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dkirschner's Card Hunter (Web)
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| [May 23, 2014 07:05:25 PM]
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It's been a while since I completed this, but I really enjoyed the game. Eventually finished all the campaign levels, some of which are quite tricky. I didn't delve into the multiplayer in the end for the same reason as in the beginning -- I didn't feel like sorting through entire decks for 3 more max-level characters. But, perhaps sometime in the future...
There is an 'endgame,' that I am unimpressed with. You can replay campaign scenarios, but you have to either choose to replay them in normal mode for experience (so you could level up new characters) or in challenge modes for rare items. You can’t play the challenge modes AND get experience, which sucks, because I want to play the challenge modes, but not if I can’t level up more characters at the same time. To level up more characters, I have to play the normal modes of the battles, which I’ve already done. I’d rather level up AND play the challenge modes. Some of the challenge modes are neat, though there seems to be little variety -- win the scenario with no deaths, win with 3 warriors, win using only items with 'penalty' attributes, etc...
They released a new mini expansion pack. I played a couple of the scenarios, and then the rest were pay-to-play.
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| [March 11, 2014 03:23:40 PM]
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This is a free-to-play miniatures/card game made by a bunch of people from Irrational Games who were integral in creating Bioshock and System Shock, and some other people, and a couple Magic: The Gathering experts/consultants. Nice pedigree.
I've been screwing around with the game for a couple weeks and really enjoying it. They did a great job figuring out how to emulate the experience of playing a tabletop miniatures game on the computer. It's a really fun, charming game. There are a couple "characters," which are this sarcastic leet dungeon master, his little brother, their mom, and a pizza girl. Their interactions and the things they say are really funny. If you've spent any time at all playing D&D, Magic or any other game with a gaming group, you will totally get and love the humor. It's funny because obviously it's a card game, but just seeing what the characters say and do next is a large part of why I want to play it.
It's set up like you're playing a campaign at the DM's house, all the art drawn to look like tabletop figures playing on a map on a table, with dice and Cheetos and sodas on the table. The DMs talk to you, the older sarcastic one is always putting his little brother down in funny ways, and getting mad he loses, and the little brother likes the pizza girl and she is always asking what they are doing in the basement and he tries to be cool by telling her they are working out. I think eventually she'll see they're playing fantasy games and will be into it. The mom offers them drinks, tells you it's late and you need to leave.
Right, so the GAME, huh? It's a brand new system, familiar if you've played Magic or D&D and stuff. It would be pointless for me to go into all the rules, but useful to outline basically how it's set up. You get a team of 3 characters. Each character has a set of equipment. Each piece of equipment has several abilities, which are represented on the cards which make up your deck. So, if you equip no weapon, your bare fists, you might have 3 Weak Strike cards. Then a small sword might have 1 Weak Strike, 1 Stab and 1 Lunging Strike, so equipping it gives you those 3 cards instead of the 3 Weak Strikes that you had with bare fists. It's cool. There are, in general, weapons, armor, boots, trinkets, and racial/class skills (you can mix races -- dwarves [slower, more HP], elves [faster, less HP] or humans [normal] and classes -- fighter [melee DPS focus], priest [healing, defense focus] and mages [range DPS, pestering enemies focus). As far as I know, you can get (buy) a bunch of different character combinations. I have the basic free starter pack of human fighter, dwarf priest and elven mage.
As you level up your characters, which gain XP for being alive at the end of battles in campaigns, you unlock more equipment slots. Right now, I think my party is all level 10, and I've unlocked all the equipment slots (I think.) Now I get 'power gems' or something like that. Equipment of higher levels requires these, so each level each character gets another one to portion out into his/her equipment. So, level up characters, get stronger equipment from winning battles and campaigns, start to customize characters as you get a variety of skills and spells and abilities on your ever-improving equipment.
Battles are set up like tabletop campaigns, and you move your characters on a big world map. Select an available campaign for your level, read the module, listen to some dialogue by one of the GMs or watch the pizza girl deliver a pizza or whatever little character interaction, and then go fight. Battles are fun and strategic and by this point (level 9-10) are requiring me to tailor equipment for different battles/campaigns to be successful. You usually can't just rush in and bash enemies to death and survive anymore. You want to use piercing attacks against enemies with armor, keep away from strong enemies, not let Attack Dogs get behind you, shield your mage...there's a ton to consider!
There's also laddered multiplayer, where you can win items every day by winning matches. I played one match once and won (hooray), but have been sticking to single player mostly because in multiplayer, you have to build a separate set of characters and they start at max with tons of equipment, which is still a little bit of an information overload for me.
Their free-to-play model is really nice. It doesn't much affect single-player. If you sign up as a paying subscriber, you get an extra item at the end of every battle. You get so many items though, it doesn't seem to matter that you miss it. There are locked campaigns that you can't do unless you pay. These provide specific items, and I guess if you want the item, you have to buy and win the campaign. But regular campaigns can be played once per day, so instead of buying another campaign for your level, you can just wait a day and play the same one again to get XP and items. They do give you some pizza (in-game currency you buy with real dollars) to buy a few campaigns or character packs, so that's nice. Then, like I just said, you can buy more characters. I'm stuck with my 3 forever if I don't pay. You can also buy multiplayer character packs.
I think there's a ton to be had for free, and I'm nowhere near done. I'll probably try some more multiplayer at some point, once I get more used to having so many abilities and equipment to choose from, but for now, just enjoying the single-player campaigns, and looking forward to each character interaction!
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dkirschner's Card Hunter (Web)
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Current Status: Finished playing
GameLog started on: Thursday 27 February, 2014
GameLog closed on: Wednesday 9 April, 2014 |
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