Recent reviews by CaptainTeembro

The Last Spell is a new Turn Based Tactics Roguelike game, that is all about defending your base for 10 days until your wizards can cast "The Last Spell" to vanquish the evil in the land and bring you to the long coveted victory screen - And I mean "long coveted" literally, as after just over 20 hours with this game I'm finally on my 7th run through of the game that I finally have enough strength to hold back the monstrous armies of the night.

TLS's gameplay is all about try, try, trying again, as you kill hordes of monsters to complete feats that will eventually strengthen your heroes and give them new tools to fight with, similarly to Binding of Isaac meets Zombicide. By design, you likely won't last long on your first 3 runs but with every run you complete you will actively feel your heroes getting stronger and such a sense of progression feels very rewarding.

For being an Early Access game, there is also a nice variety of items, heroes and monsters, though the higher rarity items seem to only provide stat upgrades rather than unique abilities attached to them (though it's possible that these type of effects are in the item sets that I haven't unlocked yet so please take this small criticism with a grain of salt, it's just a trend I noticed trhoughout my current game time). Another small criticism of the game that I have is that each weapon will always have the same abilities. For a roguelike game, I was hoping that weapons would have some RNG to the actual skills you got to work with, as a way to encourage shopping for an item with just the right stats and abilities when you max out the uses for your gold. Perhaps this could be added in a future update or as a toggle-able setting, and of course I understand why they went with their current design decision so that you know what to expect from each weapon, so this is another critique that comes from a place of personal preference. I think the worst criticism I can give this game is that you can't rename your heroes. What a shame.

Over time I hope that the developers decide to take the route of making this a Tactics-Tower Defense version of Binding of Isaac that is filled with secret 1% bosses and items that will require tens to potentially hundreds of playthroughs to unlock everything, but even as an Early Access game I highly recommend checking this title out. Here's to hoping that the developers stick through the development of this game, unlike the developers of They Are Billions who made their money and ran out after a few measly updates.

Bought this game and played with two other friends on NYE. While I understand that the game is still in Early Access, I like to think that the core gameplay of the game won't change as the game is updated, which is a shame imo. The gameplay is reminiscent of the Slender game that came out in 2012: You walk around a couple of mazes and find a few notes (for lore reasons, not for any purpose like Slender) while solving a couple of puzzles. Of course, by puzzles, I mean one actual "puzzle," as the rest of the goals are walking around to find keys of sorts (letters to a combination, actual keys, etc) to open the gates to unlock the next area. As you are walking around, you'll sometimes hear or run into various horror monsters that realistically all act in the same way: The monster sees you, you draw aggro and they chase you. Once you're caught, a not-so-scary animation plays of the monster attacking you, and then you respawn at your last checkpoint. Essentially, the core "fear factor" in the game is not scary at all, to the point where seeing a monster/having one chase us gave my group a sense of annoyance rather than fear.

Towards the last part of the current EA version, there's a part where you are in a house and you need to walk around the house to find keys to open room doors. It's extremely tedious, and while you're in any of the houses there's zero threats from any of the monsters. Normally walking around a dark and spooky house should cause anxiety as you explore it. If I open this door, what happens next? Is the monster around the next corner or hallway? I don't know. For anyone familiar with PT on PS4, you would understand how well done horror can be done in a confined space. In the current build, however, there is no such feeling of fear (this applies to both the houses and the sections of the game that occur outside).

The section with a group of party clowns on the steam page? Yeah, nothing really happens there. They move their heads, but that's about it. I think a better way the devs could go about it is leave some notes, or a riddle, at the start of the game forewarning about the clowns and have the clowns turn into a puzzle. Force players to interact with them, and if they are wrong (the first time) then one of them comes to life and becomes a monster. This would encourage players to not only care about the story/lore, but also be a nice gameplay element where ignorance of "the horrors" will only make things harder.

