LifeisXbox’s Cardaclysm review | Are you a fan of collecting cards, battling with them, and smacking the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse? Well, then Elder Games developed just the game for you with their new title Cardaclysm. On a journey to different realms, you’re battling all kinds of different creatures in order to get stronger and smack death in the face.
We played Cardaclysm for 7 hours on PC. This game is not available on other platforms.
What we liked!
- Realms | The biggest part of Cardaclysm takes place in so-called realms. These are the worlds where you will wander around, defeat your enemies in order to collect new cards, and collect orbs to play even more or stronger cards when you advance into combat. Every time you try to enter a new realm, you will get the message that it’s being randomly generated which, of course, is true to a certain degree. But if you have been playing the game for a couple of hours, you will start to notice that some are actually the same and there is nothing new about them. When you enter a realm there is a certain goal that you need to complete, collect all the loot that’s laying around, defeat every enemy there is, and eventually grab the key to open the door for a safe return to the pub.
- The pub | This is your main hideout. There is a chest where you can store your cards and it provides a barkeeper the occasionally will give you a quest that you need to complete when you are out exploring. And there are your casual traders. Some will offer you cards for a currency, or some will just simply trade cards with you. The addition of this pub is actually a great feature where you will return every time you completed a realm, making it feel like coming home, which is always true when you’re entering a bar.
- Look | The graphical style of the game is amazing. Everything is designed in a 3D animated style. The cards all have their own unique design and when you play them in battle the creatures on them literally come to life in a fantastic way. The developers did a really good job with it. Another thing that I personally liked is that when you walk behind an object, your character will glow red which shines through so you can still see where you are walking.
- Collecting | The biggest and most important feature in Cardaclysm is collecting. There are a couple of different things that need to be collected. First of all, cards. Every time you defeat an enemy you will get a reward chest with a card in it to improve your deck. If you have a duplicate you can use them on each other to upgrade them to get stronger cards, you can trade them in the pub or you can sell them. You can also complete quests and earn cards as a reward or buy strong ones in the pub, but this usually costs a lot. More important loot that needs to be collected are items such as helms, capes or weapons to upgrade your character. These items provide bonuses that provide useful when going into battle, such as every monster has +1 health or every enemy has -1 attack. And last but definitely not least, you want to collect the orbs which are needed to play stronger and more cards in battle. It’s nice to have a very strong card that can deal 80 damage but if you don’t have the power to summon it, it’s worthless.
Somewhere between
- Battles | The most important part of Cardaclysm are the battles. You will need them to earn new cards and to progress through the story and the realms. However, there is something odd about them that gives me mixed feelings about them. First of all, the battle system is amazing, they really did their best with it and the turn-based action is awesome. But what I don’t like about it is that once you have some stronger cards every battle is over after 2 or 3 rounds which will take just a few minutes. I think that the developers should take another look into this because the most fun part ends the quickest.
What we disliked
- Grinding | Yes, an important part of Cardaclysm is exploring the realms and collecting cards in order to grow stronger and take on the bosses. But in order to get there, you will need to grind a lot and by that, I mean a lot lot. First of all, there is the grind for orbs to play stronger cards. If you are lucky you might collect 6 of them in a realm but for the stronger cards you need 100+ to play them and that’s just for one card. And if that isn’t enough you will want to have better cards but in order to get them, you will have to do the same thing over and over again for a very long time. At first, I enjoyed this but when I progressed in the game it really started to annoy me.
CONCLUSION
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