HELLCARD Review
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- Опубликовано: 13 сен 2024
- Today we're reviewing "HELLCARD" (alternatively 'Book of Demons: Hellcard") a rogue lite deck builder with an emphasis on large enemy hordes and target prioritization.
Thank you to the publisher for providing a review copy.
Steam Curator: store.steampow...
Twitter: / maddmike_722
Just wanted to note that you’re not forced to use the two cards presented to you. You can press J to expand your companions’ decks and pick from their entire hand.
Wow good call, I misunderstood the feature the entire time
No worries!
Plus you can also press the "Companions" button on the far left side of your screen if you didnt know about the J key.
Or you can right click on one of their cards iirc.
Honestly, I don't even know how I figured it out myself.. as the game sort of tells you, but doesn't. And it is a necessity at some points!
There's NO need for the game to be this way IMO.
I love this game, played 60 hours on it total mostly about a year ago (about 80% of my games are from April 2023). However it really needs to be played with friends.
The single player does seem to be well executed and balanced for what it is, but having to worry about 3 decks at the same time is annoying. And you could just not add companions to speed it up and simplify it but then why not just play Slay the Spire y'know?
Multiplayer is definitely it's strength. Finding ways to go infinite / broken combos to reach the block cap which I believe is 16k, and then having the Warrior one shot every enemy with Sticks and Stones or Breakthrough. I know you called out there isn't many options to do that, and in single player I agree. But multiplayer it's definitely possible. The block stacking to 1 shot enemies is best in my experience. But Rogue can just hoard their gems and deal tons of damage with Stonks or Trickle Down (my least favourite class personally). Mages I find best to play more support cards for your team and finish off enemies with bolts for extra mana and draws. With the acorn artifact every 3 bolts played provides 10 block, allowing you to turn a losing situation into one you might not even lose HP.
The new class Tinkerer I think perfectly covers what you said was missing in terms of power scaling over the course of a battle. Allowing you to make contraptions that take effect at the end of every turn. Some of which can deal a lot of damage, and they stack. There are some other influence cards that stack. But generally higher rarity and reliant on a certain strategy for your deck. Something like Whetstone doesn't stack, but if you upgrade it into Insult or Thrill they can stack, despite exhausting after being played. Subzero gives bolts +2 damage and double damage to frozen enemies. The +2 per bolt can stack. So if you want to you could play that card 3 or 4 times in a battle to get bolts doing 10+ damage each.
High Torment levels add difficulty throughout the fight making it not always feel like it's over within 1 or 2 turns. Having enemies potentially deal 50% more damage among other hindrances like cards costing more and getting curses on killing enemies. Power cards like Weave Laylines and Battle Juice are one use, Equilibrium gets more expensive every use until you can no longer play it and it becomes a dead. These things add up to weaker enemies sometimes being able to finish you off as you and your teammates ran out of gas just killing off the seemingly stronger enemies. Though for the most part this still holds true as killing off the boss on floor 12 generally ends in a win.
On the note of individual battles taking way too long, I agree and multiplayer again semi-fixes this as you can all just spam cards at the same time to kill the last enemies much quicker once the problem enemies are gone. While in single player cleanup takes a lot longer.
In terms of overall game time multiplayer is also way quicker once you and your friends have learnt the game. Took less than 10 games for us to be regularly getting under 1 hour. While even at that same point the handful of single player wins I had took up to 2 hours each. Most multiplayer runs take 40-60 minutes in my experience. And we've had a few under 40, winning the game in as fast as 34 minutes, with a couple torments thrown in for good measure.
I agree with pretty much every point in your review, as it was made for the singleplayer gamemode. But I have to say where this game sets itself apart from its competition is the multiplayer. So much so that as much as I love it I don't think it's worth buying if you're only going to try singleplayer.
Also shout out my boy Shuffle, all my homies love going infinite with multiple copies of Shuffle and Toy Compass.
Block abusing is so broken. You don't even need the warrior cards, just Caltrops. I had 32k block and one shot the entire boss area. So broken I retired the unloseable endless run myself. Also Weave Laylines is one of the nuttiest card I have ever seen in card games.
