Chrono Ark on Steam - User reviews, Price & Information
Chrono Ark is a singleplayer roguelike that combines elements from deckbuilders and party-based RPGs. Recruit, train, and build a team of unique Investigators to restore the Twisted World!
Chrono Ark is a roguelike deckbuilder, anime and rpg game
developed and published by Al Fine.
Released on May 02nd 2024 is available only on Windows
in 5 languages: English, Korean, Japanese, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese.
It has received 11,978 reviews of which 10,793 were positive and 1,185 were negative resulting in a rating of 8.8 out of 10. 😎
The game is currently priced at 24.50€ on Steam.
The Steam community has classified Chrono Ark into these genres:
System requirements
These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.
Windows
- OS *: Windows 7 or later
- Processor: Intel Core i3
- Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Graphics: 1gb VRAM, OpenGL 3.0 support
- Storage: 5 GB available space
User reviews & Ratings
Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.
Time Traveling Troubles: A Chrono Ark Review Chrono Ark is a roguelike deck builder that combines engaging and enjoyable gameplay with a fascinating story that is pieced together as you find fragments of what happened before the start of the game. Multiple characters and builds allow for a lot of creativity when it comes to determining how each of your party members will play and what kind of synergies they can take advantage of to destroy powerful foes before things get complicated. On the other hand, as a roguelike that can be missing variation in the runs that take place in it, that is to say, the areas and some challenges, it suffers from slow burnout as things can become repetitive over time. Certain characters have either complex methods for being unlocked or greedy ones, and sometimes having a bit of bad luck can send you back to the starting area in the blink of an eye. What Works: A Roguelike Where Time Is Of The Essence In Chrono Ark, battles need to be done quickly and efficiently. Characters can get hurt from storms if they spend too much time in a battle, bosses have powerful mechanics that are dangerous in a battle of attrition and even a relaxed situation can become critical due to new foes appearing or party members becoming exhausted. In this balancing act, we can see that Chrono Ark as a roguelike game can be quite challenging but also extremely fun to play as each turn you take risks and maneuver your options to try to execute the most optimal play. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3375127834 The diverse cast of characters keeps things fresh, as each of them presents their particular playstyle, synergies, and roles. For example. Azar is a damage dealer who when using his skills, can generate blades that are free to play with no cost. While that's great, generating blades takes up actions and he requires a lot of them, which means other party members will have a harder time acting in battle as Azar requires a lot of mana. With one character we can see that the game philosophy shines in having pros and cons to every strategy. The story is very well written, with a lot of plot twists and surprising dark tones which is reinforced by the blue-ish palette of the game and the beautiful art design of the characters. I was quite shocked by some of the developments and even though I found the final section to be a bit dull, for the majority of the game I had a great time going through its narrative. [H1] What Doesn't Work, A Slow Burn That Is Exhausting On the other hand, Chrono Ark does suffer from not having enough variety when it comes to enemies and environments. After losing a few runs you can find yourself doing the same paths and gameplay loop that you have previously gone through with minimal differences, which can be tedious at times. While fans of Roguelikes will probably be able to keep going without an issue, newcomers or RPG fans could feel a dull loop that can burn them out of the game, once bosses' mechanics are learned they are no longer challenging and it can feel like a waste of time trying to reach the area you were in before. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3375126423 "That's how roguelikes are supposed to be" I agree, but the main issue is that a good roguelike needs variety, both for the player in terms of options and for enemies to keep things fresh in the long run. Chrono Ark succeeds in the former but fails in the latter, creating a weird imbalance that feels half-baked. In addition to these issues, the game also suffers from a poorly done tutorial and an overwhelming complexity for newcomers. A more gradual introduction would have worked better, and the layout is placated with issues where it can be hard to know who has which buffs and debuffs as well as boss mechanics, especially if playing with a SteamDeck or a controller. Why must I press 4-6 buttons to see a simple debuff? A better layout that presents information would have been appreciated. Price Point Analysis and Replayability At 25$ 25, Chrono Ark offers a lot of content for a decent price. The story will last for a while and while the gameplay can be dull at times, it also remains fresh in other instances thanks to its huge roster of characters and team combinations. That being said, the DLC comes in two packages that will cost you 20$ extra, and these can be hard to skip as they feature new animations, visuals, costumes, skills, and equipment. The whole complete bundle cost around 40$, which while I consider a bit expensive, can be worth it for fans of the genre. