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Having played this game for a little bit, I concur. Let me try and demonstrate what a standard early game looks like. At the beginning, you start off with a set of 5 cards, and an initial power or Fate. Mu Yifeng, the starting character that we are playing, has a very simple one. He can exchange one card for free each turn from his hand for a random draw from his deck without expending one of the limited number of charges you get each turn. The number of these charges is indicated in the bottom right, and is also where you drag a card in order to do so.  You slot 3 cards into your center board, trying to synergize them as best you can. In this case, I have set things up so I start with a power up card that grants Qi, the general consumable resource whose cost is listed as the blue backed number in the upper left of cards, as can be seen on the Flying Fang Sword all the way to the right. It also lets my next attack ignore any Defense value that an opponent may add as one of their effects (which will be indicated as a yellow number when relevant). The next attack is a relatively basic attack that also provides Sword Intent, which is an attack bonus that can be consumed for damage on the next card. Finally, there is the Flying Fang Sword, which does a good amount of damage and refunds Sword Intent if it manages to actually damage an opponent's health. In retrospect, I probably should have used the other Qi cost there for more damage, but I wanted to show off some of the abilities. Cards you do not use can either be saved for later or fed into your character's portrait on the bottom left for Cultivation. I'll explain that in greater detail in a bit.   The game switches to a cinematic mode where both you and your opponent go through your abilities, starting with the person with the highest Cultivation, until one of you drops to the floor at 0 HP, defeated. This takes off a chunk of Destiny, which is the score counter that determines victory or defeat.  After the initial clash, you return to the card-playing screen and select a side-job which adds a deck of support cards to your character's deck. You start with only the Elixirist job unlocked, so it is selected.  I think you unlock a card slot and gain a little bit of cultivation each round so you don't fall too far behind. The primary ways of getting Cultivation are as mentioned, feeding cards to your character or fusing cards together, each of which gives a Cultivation point. Cards have up to 3 levels, and the higher level they are, the more powerful their effects are. Level 2 cards only need two Level 1s fused, but Level 3 cards require two level 2s. It should also be noted that feeding cards for Cultivation carries over in case you accidentally shove in too many. That Exchange effect there, by the way, triggers if you exchange the card back into your deck for another card.   With a better board, I go back in and win the clash.    I go back, feed another card in and break through. Breaking through has two major effects - the first is that you get a bonus power in addition to your primary. One is predetermined by your character but the rest are random. The next is that you get access to a higher tier of card. It's kind of awkward reslotting your board around new cards, but I've found that not trying to do so kind of ruins you in the long run because they have more powerful effects. That purple Consumption text there indicates that this is an item which only has one use during the battle sequence, though the card is not consumed overall.  This is about the point at which the game starts getting more chaotic, but really with the exception of things like this Omen which I think is guaranteed to pop up on turn 4 and gives you a card either now or at later tier, it's about mastering the system and learning what effects do than too many more surprises in what options you have. The later on you get, the more Destiny damage is dealt, so things are guaranteed to come to a quick conclusion once you get to Incarnation (the final of the 5 cultivation stages), if not sooner. It's very on brand for the genre, starting weak and growing more powerful, and even having the ability to pull secret techniques out of nowhere since there's relative flexibility to switch things up. There is a cash shop, but right now the only thing that's not grindable out through playing matches is a single cosmetic or limited time event rewards which you can't get from the shop either. The only thing I don't like about the game is that the timers feel way too short for the number of decisions you need to make, especially when you're new at the game, but otherwise it's worth a look. Jossar fucked around with this message at 19:58 on Jan 15, 2023 |
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Jan 15, 2023 19:50
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| # ¿ May 14, 2024 04:21 |
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Other things I have discovered by delving into the game for a few hours: - There's some alternate modes besides just challenging people on the Internet, there's card challenges (Sect Esoteric Inheritance) and a dungeon diver mode (Primitive Uncharted Realms) which culminates in a boss fight before resetting with the option to go again at a higher difficulty. Doing so at each difficulty unlocks Rule Fragments which provide bonuses that make future attempts easier for all characters. And while you do have to unlock the other characters for PvP (which is the primary focus of the game), you can run with everybody from the start in the start from the Primitive Uncharted Realms, although it looks like you can't level up characters that you don't own. My big victory against the Level 0 dungeon boss involved getting knocked down after several attempts, then discarding everything but my best two cards (both Incarnation level - a Netherworld Seal I got for winning an event duel with a wandering Daoist and the Dharma Spirit Sword, an attack that drains all your Qi for big damage) and doing a 5 turn power up sequence before smacking the boss with the seal and to knock it off guard before blowing it away with a 125 damage anime finale attack. Very satisfying. - Playing Primordial Uncharted Realms levels up individual characters. Levels 3 and 5 give them more Fate slots in game, which is kind of a big deal but after level 5, the remaining 20 