. 05: Cost-effective card variants of HighWinds: Knife-Thrower and Camp-Defender are superior to many other cards. 06: Highwinds Commander Portack archer variant with no Action Cost is an extremely efficient attacker compared to rival options when allowed to strike if an opening is provided by the player with the space in front of him. It enables getting free (more) damage on the same turn. Counter-tactics for this are inefficient. 07: It's not obvious how to construct Buildings on the battlefield. The UI needs more signals for this. 08: Couldn't get the in-game scroll bar to function. Couldn't successfully upgrade cards. Needs fixing. 09: Potential for future fixes and updates may solve these issues. Until then; there's other options out there.

Early Access for sure with some fun game play. Bugs are on par similar launches. The core game play seems to be fresh with trying to build few different resources enabling your offense to strike. Will be checking in daily to see where it goes. Updated 3/18 Tutorials and game play has improved with daily updates. A bit of a learning curve but once I hit up the quests each day by doing the solo adventures, the game mechanics start to make sense. I would also suggest joining the discord to get some tips and provide feedback. Developers have a good game plan and stick to their vision but also take feedback to evolve the game. Side note, I have left the game on over night a few times, average about an hour a day.

I'd like to start this review by saying congratulations on putting your game out there, that's more than a lot of aspiring game developers, myself included, can say, it may seem disheartening to see negative reception to something you've worked so hard on, but that's just part of the process, like I said, you've already completed one of the hardest steps, keep at it. When I first saw this game I was excited to see what it was about, I am a huge fan of strategy games, especially CCGs and rts games, so a marriage of the two piqued my interest. These are my thoughts from beating the initial tutorial, every available story quest, and a few AI matches. I'll start with what I enjoyed about the game, then i'll list out what can be improved. THE GOOD -The core gameplay has a lot of potential. The action point system, resource management, positioning, individual card attacks and attack costs, and the melee and ranged attack types are all good ideas at their core. With a bit more polishing the gameplay could be very strategically deep, this I have no doubts about. -I liked how you start with every card in your deck in your hand, it's a nice change that minimizes the rng elements that most CCGs, which seems to be what the game is going for. -The effort to implement a single player campaign was nice to see Overall what I liked about the game comes down to the new and fresh mechanics introduced to make the game feel unique compared to other ccgs, and give it a more strategic rts feel. As I stated, with a lot of tweaking, balancing, and testing this could be something special, but right now its really hard to appreciate it, as it's bogged down by really poor card design and questionable mechanics, which I'll get in to in the next section. WHAT NEEDS TO BE CHANGED OR OUTRIGHT REMOVED -The progression system is really poorly designed right now. The gameplay seems to hint that the devs want to remove rng from the typical ccg formula, but the progression system seems to suggest they want to create a game where players depend on rng to get cards with good stats, then upgrade those stats, not very strategic at all. It's very baffling, it feels like a mobile game ridden with microtransactions, but there are no microtransactions, so why use this awful card unlocking and upgrading method. I hope they aren't planning on introducing that later. Why not just make every copy of a card the same, and just make a lot of cards with different abilities and functions and such, like a normal card game, it's tried and true, and just remove the upgrading system and log in bonus and stuff, it reeks of the worst parts of free mobile games.Also card collection is painfully slow when it doesn't need to be, All of the currency from the story gets you very few cards. Why not just tie unlocking cards to the story mode, as in when you beat the story mode with a faction you unlock all of their cards, there's no need to have a pack system in a game like this, we already payed for it, just let us play the game at our own pace.I don't want to log in everyday, I don't want to grind in this game, I just want to play a fun, strategic card game. The whole upgrading system and stuff would be fine if it was only in the campaign mode. It's fine to keep the research points, but only for cosmetics and the campaign. -The story mode seems broken to me, I started each game with no cards in my hand, and my enemies pretty much never had enough gold to attack me, every story mode mission is impossible to lose at the moment. This is odd to me because AI matches are in the game already and functional. -There is basically no card design, it all seems random, this makes it hard to enjoy the matches because some cards are way too good, while others are basically useless, Like why have a health potion and greater health potion that cost the same to use, there is no reason to use the lesser potion. This game could really benefit from conventional card design processes and conventions, it's tried and true. CONCLUSION The core strategic gameplay has the potential to be fun, but I never had fun playing a match because of how terrible the card design and progression systems are. Because of this, It never felt seamless, the game felt very clunky and random, like things were just happening, I didn't feel in control. This game needs a lot more time in the oven, it's to early for even early access, it's lacking in understanding of what people who play ccgs and strategy games enjoy about those games, beyond the core gameplay. Don't let this review dishearten you, it may be negative, but I only bothered to leave this review because I believe this game has potential, it just needs a lot more thought and care to be properly realized. I'll keep playing to see if my opinions change, but these are things I noticed immediately. Developers, If you want to talk about anything I listed in this review, please don't hesitate to reach out to me for clarification.