Voice of Cards: The Isle Dragon Roars
Voice of Cards: The Isle Dragon Roars is an RPG set in a world of swords and sorcery, told entirely through the medium of cards.
Voice of Cards: The Isle Dragon Roars is a turn-based, rpg and jrpg game
developed and published by Square Enix.
Released on October 28th 2021 is available only on Windows
in 6 languages: English, French, Italian, German, Spanish - Spain and Japanese.
It has received 1,301 reviews of which 1,044 were positive and 257 were negative resulting in a rating of 7.7 out of 10. š
The game is currently priced at 11.99ā¬ on Steam and has a 60% discount.
The Steam community has classified Voice of Cards: The Isle Dragon Roars into these genres:
Media & Screenshots
Get an in-depth look at Voice of Cards: The Isle Dragon Roars through various videos and screenshots.
Requirements
These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.
Windows
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS *: WindowsĀ® 8.1/10 64-bit (ver.1909 and above)
- Processor: AMD A8-7600 / IntelĀ® Coreā¢ i3-2100
- Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Graphics: AMD Radeonā¢ R7 260X / NVIDIAĀ® GeForceĀ® GTX 650 (VRAM 2GB)
- DirectX: Version 11
- Storage: 5 GB available space
- Sound Card: DirectXĀ® 11.0 Compatible Sound Card
- Additional Notes: Maximum resolution: 1920x1080, Monitor capable of 60FPS + required Supports Keyboard, Mouse and XINPUT gamepads
Reviews
Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.
This is a wonderfully charming game that, unfortunately, did not manage to completely win me over. Like most players of this game, at least that is my assumption, I have developed an interest in Voice of Cards purely based on the fact that Yoko Taro, the eccentric weirdo and lovable madman behind Drakengard and NieR, worked on this. Statements made by Taro himself as well as the videogame press had prepared me that this game was quite different from the previous titles in Mr. Taroās catalogue. Instead of a wide and deep discussion of very fundamental, very human themes, Voice of Cards would be a fairly straightforward fantasy tale in the form of a traditional JRPG. At first, I was saddened by this fact, me being a huge fan of NieR and its sequel and at least appreciative of Drakengardās ambitions. Still, I watched a trailer, was intrigued by the music and the unique art style and decided to give it a shot. The first thing I noticed which took me by surprise was the fact that Voice of Cards isnāt a card game at all. In fact, except for an optional card minigame, this gameās mechanics arenāt informed by playing cards at all. It merely is an aesthetic choice that the developers picked as a basis for the gameās presentation. Everything in this world is a card ā characters, buildings, equipment, items, the entire world map consists of cards that are arranged in a tile-based fashion that form the layout of the world. Now, you might think that this is probably an economic choice on the side of the publisher to save costs ā after all, if all your gameās assets are made of static cards, you can radically cut costs in multiple departments, above all graphics and animation. That assumption may be correct. However, I have to point out how elegant Voice of Cards works with its limitations that arise from the card-based presentation. For instance, if a character in your party performs a ārollā attack, the card actually flips over and rolls over the enemyās card. There is a scene where a character starts squatting frantically which is represented by an animation that lets his card move up and down erratically. A monster you help in the fields by curing its paralysis bows to you by subtly tilting its card. Stuff like that is just cute. Most actions in the game arenāt visually translated though. This isnāt an inherently bad thing for me as this sparks my imagination, much like older titles with simpler graphics do. On top of that, everything you do and everything that happens to you is delineated by a narrator. That guyās voice is soothing to an extent that borders on tiresome. Iām pretty sure this is by design as to give the narrator a sort-ofā¦bored tone? but it didnāt really work for me. You have to listen to this guyās voice for the entire runtime of about 12 hours and the joke of āhaha, an old tired narrator ironically comments everything in the gameā got old pretty quickly. I would have loved to have at least the main characters voiced by professional actors. Besides the visual style, another aspect that really stands out is the music. The OST has no business being that brilliant in a āsmallā game like this. Keiichi Okabe is a god in this business and Iām so glad they got him to work on this project. I implore you, even if you are not interested in this game at all, check out the OST, it is beyond beautiful. The choral sounds of NieR and the melancholic undertones that Okabe is known for, itās all here and itās honestly some of his best work. As a sample, just listen to [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-GaOzt8ZjE]this . Given its smaller scale, I presumed the game would not reach the narrative heights of NieR or Drakengard. And it doesnāt. For the most part, this is a standard JRPG fantasy story the likes of which you have seen a million times before. However, the typical Yoko Taro weirdness is absolutely here, if somewhat hidden and not as extreme as in his other works. By exploring the world, talking to people and fighting monsters, you unlock cards for each kind of NPC or enemy. These cards contain some bits of lore about the world and these texts can getā¦juicy. Not spoiling anything here but Voice of Cards definitely deals with some of Taroās favorite topics like what distinguishes humans and monsters and even contains some tragic as well as questionably humorous elements. The writing is still not quite there though. There are twists that you can see coming a mile away, background stories for villains that arenāt all that interesting to begin with and a conclusion that leaves a lot to be desired. It was good enough to make me want to see things through till the end and get a chuckle out of me every now and again, so thereās that. All that sounds well and good and still, my time with this game can only be described as a pretty mediocre experience. Why is that? Well, for one, the dungeon design in this game is among the