levels are all just premium currency and emote grind. - Beating Sect Esoteric Inheritance and a difficulty level of Primordial Uncharted Realms (on any character, no farming the easy level over with 10 characters) gives you spirit stones (the nonpremium currency) and level ups on a global Explore tree which can unlock several characters and a side-job/cosmetic or two for free. Level 5 is pretty easy to get, so if you want any of the characters on there, especially Yan Xue, just farm content rather than shell out spirit stones. - I don't know quite what you get for Ranked yet. There's a bonus for spirit stones for winning something, but it's a bit engrishy, so I can't tell if it's winning 4 times a day or coming out on top in a large match as #4 or better. I probably ought to try Ranked soon, but just wanted to post the dungeon story/show off that there's more than just the PvP bit, and stop anybody from accidentally buying the easy unlock characters. Jossar fucked around with this message at 05:07 on Jan 16, 2023 |
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Jan 16, 2023 00:55
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Jossar posted:
Alright, so I figured I would try out a round of Ranked to round out the night.  Turns out that bit above's not Engrish. Ranked consists of dropping you directly into CHINESE THUNDERDOME. 8 players enter, one player leaves! It's round-robin solo rounds with, I think, a little bit of a weighted preference so you're fighting the people who are doing as well or poorly as you. Not all the time, though!   I thought I was gonna get my rear end handed to me. If anything the first screenshot there understates it, at one point I was second to last on the Destiny tracker with all players remaining. But I had a plan: Yan Xue (the fire themed sword cultivator you get for making it to Explore level 5)'s default 2nd tier passive is that she deals max hp damage every time you hit an opponent. Cloud Sect's Unrestrained Sword style has a bunch of 4th tier attacks that hit people a lot, and it syncs up well with Yan's 5th level passive, which counts as an Unrestrained Sword card for the style boosting and lets you play an additional card in a turn. So I just went full dervish madwoman and made it all the way up to 3rd place. Maybe I would've done better going full max-attack independent of style, but hard to tell since what finally did me in was people doing rapid-fire DoT chains.    Turns out you get a little bit of everything if you do well in Ranked, so as sort of the opposite of my last post, if you really don't care about the non-PVP aspect of the game at all, feel free to just familiarize yourself with the game and go brawl with a bunch of other people. I think, partially because I spent a bunch of time familiarizing myself with things in the single player mode, what wasn't clicking for me back in Practice made a lot more sense in Ranked. I expect the further up you go, the more likely you are to get immediately pasted, but it turns out it's simple enough at the bottom tier to just throw yourself in and do okay. Jossar fucked around with this message at 06:11 on Jan 16, 2023 |
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Jan 16, 2023 06:00
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I suppose I might as well give this one more chance to shine before letting it fall into the archives for good.  On January 18th, in addition to a new cosmetic being released for one of the preexisting characters, the game got a Tiger Man. Mu Hu belongs to the Five Elements Alliance, the faction focused around element themed cards. and he's pretty good at being able to force draws of some of the more powerful ones and just generally being tanky.  In addition there's a limited time event running for the next week for the Chinese Lunar New Year. It involves a couple puzzles and a special PvP mode: one player is chosen at random to be a Demon with a set of powerful cards revolving around causing internal injuries and slapping people who have a lot of them. All of the other players are given firecrackers, a card that can flip to one of the game's most powerful pets, and a whole bunch of treasures to try and keep up, although the Demon has a tendency to take first place most of the time. Because of all the Exchange cards, it's a great way to try and find out what some of the secret cards are for encyclopedia completionism rather than searching for them in regular PvP, and grabbing some limited time cosmetic items. Jossar fucked around with this message at 01:33 on Jan 22, 2023 |
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Jan 22, 2023 01:26
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Yeah, the lower levels have kinda turned into a ghost town at this point, but mid-high level play still remains active. I don't play too much any more, but I still pop in for the occasional single player run/Event/1-2 games of Ranked from time to time. Glad to see you're enjoying it.
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Mar 19, 2023 14:11
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Sheesh game, why do you have to tempt me back into playing again just as I've gotten a ton of other stuff to play from the sale? (Would help if there was a known goon circle of people who play, though.) EDIT: I see they reset/redid the Sect Esoteric Inheritance at some point, well that's one way to get more xp... SECOND EDIT: The Sect Esoteric Inheritance change was just adding additional challenges before the big ones, so if you beat those, the new ones are relatively easy. The story is fun, but they only added Chapter 1. Not really enough here to truly tempt me back into playing again on a regular basis, but was nice to pick up the game again for an hour or two. Jossar fucked around with this message at 00:17 on Jul 1, 2023 |
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Jun 30, 2023 10:31
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| # ¿ May 14, 2024 04:21 |
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Alas, most of the matches, and in yours in particular are after I have to go into work. Watched a little bit of the replay though! Did fighting against these high end players feel qualitatively different overall, or was it the same as most of your other matches?
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May 3, 2024 01:05
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