This isn't to say that the game doesn't have a few good ideas. There's one maze where there will occasionally be branches that grow to separate you from your friends, and at the start of the game there are a small set of animatronic ghosts in the maze that pop out as you're walking by. The ghosts were actually fairly well done, as being scared by one led to quite a bit of laughter as to how silly they are to be genuinely startled by. I think a way the developers could actually build on those (in the first phase of the game) would be to have an area scripted to where an animatronic ghost scares you, you takes a few more steps, and then a monster comes out of the hedge and tries to grab you/ starts giving chase (rather than seeing a monster in the fog clumsily stand and walk towards you until you've seen it for so long you're desensitized and it's no longer scary). Similarly, if the rest of the game or the atmosphere worked better, the team separation from the occasional branches would be a more fear inducing moment rather than one where your initial feelings are "great, now I need to spend 2 extra minutes to walk around this." Having a monster spawn nearby or be alerted when vines come up would provide another sense of urgency.

Outside of the vines, however, there's really no reason for players to split up. And, of course, when everyone is all together then the game becomes substantially less scary. A maze is a perfect place to force players to split up to solve a puzzle (For example, the devs could add pressure plates around the maze that players need to coordinate to stand on simultaneously) but, again, there's just too many missed opportunities there.

I think the game would be much better off if the developers focused on adding more puzzles and built a horror game around those puzzles rather than just trying to recreate the atmosphere of Slender. However, while I refunded this game immediately after we were done playing, I need to take the time to thank it for existing. Had it not existed, one of my friends would have been at a family gathering where, unbeknownst to them, one of there family members decided to show up without knowing they were Covid positive. So thank you, Labyrinthine, for helping my friend not get Covid.

As a little background about myself, I have a few years of experience of playing MtG (Magic the Gathering for those unfamiliar), grew up playing the Pokemon TCG, was a Hearthstone player until the release of their Journey to Ungoro expansion and currently have 351 hours of play time in Eternal. I feel like this is a decent set of background knowledge of card game to be able to critique this game to the best of my ability as well as provide you, the potential future consumer, knowledge of this game.

To begin, I will start with the topic that is on most new players' minds: Money. Is this game a good investment for your time/money? With 351 (30 of which were probably me keeping this game loaded up in the background) hours put into this game I can attest that I have not spent a single dollar on this game and find that Eternal has quite the generous model for free to play players. In that time, my completion percentage for a full playset of cards in the game is at 90% (this is including the Jekk's Bounty mini expansion as well as a reserve of 18,000 gold). I will compare this to Hearthstone in the sense that I have admittedly spent at least $300 on that game, and do not have all of the cards in -any- of the sets that have been released whatsoever. Now, compared to MtG, everything in MtG costs money. Now, unlike both Eternal and Hearthstone, MtG does offer the player a monetary resale value for their cards, but in most cases you are expected to spend far more money to acquire them in the first place than you were to get back if you decided to sell the cards at a later date.

Continuing on Eternal's free to play structure, Eternal allows players to get packs of cards in numerous ways: Gold, Gems (currency you can buy with real money), and Chests. Both gold and chests are acquired as you play the game. The reward structure for chests (on average) is listed below:

• Bronze: 50 gold (avg)
  
• Silver: 250 gold (avg)
  
• Gold: 500 gold (avg) + 1 Pack of cards
  
• Diamond: 2000 gold (avg) + 1 Pack of cards + 1 Premium Card (From common to legendary; Premium is an animated card)

When you acquire a chest, each chest also has a 10% chance to upgrade into the next tier of chest. For playing on the ladder, you will receive 1 bronze chest for every win, but a silver chest for every third win. There is also no limit to how many chests per day you can acquire. Comparatively, in Hearthstone, you receive 10 gold on every third win and have a max cap of 100 gold per day that you can earn (for those who like quick math, it will take you 30 wins per day to get your maximum amount of gold per day in Hearthstone). In retrospect, it is much easier for a player to acquire new cards in Eternal than it is in Hearthstone with this model, while spending less money if they so choose. Both game also have daily quest rewards with a chance to reroll them once per day at your choosing as well as a "dusting" system to get rid of your extra cards to create new ones that you want.

