Eternal Card Game Reviews

Great CCG. Can be thought of as a Hearthstone++. Major differences from Hearthstone: - Combat happens in a similar way to Magic: you choose the attackers and then your opponent chooses which creatures blocks which. - Damage from combat is NOT permanent. - Uses the concept of lands (called sigils in this game) - Multicolor decks - Less focus on RNG - Fast spells (spells that you can cast when your opponent declares an attack / ends the turn) They took Hearthstone and then tried to make it feel a little bit more like Magic. While the changes may look small, they truly improve the gameplay.

The power flooding/screwing, how you mulligan, and how inconsistent your decks play ruins what is a competent online CCG. Magic the Gathering is already an exercise in frustration with its 60 card decks. Eternal has 75 card decks -- Why?! This just increases the odds of drawing a streak of cards you can't utilize resulting in many games where you literally lose the game without playing a unit. This, combined with the game's harsh mulliganing where you can only mulligan once to which you have to dump your whole hand, results in a crap shoot that often ends up with these wildly polarizing hands. If you somehow manage to make a game more inconsistent than Magic the Gathering, then you're doing something very wrong. It's really fun when you get a reasonably balanced hand, but too often your options are to draw power for 10 turns in a row or not draw power for 10 turns in a row.

This is probably the best digital card game you will pick up. As someone who has played Hearthstone, Magic (digital and non-digital), Spellweaver, and that random Might and Magic card game that really didn't do it for a lot of people, I can safely say that this game has taken the features I have loved the most about those games, and mashed them all together into something that is very clearly a winner for me. But you know what? It's done something that I haven't seen in any of those other online card games, and that is the FREE Gauntlet. I don't think I have played a game where you can continuously fight with the AI, not a real person, and still find it (sometimes) challenging and always rewarding. Most games in this genre don't reward players who dislike playing real people, and put Versus AI mode as a practice mode with relatively few gains. I am aware Hearthstone has limited rewards for singleplayer challenges, but Eternal offers you packs, singles, and gold each time you challenge. That is probably the most redeeming feature for me, because in the end, it makes free-to-play really feel like free-to-play. TL;DR: Congratulations to a development team who have done a bang-up job of sticking to their idea of "generously Free to Play".

I'm updating this review to reflect on what I have gathered after two months of play. Sadly, my opinion about the game has quickly gone downhill as the fun factor has been drained by the effects of bad variance. Eternal Card Game is Hearthstone’s UI with a Magic: the Gathering feel to it. And it features more of the bad from both those games, than the good. There are three main issues with it: First of all, extreme resource variance, known within the community as power screw and flood, determines an unacceptable amount of games, and the tools to mitigate this given within the game, both as cards and game mechanics, haven’t been enough to solve it. This is particularly frustrating during draft, and has been highly criticized in the forums. Second, swingy mechanics aren’t kept on check, and this is mostly related to the fact that changes in cards can still affect them while outside of play (?). This leads to some games being determined by players drawing into oversized units that their opponents can’t respond to, or recycling weapons that grant increasing numbers of armor and damage. As a direct consequence, tempo swings are immediate instead of gradual, and they set a quick counter towards defeat. And third, it seems like the developers are digging into abilities that generate random cards. Concededly, there’s not a huge amount of them at the moment that I’m writing this review, and they’re not the most powerful effects, but it makes me scared that this is the direction we’re heading. What’s most frustrating is that the developers are already engaging into releasing new content instead of addressing the current problems. This makes me concerned that the game might be released without any changes in these regards, which is why I’m advising that people don’t spend any kind of money in it. ***note***: I'm keeping the old review around, just in case someone is interested in the games best features, instead of it's worst. Thought I’m giving this game a positive review, and I encourage tcg players and virtual ccg players to try it out, I advise against spending any money in it until you’re definitely sure that you want to stick with it. Eternal Card Game is Hearthstone’s UI with a Magic: the Gathering feel to it. And it features both, some of the good and some of the bad from both games. Nothing in its core is original. It is fast paced, and its familiar mechanics and simple UI make it easy to learn. The main issue about this game, however, is that it falls in the “screw and flood” paradigm of any card game where resources are cards. While, additionally, forcing players to make at least one third of each deck to be resource cards. This particularly punishes low curve fast strategies by increasing the chances that they flood in resource cards with nowhere to spend them, while not solving the fact that they can still get resource screwed and not be able to play any most of their cards. I do believe that it will be better in the future as the card pool grows in size and design mistakes are balanced.