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3375127267 In terms of replayability I think that by the time one beats the story, they usually move on, but during the whole journey, it can offer between 15-40 hours of gameplay. For newcomers, think carefully if running loops is fun to you before buying, especially at full price. Conclusion Chrono Ark is a game that kept me awake for a couple of nights after seeing the whole story and I kept reminding myself of its characters and narrative. The gameplay is a lot of fun with all the options it presents to the player, and while it was a slow burn, it can be a thrilling experience for anime fans looking for a deep roguelike deckbuilder. Newcomers be warned that if you are not into repetition in terms of pathing you will suffer from an exhausting run as you play the game. While complex and confusing at times, mastering its combat system is extremely rewarding and is well worth the effort. [TABLE] [TR] [TH][H3]The Good[/H3][/TH] [TH][H3]The Bad[/H3][/TH] [/TR] [TR] [TD] [*] ✔️ Beautiful art for characters and story visuals. [*] ✔️ Bosses with mechanics that require attention, are a challenge at all times. [*] ✔️ A huge roster of characters makes for a fun time building the ultimate teams. [*]✔️ Story with dark narratives that are deeply captivating. [*] ✔️ While pricey, the DLC adds good content that makes the game better. [/TD] [TD] [*] ❌Slowly builds up a slow burn due to a lack of foes and environments. [*] ❌Despite looking simple, it demands the most optimal plays to succeed. [/TD] 7/10 GREAT :) If you enjoy and find the review helpful, please follow my curator! [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/43679955/] StarsDeck
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For those who wonder what is the recent drama of this game: The recent game updates have broken a large amount of mods. One of the devs argued with mod creators in Chinese community, continued ignoring their opinions, and finally muted the mod creators (one of them is also the founder of the Workshop support of this game, as acknowledged in the contribution list of the game). As a result, a few mod creators left the community and deleted their mods. You can see the devs' apology message in the most recent news in the steam page. If you are a player who just wants to play the game and doesn't care about dramas, this game is truly one of the best deckbuilding rougelite games. If you only play the vanilla game, nothing will be affected and you can just enjoy the game. If you would like to add a few mods, there are still hundreds of mods and some of the deleted mods are brought back by others, so you can still enjoy the QOL additions, new characters, and new enemies from the mods. Although the development of some new mods may be delayed because of the incident.
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Genuinely one of the best roguelike deckbuilders. If you can embrace the anime theme, the story is good, the characters amazing, the cards unique and fantastic. The min-maxing strong, the bosses crazy. The final boss fights will make you take several days to recover from. Recent negative reviews are because of a controversy regarding the way a developer interacted with a modder. It has nothing to do with the game itself. The dev was in the wrong and has been punished, so the correct steps were taken. The game itself still stands as an incredible example of a roguelike deckbuilder.
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Chrono Ark's a game of mixed first impressions that end up panning out into a set of great ideas that are surprisingly often well executed. It ends up being a very good game with an originally questionable, but now revised localization. After clearing the game on several regular runs, the optional superboss route on normal and hard mode, and a hard mode run on two different teams, I feel qualified to answer the question of "is it good?". And the answer to that is a clear "yes". Not a "yes, but", but a straight "yes". It's good. GAMEPLAY: At its core, Chrono Ark tries, and manages, to marry two primary concepts: the Four Guys In A Row JRPG dungeon crawler and a looping, deckbuilding spireslayer with metaunlocks. It ends up being far more than that, with a lot of thought put into how to put a personal twist on almost every fundamental pillar of the latter, with each choice having a clear vision behind it. If anything was changed just for subversion's sake, it was shored up well enough to make it worth it. The FGIAR element shows up most prominently in how the party system works, and lends the game most of its in-the-moment gameplay design. You have one untargetable player surrogate character who's effectively in charge of the party's shared mana pool and card draw engines, and a party of four characters you build up across a run that handle combat. Your four guys have their own health pools, can go unconscious on their own without losing a run, and can be revived with limited conditions each run. If everyone drops, you wipe and lose the run. Simple as. Damage taken is left behind on a character's lifebar as green health, and all green health they had remaining is erased unless protected through specific buffs. Healing restores green health at 100% efficiency, and completely lost health(overhealing) at 30%, meaning good triage and quick response saves a lot of healing efficiency, as well as making enemies with multiple attacks particularly dangerous. Each character has their own card pool that gets put together to make your deck. The owner of the card is the one whose stats and equipment affect it, and the more cards the same character plays in a turn, the more their mana costs ramp up for that turn. This also applies to your little player surrogate for card draw, putting a clear, mounting damper on how much you can play in one turn. Unusually for the genre, enemies get to play out of turn. Each time you play a card or wait, the turn advances by one action. This adds a timing element, mainly to