This is what I've been waiting for since I heard about the PC version in Korea and when I saw the announcement for the western release, I couldn't have been more excited. Being a loyal Mabinogi Duel player since the release back in 2015, I could finally play the game both on my smartphone and PC. Except I can't. Not only Duel of Summoners starts from the beginning, but in addition I can't even synchronize my account with it. I feel like I've been playing a beta for two years and all the cards I've earned by hard work have gone through a grinder.

Don't get me wrong. This is a really good digital card game with excellent story mode and I'm sure new players are going to enjoy this fresh start, but I can't hide the fact how this will probably alienate old players like myself.

So, at the time, there's no way I could give my blessings for this PC release.

This game is identical to the mobile app Mabinogi Duel.
Only difference is they reset the game back to 1.0.
So if you are one of the few playing the mobile app, there is no incentive to play this version.
If you didn't than go ahead and play it, it is fun. But it won't last long after they add new sets to break the game with.
Plus i don't see any way to trade cards with people in this TCG. Its available in the mobile app if you know someone right next to you who plays. (obviously that's not going to work on the steam version.)
Also Its nexon, take that as you will.

Stupid Devs!

Review of the Steam version of the game:
This game is available for mobile globally and mobile users can play across region and OS (android and ios). The Koreans and Chinese also have a PC version but their version is crossplatform with the mobile game but for whatever reason the Steam version of the game is NOT cross platform making this game a huge waste of time. If you play this game you will be basically playing with a small sliver of the community who aren't aware of the mobile game.

As I understand it the reason Nexon decided to make the split is because they wanted to make an enormous balance patch on the mobile version but decided that some people would leave if a a bunch of their rare hard-earned cards got changed and decided to make a separate game with these changes. Even if they do a stellar job with balance in this version I can't see why people would toss all thier cards in the mobile game just because a few of their cards stopped being meta to play a version that boasts balance from a company with a generally bad reputation with balance. All of this while losing the convinience of being able to play anywhere and with a much larger community.

Review of the mobile version of the game:
Assuming the Devs realize that a standalone game is a stupid idea and itegrate this version with the mobile version the mobile version is a pretty good game (at least on par if not better than Hearthstone). You don't draw cards from a deck like Hearthstone and Yu-Gi-Oh taking a huge amount of luck and RNG out of the game, instead all of your cards in your deck are available to you at the start and you have to balance card costs to decide which cards to play and when. There is still some RNG as your deck might have a slight strategic advantage over your opponent's or you might get super unlucky with which resources you get but you won't be in a situation where you are stomping an opponent who is vastly worse than you but all of a sudden your opponent gets a super lucky draw and destroys your entire strategy with a single card.

Gameplay is fun but very limited, feels v repetitive. Also, moderators from this game's discord tend to support toxic behaviour and intrude in private conversations (DMs), this level of unprofessionalism doesn't help to an "already" low player base game. DEAD GAME

Might be an alright game, but the userbase is so empty it is hard to play. Since going against other players is a big part of the game can't really even try as the userbase seems to be near dead.

The game is great, and it works well. But my main issue is that there is no card variety. For a TCG that is fatal.

Pretty Generic Card Trading game Has 5 forms of resource
It removes drawing from a deck which decreases rendamazation
It has an intresting Draft mode and is quite fun

There are however bugs in this game,
All healing mechanics break at some point
This leads to undeserved wins and unwinable games

How to earn points in daily competitions are vague so you dont know why
some players can have 20 wins and 4k point and some players have 35 wins and 4k points

There is an ai card trader that would ask you to trade away cards that are part of an existing deck
and that card trader comes with a trading advisor
that advisor compaires traded -in cards accoring to the buy value
and to the traded-away cards according to the sale value
making the advisor always say you are getting the better trade...

I had to buy a card that cost 6,000 in game cridets because of the broken ai card trader
after it remove two cards from my existing decks...
and i wasn't allowed check my deck during the trade

Its a good time waster, after encountering the healing bug a few times in 3 days of play
made me feel this game needs to fix those bugs before selling anything to anyone

I've played this a pretty decent amount and this is what I can say so far.

1. The mechanics are a lot of fun. The game is very interesting compare to your typical card game. You don't get unlimited actions per turn and your resources don't fill up to max per turn. This is very fresh..

2. It's a TCG, not a CCG. This means that players can trade with other players and buy/sell from/to each other. This makes it easier to get entire playsets or specific cards. This means that the game is not P2W at all.

3. Nexon is very generous with rewards.



Now.. why I don't recommend playing this game "right now" is due to the playerbase. The playerbase is very small and they mainly play between 7:00 am PDT and 9:00 am PDT. Most of the playerbase is from Asia. This means that if you don't play during this window, you won't get many, if any, ranked matches. You can play casual mode with the other people from the US, sure. You just won't get to play any monthly ranked, weekly ranked, or weekend ranked. I don't know why US players don't play those modes and only people from Asia do, but w/e, it is what it is and that means only 1 match every 6-9 hours if you don't play during those 2 hours when the people from Asia are on. Also, you can be sure that your rare matches are going to be people from Asia, like Japan.


Anyways, continue to check steamcharts if you are interested and wait for the playerbase to be more substantial beyond the hours of 7:00 am PDT to 9:00 am PDT. It doesn't matter if it grows only during that timeframe =P.


I also need to note that the OST is horrible, the UI is horrible, and that the first impression couldn't be worse.

I don't do reviews but as of this posting, there is one annoying bug that crashes the app and there is no workaroud other than to lose your match. I have encountered this bug a lot in the recent days and it is so annoying I had to put this review out there. I recommend you to not play this game and avoid it at all costs and dont forget to tell all your acquaintances to avoid it and their acquaintances to avoid it.