I've played Magic on and off my whole life and spent at least 1000 hours playing Hearthstone. I had MTGO since the very beginning, and Hearthstone since open beta. Eternal is the best online card game I've ever played. It combines the best aspects of Magic's strategic depth and Hearthstone's fast-paced accessibility while avoiding their flaws. PS:Though the mulligan will always drive you crazy,but I love this game indeed. [u]F2P[/u] Magic will always be expensive because it's a tradable CCG with a reserve list of cards that can't be reprinted and expensive booster packs. Most cards lose tons of value when they rotate out of standard. MTGO is less expensive and more liquid than physical cards, but still expensive. Recently, Wizards have added features similar to other digital CCGs like treasure chests. Hearthstone is "F2P" in name only. New players need to spend lots of money or time to earn a viable deck. Otherwise, enjoy scraping out wins with a crappy pile at rank 17. Rewards for winning games are meager. You can get big payoffs in Arena (where you don't get to keep the cards you draft)...if you're already an experienced player and/or lucky. Arena costs 1.5 packs to play with cards you don't own and win at least 1 pack of value. You don't keep the cards. New Arena players get trashed. Eternal is truly F2P. The spoils of victory are frequent and generous. Each win either gives a treasure chest with gold and a card, or more gold and a better card, or even more gold holy shit and a booster pack. Each treasure chest has a chance of becoming a better treasure chest full of even better rewards. Single-player Gauntlet mode lets you face the AI for free to win big rewards. Forge and Draft are more expensive than HS Arena (2.5 and 5x pack price vs. 1.5x pack price), but you get to keep all the cards you draft in Forge and Draft modes while still winning big payoffs for playing well. Magic is pay to play, try to recoup your losses later. Hearthstone is an evil slot machine that reluctantly hands out the goods. Eternal is a slot machine that always gives you something, but sometimes gives you something better, and occasionally gives you an all-expenses-paid trip to Hawaii. Winner: Eternal [u]Gameplay and RNG[/u] Magic is the deepest, most complicated, most strategically interesting CCG ever. Almost every type of card, zone and resource can be interacted with, during both players' turns. The mana system rewards intelligent deck building and decision making skills. However, the mana system has also been a constant thorn in its side. Mana screw and flood as well as color screw are a necessary evil of the game's design, and consistently ruin the experience and decide high-level matches. The mulligan system punishes you further for the crime of being unlucky. Magic Online makes no use of any digital-only design space (except Momir Basic) and the relief from shuffling physical cards. The metagame gets patched several times a year whenever the physical Banned and Restricted list is updated. Hearthstone sidesteps resource problems with its mana system, but has different issues instead. It's a simplistic "My turn, your turn" game with a hard limit to how interesting and interactive it can be. The mana system means that instead of getting mana-screwed, you get tempo-screwed if you don't draw a 2 on turn 2, a 3 on turn 3, and so on. It's called Curvestone for a reason. Being able to attack anything directly means that losing the board first usually means losing the game. The mulligan system is good. Hearthstone explores digital design space, but leans overwhelmingly on random effects. The RNG is so hilariously pervasive that even top-level players meme about it on a constant basis. Omnipresent powerful random effects make situations that are impossible to play around. It's one thing to get outplayed, but it feels awful to get outlucked. HS is the game of getting outlucked. Also, the