@@Gaze73 endless wasn't a thing when I played most of my games so you normally wouldn't have caltrops at all during a run. and yeah weave laylines is ridiculous. I always try to get as many as I can in my deck lol
I like your analytical review. I am surprised that they implemented such long runs, when Book of Demon had the outstanding feature of giving choice of runs length at the start.
Awesome review
Played it by taking advantage of the "Play Free for the weekend" on Steam, as I would not have bought it myself.
I played 2 runs, and I already don't really feel like engaging with it any more.. the amount of variables introduced (all companion cards at the same time, demanding CO-OP?), bad companions (la bruja and others), a lackluster final boss with an annoying skill that doesn't let me "play the game" as I have been doing, etc.
The visuals and system IS impressively well designed. But there's no more juice in this lemon to squeeze.. Probably the fault of how much you can get / upgrade in a single run.
I also took advantage of that, won every run with every character but I don't feel very compelled to play much more. Too easy to make broken combos. La Bruja is good but you don't get any Grace and Reckoning synergies in the early game. Still, can't go wrong with 0 cost attacks and 15dmg aoe attacks.
You said all my feelings lol it was nuts. I would say too though: it doesn't feel good to kill. STS makes playing a card feel violent somehow, maybe because it takes up so much screen space. Hellcard i feel like I'm just clicking little guys. Still cool but literally made me play more STS right after
nice review
Well articulated interview that didn't overstay its welcome. This game is what I feared, competently executed but doing constant time consuming "Clean up". Its my least favorite part of these kind of games. I need my semi frequent by the skin of my teeth, nail biters.
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Thanks for the review, I thought it was really well made and informational. Now the only question that remains in my mind, coming from StS just like you: Is it worth spending my ~13€ on it 🙂
In my opinion: yes. A good deckbuilder if not an infinite one.
Ok thanks! I'll have a (back)stab at it. Any other roguelike deckbuilders worth trying in case this just doesn't hit the spot? Have played StS amd Beneath Oresa so much that maybe it's time to try something else., @@Maddmike
can I recommend Hadean Tactics? played both around the same time and that stuck more. Autobattler is more novel to me than this mechanic I think.
I think someone else mentioned it here, but I also wasn't aware of the Companion button on my very first play of it and when I learned about that, it was (no pun intended) game changing. I agree with your point that sometimes after you've dealt with the main threats, the 'clean up' can be a little bit of a slog, particularly on the boss fights and especially on the final boss. I feel like if I killed the final boss, then why am I sitting here fighting through the minions? Otherwise, my buds and I have been having a lot of fun going through it and I'm excited to see what they'll bring to the table with future updates and whatnot.
I guess my 'Edit' thought is to also add that, while I understand what they're going for, when you have companions on Single Player, you should be allowed to make their decisions instead of the game using an AI to simulate the multiplayer where you have no control over them.
I think it's fine you need to fight minions. Otherwise you'd just stack marks on the boss and kill him turn 1-2 and ignore the defence.
@@Gaze73 That's easier said than done; focusing on mark builds are difficult to put together because you're at the mercy of what cards you can find, and the bosses have enough counterplay to mark that I think a 'mark build' just to try to defeat bosses wouldn't be sustainable; particularly in the endless mode
@@StefanSochinsky Doesn't even have to be a dedicated mark build. Mage has a doom spell that applies 5 mark. Then Laylines which adds 15 mana to the team. Then you can OTK the boss.
@@Gaze73 Buddy, I think you're taking this a bit too seriously. there are a bunch of strategies that you can find and combos that i'm sure do really really well for you, assuming the RNG is in your favor but I also feel like your discounting how much RNG impacts the game.
The point we're really making is that mob-cleanup kinda drags the pace of the gme down for us. Clearly you disagree and like spending extra time with that, and that's all well and good. Enjoy!
this is what i was worried about with so many enemies,, they should have maybe had some sort of auto resolve once your win % reaches a certain point.
Im sure spending a few minutes clearing the stragglers also eats into that long run time, sometimes less is more, but i understand what they were going for.
it seems alright but ill probably just stick to StS, thank you for the review.
What’s StS?
@@samrobson8602 Slay The Spire
Good review but I wish there was either some time spent on how it feels to play as a multiplayer game OR mention that this is a review from a single player experience only.