most boring I have seen in a JRPG. At first, that isnāt that much of an issue as the first set of dungeons are fairly limited in scope but the more you progress, the worse it gets. Some of the late game dungeons are so dull as they consist of a multitude of levels that offer little to no variation. Every level looks the same and the high enemy encounter rate (yes, this game has random encounters) doesnāt help either. It just goes on and on and sometimes, you spend the better half of an hour in there. The lighthouse, volcano and mausoleum are especially terrible in this regard. Mind you that the game usually allows you to jump to previously explored tiles on the map. In some dungeons, movement is heavily restricted though and the game forces you to trod through these boring-a$$ levels one step at a time; itās not fun. Then thereās the battles and they are simply way too easy. Except for some battles at the end, out of which the best ones are optional, you can turn off your brain and breeze through this entire game. Thereās no real challenge here and most of the combat decisions you make end up not making any significant difference at all. Combined with the uninspired dungeon design, things can get very tiresome very soon. This is the type of game you enjoy on a lazy evening with nothing to do and maybe some āDevilās Lettuceā if thatās your thing; believe me, youāre in for a chill time :D Another thing that bugged me was that some game design decisions feel like Yoko Taro is taking the pi$$ out of the JRPG genre, and not in the usual subversive way but more in a direct and heavy-handed manner. To give some spoiler-free examples, in this game you travel from the town of āAdventā to āNextonā and then āThricetonāā¦ medicine is conjured on a mountain called āMt. Medicaāā¦see where Iām going with this? Then there are a number of treasure maps you can find and they point to the most random places. One map hints at āa place where you can see the oceanā which is ā¦ interesting, given the fact that you can see the d@mn ocean from literally everywhere :D Another points to a place āsouth across the mountainsā which is as vague as can be. Remember, for every step you take, a random encounter may ensue, so this seemingly fun treasure hunt can turn into quite the chore. There was also an event where the game required me to have a āMercenaryās Swordā in my possession, one of the weakest early-game swords I had naturally sold at this point. This was a one-time chance and to this day, I do not know what I missed by not having the required item. Stuff like that is just annoying. This is a fine game with amazing music and a cool art style. Itās no narrative masterpiece and its dungeon and enemy design could use some heavy polishing. It didnāt fully grasp me in a way NieR did but I surely enjoyed my time with it. If youāre looking for a chill JRPG with mostly lighthearted storytelling and a relatively short runtime of approx. 12 hours, give it a shot. If youāre expecting Yoko Taroās next big thing, this aināt it.
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Good game but definitely not for everyone. The gameplay gets rather tiring with time, and combat isn't the most interesting for sure. Loved the final boss though, it was actually challenging and fun to fight. Amazing music and art. The story is pretty good too, but it takes its sweet time to actually start getting interesting. anyways in any situation just use ridis shes insane
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What an interesting experiment this game is. I will separate this review in three parts to better explain it: reviewing the game as an RPG, reviewing it as a Yoko Taro directed game, and reviewing the experience as a whole. The RPG part. This game is a pure classic RPG, it has almost no card game element and the cards are only visuals. The party setup is the usual JRPG 3 characters (with more in reserve). But the base 3 characters are so good I ended up never swapping them. It is an extremely simple RPG recommended for beginners, with a level cap of 30 which you will reach by the end. The one superboss in the game also isn't that hard to beat. If you are looking for a challenge this will not be the game for you. Here is a list of interesting mechanics that this game tries to work with: -limited party wide heals. You don't get a ton of party wide heals, making attacks that hit your entire party extremely effective, and putting you in situations where you have to choose who gets the heal and who can stay at low health, making for some tense late game encounters. -no healing out of combat except items. If you are not using items the only for you to heal is to find someone to fight, this is interesting because you will have moments where you want to delay the end of a fight or the phase of a boss in order to heal before proceeding. -random events. some fights will have random events happen and they usually affect both the enemies and your own party. These are truly random so restarting a boss fight will put you in a different situation depending on the event card drawn. -visible stats. The game shows you precisely the attack/defense/hp of everyone, enemy included. Due to some weird maths the numbers aren't 100% correct but you can still use them for quick calculations. -tile jumping. You can move to any tile you have encountered with some very specific exceptions in like 5 rooms in the entire game. Meaning you can skip every encounter from Overworld to Dungeon by jumping to the exit tile, this weirdly invalidates an item in the game that allows you to escape dungeons. -gem system. This RPG completely removes mana points and replaces everything with a gem system, at the end of a character's turn, you get a gem, some skills require multiple gems to activate. This gives you some simple strategies where you save gems for a big heal or a strong AOE. -completely free inns. Not only are the inns free they also all have different reasons for being free in every town, be sure to check them out! -elemental weaknesses. The most used trope in RPG games, they are here to stay. Sadly even though you have a monster compendium you can't see enemy weaknesses anywhere in the game, you have to remember yourself which element they are weak to, hard for players with a poor memory like me. tl;dr Short RPG (12 hours to beat, even faster if you turn on fast