Card En Ciel is overall a great game in all it aims to accomplish. The gameplay loop is fun and engaging, the variety in music is amazing (50+ songs ostensibly) and some well voice-acted , mostly comedic story. Anime tropes are dialed up to 11 here, which isn't for everyone. I'd stray away if high amounts of anime cringe put you off these sorts of games. Imperfections lie in the story and gameplay, but these are very minor to the overall package. Story The story is not the focal point of this game. It is basically a Saturday morning cartoon show of you and your partner Ancie jumping into dungeons to collect "error fragments," and you do this on repeat the entire story. There is the usual forced romance between the main character and his partner, some bad guy pops out of nowhere, has a paper-thin backstory, you beat him, and party poppers—you save *the world*. It felt like the game wanted to tell some deeper story here? It never goes into any deep world-building, but there are weird plot points sprinkled in that are never expanded upon later. Such as the main character having some sort of trauma that takes them out of the "VR World," and he gets a little back story developed here, and it is entirely forgotten later. I'd have liked to have seen more of this; really, the characters I found likable. Overall, the story will keep your attention. Most of it describes fictional games, fighting their fictional protagonists, and experiencing all of the over-the-top tropes they resemble. It is entertaining. Gameplay How it works Card-based battles are the meat and potatoes of this game. You get 3 energy each turn, and your cards cost 0-3 energy each. Cards have abilities on them that are standardised, think Hearthstone or any other card game where cards have abilities really. For example, a card with Reboot will, when used, make a copy of it in your hand. Suspend will keep a card in your hand after your turn is over. Banishing a card removes it entirely from play, etc. You are progressively taught all of this. Each dungeon has a "muse" you are given centered around its mechanic to teach it to you. Muses are amazing. You acquire them in dungeons, and when you activate their "condition," you activate the muse, which gives you some sort of buff, both to the BANGER music that drops and your cards, I guess. They're all quite unique, and there are tonnes of ways to build a synergistic deck around them that all feel utterly broken. Building a deck is as you'd expect. Beat an enemy, pick a card, build your deck over time. Additionally, you can "enhance" cards with cheat codes sometimes. Cheat codes apply to all copies of a card in your deck. They range from simple +4 attack to adding those special behaviours like "Reboot" I mentioned before, which adds another layer of strategy and synergy with cards that would otherwise be useless. Leaving the dungeon, you lose your deck. It is a roguelike. You are able to upgrade yourself with currency the game gives you for beating higher difficulties. Upgrades are along the lines of "increase rate of epic cards" or even "enable this cheat code to be applied to this card," which are often quite powerful cheat codes that become available in a run. I like this upgrade system, as it avoids boring upgrades all the time; however, later upgrades do start to become rather samey. Is it fun? Answer: YES. One of the greatest strengths and weaknesses of the game is how easy it feels to make an overpowered deck. It's not an entirely brainless activity to make these synergies, but the chance of failure is fairly low on normal difficulty. For me, even though it is easy, the game feels so satisfying to build an overpowered deck, I end up not caring how easy it ends up being, since each run is its own unique flavour of broken. It is also a lot of fun seeing a card in a previous dungeon thinking "why would that ever be useful?" and then seeing a completely broken way to use it in a later dungeon. Activating the muses also changes the music, which makes it extra satisfying when you know you're about to summon a bop upon the enemy. I feel that this difficulty aspect could have been addressed by allowing the player to choose higher difficulties in the beginning. You're constrained to "normal" difficulty on the first run, subsequent runs you get hard +1, +2, +3, etc., all the way to +9, I think. It jacks up the attack, HP, and defence of enemies, adds unique effects to play around too, which makes it more interesting too! Traversing dungeons remains quite repetitive; all the dungeons look the same, have the same sort of layouts. It'd be nice if there was something that made them more visually distinct. While the game is easy, it grades you in dungeons. At higher difficulties, this is quite brutal. The grading system is based on the number of turns you take. It greatly encourages you to make every turn efficient. At the highest difficulties, this means 1 turning almost every enemy. Sadly, the results screen doesn't make it obvious what contributes points to your grade, so you do need to figure it out or wiki dive. But THIS remains the end game. Which isn't the worst thing, but it'd be nice if there was another layer to the difficulty beyond this. There's a solid card battler here to explore some more modes or spins on the dungeon formula it has. It's really hard to say anything else bad from a gameplay perspective. They have plenty of content post-game too. Extra dungeons, puzzles, the higher difficulties. It'll keep you engaged for many hours if it hooks you. Conclusion While Card En Ciel is not going to keep you on the edge of your seat for its overall story, its dungeon banter and characters will likely keep you entertained, while the gameplay hooks you along with its power trip of over powered decks and combinations you discover, luring you even further with all the bangers that trigger when you activate a muse. It's only let down by its repetitive dungeons and overall difficulty on a first playthrough. *As an extra addendum, this game has a bunch of "fake" fictional games within it and each game has its lore description and so does each card? Each card also has its own voice and voice lines that interact with other cards voice lines if they're in your hand??? (Though that'll likely drive some people crazy)*
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