meta is prone to getting extremely stale as Team 5 moves very slowly to nerf problem cards and very rarely buffs weaker ones. Eternal simplifies the essence of Magic's strategic, interactive gameplay. You can still interact on your opponents' turns and there's plenty of powerful spot and mass removal (at common and uncommon, even!) to deal with tall and wide boards. The mana and combat systems are similar to Magic's. Eternal mitigates bad opening hands by allowing you to redraw a 7 card hand with between 2-5 mana cards, guaranteed. Flood and screw are still possible, but not nearly as frequently as in Magic. The combat system is much more interesting less blatantly aggressive than Hearthstone's, with different advantages given for attackers and defenders. Eternal makes excellent use of digital design space. You can affect cards in any zone, some cards make copies of themselves when drawn, and card attributes will persist across different zones, resulting in creative combos. As far as the metagame, in the last few months Dire Wolf Digital has shown a willingness to alter cards and tune up the meta in a timely manner when certain strategies are revealed to be too oppressive or lacking in counterplay. Winner: Magic for overall depth, Eternal for elegance and creativity with digital space. [u]Polish and Features[/u] Magic Online is the laughingstock of the digital games world. However, it has many more features than HS, with a huge variety of formats available, a full-featured collection and deck manager, and the ability to trade tickets cards with bots other players. Hearthstone is a beautiful experience with compelling graphics, music, animations and voice acting. However, it possesses a few game modes (casual, ranked, arena, tavern brawl) with only two formats for now (wild and tavern brawl). It possesses extremely few features despite its obscene profitability and years post-release. There is no tournament mode and the deck and collection managers are very weak. Eternal's art direction, sound design and graphical effects are better than Magic Online (like every other game) and worse than Hearthstone's (like every other game), but far closer to Hearthstone than to Magic Online. It only has two single player and two multiplayer modes. It has an intuitive, full-featured collection manager and deckbuilder with analytic tools to help guide deckbuilding. Winner: Hearthstone for polish, Eternal for features. [u]Verdict[/u] On the whole, Eternal refines and simplifies Magic's gameplay and creatively explores new design space while avoiding the egregious errors of Hearthstone. The gameplay finely balances a majority focus on skill with a pinch of luck. There is a wealth of interactions and strategies to explore. The online experience is elegant, enjoyable and full-featured. The game is generous with its rewards. You should stop reading this and install it right now. Why are you still reading this? Go away. Go play Eternal.

I love Card Games and i must say i realy love this one. I have trieed almost every card game on a PC a came along, but none of them keeped me playing like Eternal. Like the other reviewers sayed, its a mix from hearthstone and magic, in a good way. It can be frustrating when you didnt get the power cards (sigils) you need to play cards, bute hey: RNG! But the most important Fact in this Game is the really good PvE Content, you never need to play PvP if you didnt want to and still can progress. Just try it you have nothing to lose :)

A UI as good as Hearthstone with cards and a resource system more similar to MTG and a surprisingly competent AI makes going through the long tutorial worth it. As of writing this review game is very generous giving out commons and uncommons for simply completing quests and building up enough f2p coins to draft doesn't take very long either. I would say Eternal has the most consumer friendly model on the CCG market.