animations), extremely simple mechanics but enough to keep you engaged. The Yoko Taro part How does this compare to Yoko Taro's other works? Well in the first 30 minutes of the game, you encounter an old lady on the road and help her. Not even 2 minutes go by and you discover she was actually abused by her husband and she cut him up and ate him. This might seem shocking to most players but honestly after what he wrote in his other stories this seems a bit too predictable at this point. I can't say the game really surprised me in big ways. It's missing a lot of 4th wall breaking moments (there is only one that happens in a conversation with an NPC). I accidentally got the true ending on my first playthrough and damn this is the happiest ending Yoko Taro has ever shown us I have to say it's a wild departure from his other games. There is no NG+ that dramatically changes the game, the only way to get the endings is to redo the final boss. NG+ should have been used to either add on top of the story or remix encounters. tl;dr if you want more of small scale yoko taro (the one you get in the weapon stories), you'll get exactly this. But don't expect some mind bending 4th wall break. The Experience Overall it's a solid experience, the art on the card is absolutely stunning, and the pixel art DLC changes the cards of every NPC, every main character and every monster in the game including bosses (only things unchanged are the items and skills). The mood is there, the narrator is great, the soundtrack isn't oppressive and lends itself to a small tabletop adventure like this one. You sadly don't get a lot of unique mechanics tied to the entire game being a board, with the exception of the final boss visual, looks really cool. In conclusion, the experience of the game is really good, not perfect, not the level of NieR. But it's a cozy game with great visuals, great mood. It is very short however, 12 hours to finish (with normal animations), and got the full achievements at 17 hours (with fast animations on this time). So you might want to get it on a sale.
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It's a neat little turn based RPG and not really a card battler with deck building elements as you might think. It is very reminiscent of a fully guided "on-rails" type of D&D campaign. I can say if you're not really into reading and kinda just want to listen to a story and cruise through a turn based RPG that isn't particularly difficult, you absolutely can and you'll probably enjoy the game for what it is. There are definitely some issues though. I give it a 6.5-7/10 That was is the tl;dr of the review. Read on if you want more context for the score. I'll go ahead and do a "Pros and cons" type deal because I'm lazy and it keeps my peace of mind. PROS: - The narrator has a good voice and everything is voice acted, so you really don't have to read if you don't want to. - The "events" range from kinda funny to interesting concepts and have a decent variety to keep you going. - There's no reason to grind if you don't want to. You keep your levels, items, gold, and equipment for NG+ and characters level up without being in the immediate party. - A good amount of humor was put in to keep you from getting too bored and to keep the game from treating itself too seriously. - The visuals and aesthetics of the game are very unique, in a good way. CONS: - Choices are an illusion that mean nothing. Seriously they mean nothing. You can only "fail" at maybe two things, but it will still end up at the same conclusions. - The main character is a piece of sh*t and no, none of your decisions will make him better. He started off a tw*t and ends as a tw*t. You can't change his twattery to play either the "good" or "worse than he already is" character. - It is a MAJOR slog to get through all the endings. - The encounter rate is pretty high in some areas and it will likely piss you off since there's no item to help you avoid enemies until NG+ and running is for chumps. - If you want to see all of the different "Event" endings, you'll have to waste a lot of time to make that happen. There should have been an item that increased event chances for NG+ or event chances should have just been increased for NG+ - The game's world feels really empty if you did everything on the first play through. If you already did everything the only thing to look forward to is slight dialogue variations. NEUTRAL: - The game is pretty easy. The only things that could really be considered hard is the end boss and the NG+ boss. Depending on your preference, this can be good or bad. - Your inventory for items is kinda small or at least it will feel that way after a while. - You'll need to talk to nearly every "NPC" and kill at least 5-6 monsters of each type to get the flip stories to get the achievements. It can definitely feel like a waste of time if you dislike that type of thing. - The game isn't particularly long. I spent 35 hours to get all the achievements but I also wasted a LOT of time and even left the game running for a bit. Getting everything should reasonably take about 20-30 hours. - You will never get "one shot the final boss" powerful even with max level and the best equipment. The unskippable battles later on still take a chunk of time. - It's less a "card battler" than it is a turn based RPG. Cards are just the main premise. There's not really a luck or deck building element to go off of here as you might be lead to think. I could probably come up with more pros/cons/neutrals but that's good enough. Anywho, I liked it for the most part. I'd say it's a slightly above average RPG at a solid 6.5-7/10 in my eyes. I'd recommend it if the cons and neutrals don't sound like they'd bug you too much.
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Great for practicing japanese reading and listening due to the concise narrated card text used for everything. Sadly once a card is read there is no voice replay.
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Last Updates
| Steam data | 22 November 2024 11:15 |
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| SteamSpy data | 18 December 2024 09:35 |
| Steam price | 23 December 2024 12:27 |
| Steam reviews | 21 December 2024 23:58 |
Online players
12
Developer
Square Enix
Publisher
Square Enix
Release
28 Oct 2021
Platforms
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