Eternal's system of getting Shiftstone (Hearthstone's version of arcane dust) also varies from Hearthstone's to a decent degree. Hearthstone's system allows player to get a card's "full" value of dust back if a card is ever changed in a balance patch. This incentivizes players to not want to dust a good portion of their extra cards in the hopes that one day they will get their "maximum value" back, causing them to spend extra money or time on obtaining more packs to get the cards they want instead of creating them when they want or need them. In Eternal, a player will only get extra Shiftstone from a card if a card is changed AND that the player has crafted. So a player will never have to worry about opening packs and sitting on cards to get rid of, since if they ever craft a card and that card gets changed, then they can get their refund back for that crafting. Personally, I find this option much easier to manage and encourages me to constantly grow my collection. On top of that, whenever you open a pack of cards in Eternal, you are given an extra 100 Shiftstone as well to, once again, help and encourage players to grow their collection.

Unlike MtG Online, Eternal has a very simple UI that allows new players to not be overwhelmed or become too confused when starting off. Also, unlike MtGO, the Eternal client doesn't run like it's from the early 2000s era of technology, but instead runs considerably smoothly for still being in the "beta" phase of the game. Now, I use the term "beta" very loosely, as Eternal is essentially at a point where I would consider it a "full release title" as far as the Collectible Card Game genre is concerned. Of course, the developers are taking this extra time to keep the beta tag on their game so they can most likely make a better first impression for future players when it comes into its "full release."

As for the actual gameplay itself, I have described this game to my friends as the "love child" of MtG and Hearthstone. Eternal takes the easy to learn nature of Hearthstone and mixes it with the subtle complexities of MtG in a formula that I feel is enjoyable for most people. Eternal's resource system is heavily inspired by MtG in the sense that your ability to cast cards from your hand and use abilities is tied to drawing sigils (Land in MtG terms) from your deck and generating power to use cards. This is easily the make or break part of the game for the player. As someone who really enjoyed the Pokemon TCG growing up and really loved MtG as well, I was able to quickly grasp Eternal's resource system. This is the main difference from Hearthstone, since in Hearthstone your mana is automatically generated every turn, causing decks to be inclined to play a card every turn and if they don't then that player can fall behind in the game. Admittedly, this system of resource generation does have its flaws as well. Power flooding and starvation can and do happen in Eternal, just like it does in MtG and Pokemon TCG. The developers do know that this can create some "non game" games and are always looking for feedback on how to improve it.

Eternal also offers a huge variety of decks that one can play to suit their playstyle. While Hearthstone and MtG usually have three main decks in their meta at a time, Eternal's meta has been quite healthy, seeing about six or more different decks in every meta game that seems to evolve every month or every other month. This variety keeps new games exciting, as you are highly unlikely to run into the exact same deck twice in a row until you are at the higher points in the ladder where things get a bit more competitive. But even then, knowing what a subset of players are playing at the higher ranks allows you to brew a counter deck against them and get wins consistently that way.

Most of the things about Eternal that I am a bit let down by are the aesthetics. The battlefield you play on is a bit uninteractive (besides the players' totems on the sides). A personal preference of mine would be to have the battlefield get "scruffed up" as you play and to have the totems begin to crack as their respective players take damage, making the game feel like the battle is bringing destruction to this digital battleground. Some of the artwork in the game could also be better, as the artworks tend to range from comicbook-esque cartoony to a mix of beautiful and classic fantasy as if you combined the art styles of MtG and Hearthstone. The premium cards in Eternal are also quite hit or miss. Some of them have added effects to make the cards feel more alive while others have odd glows that you wonder why they are even in the image. Of course, again, these are all simply aesthetic issues I have with the game and don't really affect the game play whatsoever.

Tl;dr: Eternal is a very fun card game inspired by both Hearthstone and MtG that is also extremely generous for free to play players. I highly recommend giving it a try.