Griftlands Reviews

I beat the game as Sal and I have to say the game is both lackluster and overwhelming, somehow. The game is extremely complicated with high time investment into runs. It is extremely punishing when you inevitably fuck up, because you have no idea whats going on. The dual deckbuilding is a meme. Negotiating is 100% optional, as is building its deck up. Combat is MANDATORY, as is building up your combat deck. "Muh choices matter" marketing is just straight bullshit.

This is one of the highest-quality games I've ever played. The game is basically a deckbuilding, card battling roguelite. There are two types of card battles, each of which uses a different deck. The first type are combat-style battles that are almost exactly as in Slay the Spire (re-skinned, of course). The other kind of card battle is for negotiations, and it uses a different deck. Both types of battles are fun, are very well designed, and are compelling. But these make up only half the gameplay. Another quarter of gameplay is having conversations with NPCs as in an RPG. The player's choices in these dialogues result in different rewards or consequences that enrich the risk/reward mechanic and also make the game way more engaging and playful. The last (and smallest?) quarter of gameplay is deciding where to go when, buying/destroying cards or pets from merchants, and making allies or enemies. If you liked Slay the Spire, I challenge you to try this game. Although I've only played a few hours of Slay the Spire so far, I think this is an improvement in just about every way. It's deeper, more interactive, has much better graphics and music, supports more play styles, has more types of "battle", and so on. I have yet to find any bugs.

Excellent Roguelite card battler/ deck builder. I won't do a full review or anything, but it has... 3 interesting protagonists with their own story and location, 2 different battle types, loads of cards and upgrade options, long-term upgrades outside of runs, costumes etc. Well worth the price tag in terms of re-playability.

This is one of those games I can always come back to and enjoy, after hundreds of hours of play. The negotiation mechanics are genius. And personally, I especially like that the course of the game involves morality-based decisions, so you can be as righteous or nefarious as you like. I kind of wish that there was a sequel or reasonably priced DLC.

This is a great game and once you beat the game once and unlock the brawl mode it gets way better. In fact personally up until then it was a 8/10 must buy game but after that id slide it up to a 9.5/10. It's a really complete game

Great art, characters, world-building. Lots of moving pieces, which could be a pro or a con.

Quite fun story heavy roguelike. Not much more to say, just cool having the option to fight through "dialogue" options. This game is a solid representation of the genre.

A brilliant roleplaying deck building rougelike game. You can live through a character's story while building them like you want, akin to an RPG. Sometimes I just start up a random campaign and am still amazed at the quality of dialogue and random event generation. You can also just play a brawl, which is the same game but with all the story, and dialogue cut out, with random generated encounters and missions. The deck crafting is quite satisfying and fun since you can craft many different approaches to fighting and arguing, and usually the game's randomness directs you into a new build you never tried before. All in all, a great game to play through for the brilliant story and its world, and then later a great game to keep on playing with. Sometimes I describe it to my girlfriend as my generation's version of Solitaire.

Excellent CCG. Balance can be sometimes a bit odd as it wildly depends on your deck and character. For example in my experience Sal felt balanced overall, Rook had a VERY hard time doing any negotiation in Brawl mode, while Smith almost instantly won every negotiation (and also had an easy time in battles). The dialogues are nice, the card mechanics are nice, lots of different types of mechanics combinations and chains you can utilize, negotiation and battle ideas are awesome. Only drawback really is the lack of (random or not) "events" that happen in between your regular quests and story line. There are very few and they are very linear/predictable.

Great game. Very cool card system. Just wish they'd make some DLC's for it!!! Cool world, cool story.