Eternal Card Game initially comes across as being quite a solid redo of Magic the Gathering. It has some very interesting mechanics that build upon previous concepts from other card games, and has made some effort to reduce the common issue of variance. Eternal uses a number of mechanics seen in MtG and hearthstone (such as trample, flying, death-touch etc), as well as a very similar mana system and turn structure. Eternal moves on from there though with a slightly different take on hearthstones weapon system, and some interesting mechanics that make good use of the digital format. Unfortunately I cannot recommend this game, and instead recommend 'Magic Duels' instead. There are some flaws that hinder Eternals current potential, and 'Magic Duels' is simply a more balanced and newcomer-friendly environment. To explain, I will list the pros and cons below. Pros: - Eternal makes good use of being a digital card game. There are a number of mechanics and unique card abilities (namely 'echo' and 'crown of possibilities') that are fun, reasonably powerful, and also very difficult to replicate in a paper format. - Eternal is somewhat balanced. Some cards are great, some are not, and no cards (from what I have seen at any rate) are game-breakingly poweful. Ranked (Standard) definitely has tiered deck lists (ie, some decks are better than others), but budget or janky decks can still participate with an expectation to pull off a few wins - Eternal is free to play, paying simply speeds up the process. All formats can be played with the in-game currency (gold), and all of the cards can be obtained through earning and using gold. Gold is also not too difficult to obtain, as you can complete quests, battle players, or battle AI to earn gold. Participating in drafts or sealed formats also awards gold and cards/packs, and doing well in draft will either cover the entire cost (winning 6 games and losing 3) or will earn more gold than what you paid (7 wins, 2 or fewer losses) - Eternal is reasonably solid with very few bugs or systematic issues. It doesn't play well with certain GFX settings or GFX cards, but the only real issue I encountered was that certain parts of the UI might black out (while still being usable). Cons: - Biggest first: variance. A lot of people will say "variance is in all card games, it's part of the game", and I will agree with them. However, when playing Eternal in any of its formats, there are far too many "non-games" - games where you have drawn too many sigils (lands), or too few, or are missing a colour entirely; games where you have drawn poorly and/or the opponent has drawn perfectly; games that are not really games, because either you, or your opponent, did not really participate. Eternal is very much a 'value' game rather than a 'combo' game, 2-for-1'ing your opponent is always what you play to, and often what you lose to. While out-valuing your opponent can be fun, often a single 'out-value' moment can snowball into victory. Why? Deck size requirements are too high (45 for sealed, 75 for draft), you can only mulligan once, and games are a 'best of 1', which means that consistency is regularly quite low. With this, even the best decks can easily lose repeatedly to lower tier decks, even if the match-up is favourable. Also, this issue of variance practically doubles in draft. The limited format is decent, and the card design makes it clear that MtG professionals have assisted with creating the set. However, the drafting stage takes place with AI bots (draft with bots, play against live players), and the AI often make strange choices that lead into odd drafting signals. Packs also have extremely poor variance, often only containing one card of a particular colour. Due to this, it's quite often that you will be passed a pack where there are literally no good picks for your colour(s) (even at pick 2), and even pack-1-pick-1 can be extremely poor. These issues exacerbate the previously mentioned variance issues, often leading to a bad draft experience. In all, there are an alarmingly high number of "non-game"s, and be rare to experience actual games. Non-games are less likely in ranked, but even then the rate seems (purely based on experience, not at all researched) to be approximately 50-50. - Eternal is not newcomer friendly. There is a tutorial, and you do get to play a relatively easy and straightforward campaign. 'Forge' (sealed) is also relatively easy, and can be a good way for new players to spend gold and learn pick order basics. However, there are a few mechanics that are not explained well, and a number of interactions that are not particularly intuitive. Good examples of this are 'Aegis' and 'Exhaust', as neither are explained fully by the in-game rules description. Thankfully this issue isn't too uncommon, but (without some prior research) you will likely lose a few games (some of which you may have paid for, like draft) due to not fully understanding a particular mechanic. - Certain cards and mechanics are unbalanced. Anything that provides card advantage, and any mechanic that provides an easy and/or immediate 2-for-1 (eg. warcry and echo) are notably more powerful than other effects. While this would be fine normally (as you do need certain cards/effects to be pushed), the issue of consistency and variance makes this a bit more unbalanced. I did say earlier that Eternal is "somewhat balanced" as a 'pro', and overall the game is good in that regard. The colours all do fine in limited, and nothing is game-breakingly powerful. However, you will experience more 'non-game's the moment you don't run some form of deck-thinning/card advantage/inherent 2-for-1s, as variance will simply punish you more often. To conclude, variance is painful, and "non-game"s are the worst. The game is fun in a lot of ways, but sadly the sheer number of "non-game"s detract a little too much from the overall experience. The game is still in development, and it still holds a lot of potential, and hopefully the developers will work toward some better solutions for the current issues. For now though, I suggest finding another game.