where you fit your healing in a turn to avoid getting doubletapped for half a character. Waiting starts costing mana after a certain amount of waits in a turn, too, forcing you to budget your turn for several actions later and making slow acting enemies a genuinely dangerous cleanup crew. The spireslaying aspect is about what you'd expect: you go around picking cards for your guys, leveling your guys and collecting equipment for your guys. Each of your guys has two equipment slots, so use them and change them wisely. The biggest difference is that you cannot see enemy intents, and will need to cover multiple possibilities and respond in between enemy actions to not eat enough actions in one turn to go straight back to character select. The character variety is commendable and has clear visions for multiple build options while the game still tries its best to bottleneck and tax you as hard as possible for trying to build anything particularly degenerate. Enemy variety is solid, with clear strengths and weaknesses against certain types of builds without hitting you with impossible buildchecks. Bosses vary from choreographed gimmick encounters to raw statcheckers with a few extra rules stapled on top of them, and all of them do a good job of forcing you to respect their unique mechanics, for better or worse depending on your build. VISUALS: It's a pretty enough game that really pops off every now and then. The game looks good. Your little cutesy character walks around on a map hitting event nodes, enemy encounters and pickups. In combat, your team of four portraits beats up good looking PNG paperdolls with effects that do their job and aren't too extra. When it's story time, you get some pretty nice character art and CG's that do a solid job of setting the appropriate mood. There's nothing else I can really comment on without detracting from the experience. The game absolutely does take advantage of its presentation and really pops off with its visuals at times, and one of those moments just does not stop impressing. AUDIO: Generally good, with a few higher points. Sound effects are fairly stock, but well used. Things feel like they should, and I overall just enjoy the general soundscape. Music's overall pretty good with a few REALLY high points, but more importantly the soundtrack goes absolutely all over the place. Do you want many flavors of electronic? Flamenco? Funky clowncore electroswing? Gregorian chanting and doombells? The one rare stinker in an otherwise banging soundtrack that sounds like Tekken 7 helipad brapcore? All of that in one? It's all here. I respect the diversity, and being such a mixed bag actually works in the setting's advantage. The game sounds good, sometimes great. Not spectacular, but almost never less than good. STORY: There's very little I can say about this, but I'll just say that while it's not a groundbreaking masterpiece, it still made me care. That's a credit in itself. Chrono Ark puts a much heavier emphasis on story than most of its genre contemporaries, which is told over several runs, key game events, you know the drill by now. The game uses the tools it has to do a competent job of telling you the story it wants to tell, and it's a perfectly fine story. The issue is, there's words. A lot of words. This wouldn't be an issue if it wasn't for our next topic: WRITING AND LOCALIZATION: This is it. The real mixed bag. I have no doubt that the original Korean writing is solid, and I've heard the Japanese localization is actually very good, but if you're reading a review in English, odds are you want your text in English. The English localization starts with a very unflattering first impression that gradually gets better throughout. They have a new person in charge of the English loc, and the stark contrast in the quality between very early content and stuff released much later is almost jarring. Still, even the really early stuff is perfectly understandable and mostly just clunky and lacking in tone, intelligible if poor prose. Things get better quickly, and even the weaker localization performances manage a few gems from time to time. Story text aside, there's a more important implication with questionable localization, and that's gameplay related text. Card and skill descriptions are generally clearly conveyed. Keywords make sense, keyword descriptions explain themselves well enough (Sheathe didn't explain itself very well until a short while ago, but that's been fixed too) and buffs and debuffs communicate what they do well enough. Gameplay text really isn't impacted beyond a few clunky wordings, and I never felt scammed due to something not explaining itself adequately. Again, the English text makes a poor first impression, but gets MUCH better very quickly, so don't panic. It's a solid game with very high highs and few lows. Mixed first impressions, but improves greatly. A lot of love on the mechanical side, and it shows. Good game.
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I got all the achievements and completed the game on the highest difficulty possible. The only reason for that is because this game is absolutely amazing. The story is great, the game play is great, and the music is great. Looking forward to more games they make in the future!
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If you'd like to dive deeper into the details about Chrono Ark, we invite you to check out a few dedicated websites that offer extensive information and insights. These platforms provide valuable data, analysis, and user-generated reports to enhance your understanding of the game and its performance.
- SteamDB - A comprehensive database of everything on Steam about Chrono Ark
- SteamCharts - Analysis of Chrono Ark concurrent players on Steam
- ProtonDB - Crowdsourced reports on Linux and Steam Deck Chrono Ark compatibility
