Mixed Review

[Scrublord]

So the game is still mixed, but alot of the reviews state that those are from older reviews and the game is much better balanced now. While I imagine those here love the game, I'm wondering how it has changed and why maybe it still has a mixed review?

[Morthgarrow]

That's a good question. I've only bought the game recently (and really enjoy it), so I have less of the full picture, though I did watch several people play close to the time it was released to compare it to, and that held me off of buying at the time.

Cards and progression seem much better balanced than before. There are plenty of small and large tweaks that could be mentioned, but suffice to say at launch some decks and cards were unbalanced and that dampened enjoyment. Things feel much better balanced now, personally.
The meta-progression in the rougelite mode seemed too grindy, requiring too many runs to fully unlock upgrades, and the unlocks were powerful in a way that made runs without meta-progression feel too restrictive and runs with full unlocks could feel too strong.
For example, the number of relics you could carry on a hero needed to be unlocked with meta-progression, which made early runs with them feel less fun as you would pass up relics beyond your first.
Currently the meta-progression (to me at least) feels far less grindy than before, and the upgrades while good do not impact the level of fun nor are they required to win even on Hard mode, and several just give you different options to start the run with.

The game no longer forces you to pick up new cards after battles in the rougelite mode. That was a common complaint that stifled enjoyment as the decks would naturally get bloated over a run without options to skip the rewards. The current drafting process with optional picks feels much better, and you can still cram your deck with a lot of drafted cards if you want.
I'm sure there's been a lot of bug-fixing and UI tweaks as well.

Something else I discovered while writing this is that about half the reviews are from English, and that total has an overall rating of 89%. I'm not sure if there were translation issues for the Chinese languages or some other problem that caused them to pan the game more.

Someone who may have stuck with the game since its launch could probably give a better overall view, but hopefully that helps. I've been very happy with the game so far, and I rarely buy into early-access and/or low reviewed games, so this one was an excellent surprise with how much I enjoyed it.

[Dlanor]

Like the last comment said, if you actually look at the review breakdowns it's mostly cultural. About 90% of the English reviews are positive, the game has mixed reviews because Chinese reviews are split 50/50. I have no clue if that's because of the translation or just audience preference differences or review bombing or what.

Here's a source on this if you don't just want to scroll through reviews. At this moment, English reviews account for 47% of reviews, with there being 464 positive reviews and only 52 negative: https://www.togeproductions.com/SteamScout/steamAPI.php?appID=1619520

Even a lot of the 10% of negative reviews in English seem unfair for the record. It's a lot of "I found a minor bug so here's a negative review" (with the review not telling you that bug was already fixed 2 weeks after it popped up). A lot of "The devs promised X feature by time the game leaves Early Access, here's a negative review to hold their score hostage until they add the thing they already said is coming in the game I bought that was clearly marked as in progress".

The game has improved a lot and gained more content too of course. The last comment brought up a few of the big ones, here's a few more: They went back and did some improvements on the older stories when they made the 3rd. You used to have to play through twice to get every unlock, they reworked that into side quests you can do in a single experience. The devs clearly listen to feedback, every patch is full of direct responses to the player requests. Some recent changes in the last beta patch include responses to feedback like changes to some cards, improvements to a bunch of fights, improved economy in the story mode, AI changes, Chinese translation improvements, and a big list of bug fixes.

Another big change they made is implementing a beta branch. Basically, new content first appears on a beta branch anyone can access for free if they own the game. I have to guess they started doing this because of the wave of negative reviews about bugs on new content that never get removed when the bugs get patched out soon after. Like if they add 100 new cards in a patch and 3 are bugged in certain interactions, negative reviews always pop up instead of just using the other 97 until the fixes come. The point here is that if you're worried about bugs or balance issues, stay on the main branch and the vast majority of those things get worked out before you see the content, because the main branch skips the "here's new content" patches and gets everything on the "here's bug fixes and feedback changes for the new content" patches.

[Xuande]

While I left a positive review, soon after release there was a massive rebalancing of the non-story metagame that left me bored, making it far too easy to force whatever kind of deck one wanted. A lot of players praised the change, which tells me their core active audience leans casual, but also told me to shelve the game in the hopes some of that gets reverted/reworked eventually. There's not much challenge unless you consider trivial but time consuming achievement lists fun.

Its a good game but one that doesn't cater to what I want out of the deckbuilding genre.

[Dlanor]

Originally posted by Xuande:

While I left a positive review, soon after release there was a massive rebalancing of the non-story metagame that left me bored, making it far too easy to force whatever kind of deck one wanted. A lot of players praised the change, which tells me their core active audience leans casual, but also told me to shelve the game in the hopes some of that gets reverted/reworked eventually. There's not much challenge unless you consider trivial but time consuming achievement lists fun.

Its a good game but one that doesn't cater to what I want out of the deckbuilding genre.

I don't know what kind of runs you were playing, but hard mode with 3 masks becomes really difficult even if you know what you're doing. If the mask stuff was added after you played it's worth checking that out, it's not exactly the ascensions from Slay The Spire but combined with Hard Mode it does let you do much harder runs.

[Xuande]

That's what I mean by achievement lists. Masks weren't interesting ways of handling difficulty for me, an actual StS/MT style ascension system might have been.

[Dlanor]

Originally posted by Xuande:

That's what I mean by achievement lists. Masks weren't interesting ways of handling difficulty for me, an actual StS/MT style ascension system might have been.