Quick Review: Great Magic: The Gathering inspired digital CCG. Amazing UI, loads of features, brilliant draft system, and some truly awesome cards. But... as an MTG derivative, you have to be able to accept mana flooding/screwing. Long Review: I wanted to put some good hours into the game before reviewing (18 as of this post). I've completed the Tutorial Quests, four Forges, one draft and a ton of ranked games. Oh, and I've been playing Magic since Arabian Nights and Hearthstone since Beta. To start, this is NOT Hearthstone. It is Magic the Gathering. Everything you know from Hearthstone doesn't apply here. You have to play "power" cards (mana/lands), so you need to know how to balance a deck. The system will try to do it for you and they start you out with a full set of 40 "dual stones", but to be good at the game you'll need to understand how to get the proper ratios. You also don't choose how you attack. You choose WHO attacks, and the opponent chooses blocks. Once you accept that this is Magic on digitial steroids, you can really enjoy the game. Note: the initial tutorial quests are drudgery. Your decks suck and the mana ratios aren't great. They should really let you skip parts of this, but they don't. JUST PLAY THROUGH. It's worth it. You'll get a free Forge, which will net you a solid amount of packs and get you going. The UI is AMAZING. You can get through games in 5 minutes and there is almost no waiting. Everything just works like you expect it to. WotC should hang its head in shame after seeing this. There are a ton of cards for a first launch and lots of interesting deck ideas to build around. You could say that there are some balance issues - Black has a ridiculous suite of creature removal for a core set - but overall it does feel like every color have something truly special that it can do, and there are solid Aggro, Control and Combo strategies. While I still love Hearthstone, I've been finding myself coming back to Eternal again and again, excited to play more. It's awesome and will be enjoyed by anyone who has played and enjoyed Magic at any time in their life.

I've played Magic on and off my whole life and spent at least 1000 hours playing Hearthstone. I had MTGO since the very beginning, and Hearthstone since late 2013 near the end of the open beta. Eternal is the best online card game I've ever played. It combines the best aspects of Magic's strategic depth and Hearthstone's fast-paced accessibility while avoiding their flaws. F2P Magic will always be expensive because it's a tradable CCG with a reserve list of cards that can't be reprinted and expensive booster packs. Most cards lose tons of value when they rotate out of standard. MTGO is less expensive and more liquid than physical cards, but still expensive. Recently, Wizards have added features similar to other digital CCGs like treasure chests. Hearthstone is "F2P" in name only. New players need to spend lots of money or time to earn a viable deck. Otherwise, enjoy scraping out wins with a crappy pile at rank 17. Rewards for winning games are meager. You can get big payoffs in Arena (where you don't get to keep the cards you draft)...if you're already an experienced player and/or lucky. Arena costs 1.5 packs to play with cards you don't own and win at least 1 pack of value. You don't keep the cards. New Arena players get trashed. Eternal is truly F2P. The spoils of victory are frequent and generous. Each win either gives a treasure chest with gold and a card, or more gold and a better card, or even more gold holy shit and a booster pack. Each treasure chest has a chance of becoming a better treasure chest full of even better rewards. Single-player Gauntlet mode lets you face the AI for free to win big rewards. Forge and Draft are more expensive than HS Arena (2.5 and 5x pack price vs. 1.5x pack price), but you get to keep all the cards you draft in Forge and Draft modes while still winning big payoffs for playing well. Magic is pay to play, try to recoup your losses later. Hearthstone is an evil slot machine that reluctantly hands out the goods. Eternal is a slot machine that always gives you something, but sometimes gives you something better, and occasionally gives you an all-expenses-paid trip to Hawaii. Winner: Eternal Gameplay and RNG Magic is the deepest, most complicated, most strategically interesting CCG ever. Almost every type of card, zone and resource can be interacted with, during both players' turns. The