Masks aren't achievement lists, it's essentially that each map zone has 4 (seriously difficult) ascension levels you can toggle 3 of. STS has ascensions for things like giving enemies more health or making your deck less consistent, and masks do things like giving enemies more health or making your deck less consistent. It's essentially the same system but with a little more variety and flexibility because you can pick 1 modifer you don't want in max difficulty runs, and the modifiers are different in different maps.

I can get saying you like the presentation of the ascension system more of something, but claiming Cross Blitz doesn't have a way to make runs more challenging like an ascension system is completely untrue. If you want really difficult runs you can toggle them on, so it sounds like the issue is more like that you don't feel compelled to do so like you did for STS.

[Jamjars]

A lot of it was review bombing by a large crowd who wanted more casual gameplay.

But the criticism isn't entirely wrong. This game does feature some strange balancing decisions. Especially in relics. Death dice being the worst offender by a lot, and the example everyone points to first, but there's some other strange decisions too.

However, they addressed one of the other worst relics recently, the shark teeth, which gives me some hope they plan on rebalancing the other bad relics and cards in the future.

[Dlanor]

Originally posted by Jamjars:

A lot of it was review bombing by a large crowd who wanted more casual gameplay.

But the criticism isn't entirely wrong. This game does feature some strange balancing decisions. Especially in relics. Death dice being the worst offender by a lot, and the example everyone points to first, but there's some other strange decisions too.

However, they addressed one of the other worst relics recently, the shark teeth, which gives me some hope they plan on rebalancing the other bad relics and cards in the future.

You personally failing to utilize Death Dice correctly does not translate to it being something "everyone points to first". The majority of comments on Death Dice excluding yours in the steam forum were people asking them to improve it early on in EA, and they did exactly that, and the playerbase thanked them for that. I've personally gotten #1 daily run wins using it, because it's not bad at all and the results show it. You just got salty and have held a grudge for almost a year over a broken minor relic being nerfed to a fair minor relic that you need to play around better.

They consistently improve balance, but the fact that you've nonstop spammed about Death Dice in the forums and they ignore it while putting in other suggestions in the same threads speaks volumes. It's not Death Dice that's messed up, it's you having bad judgement. I hope no amount of spam will make the devs say "you know what, he brought it up off topic in 100 threads now, time to make a bad balance change to placate him".

[Eleveneleven]

Death Dice is terrible. The fact that it constantly gets brought up means you should just accept that there's a problem with it. If most people don't like it, then it doesn't matter if you're convinced you like it, no one cares. It's not in line with what the majority wants, and it's hurting the balance and appreciation for the game.

[deoxxys]

This topic convinced me and I also did notice how if I only looked at reviews in English it comes out as 89% positive.

Will pick it up next sale.

[Dlanor]

Originally posted by deoxxys:

This topic convinced me and I also did notice how if I only looked at reviews in English it comes out as 89% positive.

Will pick it up next sale.

Nice. If you have any issues don't be afraid about making threads for it.

Originally posted by Eleveneleven:

Death Dice is terrible. The fact that it constantly gets brought up means you should just accept that there's a problem with it. If most people don't like it, then it doesn't matter if you're convinced you like it, no one cares. It's not in line with what the majority wants, and it's hurting the balance and appreciation for the game.

Name the majority of people besides you and the other spammer ITT that says Death Dice is terrible. You can't because you are delusional and they don't exist.
The fact that 1 or 2 people spam nonstop about it says nothing about the relic and everything about the spammers. More people have defended DD than said it should be changed in this community and that is an ironclad fact that the delusional refuse to accept, there are 3 people that defended it in the last update thread alone and that outnumbers every person that has said it needs a buff ever.
The only thing hurting appreciation for the game are spammers that think their own opinion is worth more than the actual provable majority based on real posts that disagree with them.

[Jamjars]

Originally posted by Eleveneleven:

Death Dice is terrible. The fact that it constantly gets brought up means you should just accept that there's a problem with it. If most people don't like it, then it doesn't matter if you're convinced you like it, no one cares. It's not in line with what the majority wants, and it's hurting the balance and appreciation for the game.

People will complain about problems.

Death dice are a problem. Truly a terrible relic. Never worth picking up over anything else. Needs a rework or buff immediately.

[Dlanor]

Originally posted by Jamjars:

People will complain about problems.

Death dice are a problem. Truly a terrible relic. Never worth picking up over anything else. Needs a rework or buff immediately.

Spamming your hot take nonstop for almost a full year transcends "complaining" into being a full nuisance. Death Dice are fine as-is, you are just not good enough of a player to use them correctly. As someone that uses them all the time, they easily help good players win when used correctly.

You might as well claim 2+2 is impossible to solve. The fact is that other people can solve it. Even if 2 people come together to both claim 2+2 is impossible, the fact that other people are telling you that 2+2 is very possible to solve because they have solved it is in itself proof you are wrong. I have absolute proof of a positive because I have done it myself, you cannot prove a negative and say that something I do constantly is impossible.

[Aegix Drakan]

I just updated my original positive review just now.

Game was fine before, with a lot of potential.

Now? A lot of the snags have been smoothed out, and I like a lot of the new decks. Game's really shaping up to be something special. :D

[Jamjars]

Originally posted by Aegix Drakan:

I just updated my original positive review just now.

Game was fine before, with a lot of potential.

Now? A lot of the snags have been smoothed out, and I like a lot of the new decks. Game's really shaping up to be something special. :D

Overall I really like what they’ve done with the game. I preferred when it had some actual difficulty in the story before, but there’s enough to enjoy in the other modes.

But they still really need to fix some of their more glaring balance and design issues.