mana system rewards intelligent deck building and decision making skills. However, the mana system has also been a constant thorn in its side. Mana screw and flood as well as color screw are a necessary evil of the game's design, and consistently ruin the experience and decide high-level matches. The mulligan system punishes you further for the crime of being unlucky. Magic Online makes no use of any digital-only design space (except Momir Basic) and the relief from shuffling physical cards. The metagame gets patched several times a year whenever the physical Banned and Restricted list is updated. Hearthstone sidesteps resource problems with its mana system, but has different issues instead. It's a simplistic "My turn, your turn" game with a hard limit to how interesting and interactive it can be. The mana system means that instead of getting mana-screwed, you get tempo-screwed if you don't draw a 2 on turn 2, a 3 on turn 3, and so on. It's called Curvestone for a reason. Being able to attack anything directly means that losing the board first usually means losing the game. The mulligan system is good. Hearthstone explores digital design space, but leans overwhelmingly on random effects. The RNG is so hilariously pervasive that even top-level players meme about it on a constant basis. Omnipresent powerful random effects make situations that are impossible to play around. It's one thing to get outplayed, but it feels awful to get outlucked. HS is the game of getting outlucked. Also, the meta is prone to getting extremely stale as Team 5 moves very slowly to nerf problem cards and very rarely buffs weaker ones. Eternal simplifies the essence of Magic's strategic, interactive gameplay. You can still interact on your opponents' turns and there's plenty of powerful spot and mass removal (at common and uncommon, even!) to deal with tall and wide boards. The mana and combat systems are similar to Magic's. Eternal mitigates bad opening hands by allowing you to redraw a 7 card hand with between 2-5 mana cards, guaranteed. Flood and screw are still possible, but not nearly as frequently as in Magic. The combat system is much more interesting less blatantly aggressive than Hearthstone's, with different advantages given for attackers and defenders. Eternal makes excellent use of digital design space. You can affect cards in any zone, some cards make copies of themselves when drawn, and card attributes will persist across different zones, resulting in creative combos. As far as the metagame, in the last few months Dire Wolf Digital has shown a willingness to alter cards and tune up the meta in a timely manner when certain strategies are revealed to be too oppressive or lacking in counterplay. Winner: Magic for overall depth, Eternal for elegance and creativity with digital space. Polish and Features Magic Online is the laughingstock of the digital games world. However, it has many more features than HS, with a huge variety of formats available, a full-featured collection and deck manager, and the ability to trade tickets cards with bots other players. Hearthstone is a beautiful experience with compelling graphics, music, animations and voice acting. However, it possesses a few game modes (casual, ranked, arena, tavern brawl) with only two formats for now (wild and tavern brawl). It possesses extremely few features despite its obscene profitability and years post-release. There is no tournament mode and the deck and collection managers are very weak. Eternal's art direction, sound design and graphical effects are better than Magic Online (like every other game) and worse than Hearthstone's (like every other game), but far closer to Hearthstone than to Magic Online. It only has two single player and two multiplayer modes. It has an intuitive, full-featured collection manager and deckbuilder with analytic tools to help guide deckbuilding. Winner: Hearthstone for polish, Eternal for features. Verdict On the whole, Eternal refines and simplifies Magic's gameplay and creatively explores new design space while avoiding the egregious errors of Hearthstone. The gameplay finely balances a majority focus on skill with a pinch of luck. There is a wealth of interactions and strategies to explore. The online experience is elegant, enjoyable and full-featured. The game is generous with its rewards. You should stop reading this and install it right now. Why are you still reading this? Go away. Go play Eternal