Water Iris' Beauty is quite bad. The 2 Popularity cost means you can't play it on turn 1 if you don't also play 2 attacks. Even then you spend 1 energy and a card to do nothing on this turn. It gets better when it's upgraded and you have enough card draw to want 1 energy next turn but even then it's only situational. The other Joy card are all better.

Crane and Tortoise is quite weak. It is useless when Emotionless and it is much weaker than the Silent's Neutralize. The Accelerator can be powerful in some situations, otherwise it's just worse than Slice, Deflect or Just Lucky.

Retreat could be ok if it wasn't for the Popularity cost and the Iris and Crane in the starter deck. When you draw those 3 with 2 Defend against the Cultist you are in for a rough time. It also means the strict Emotion-bound cards are very hard to pick on the first few floors since they also can't be played.

The upgrade on Fan Swipe is underwhelming. Unlike Claw you don't have Hologram, Echo Form and All For One to play it multiple times per deck cycle. Adding 3 damage on upgrade would match Slice.

The Emotion-Bound cards are often underwhelming when Emotionless. That's fine, but some of them don't have any effect and can't be played Emotionless. That's very bad when you have them in your starting hand.
The card preview for Emotion-Bound cards doesn't show the keywords of the emotion versions.

The Accelerator buff should describe the effect of Graze and Power-Up instead of mentioning their name. To my knowledge there is no way to get Power-Up and Graze other than Accelerator. Also it does not say it reduces by 1 each turn.
The Accelerator seems to only take into account the cards played during the effect, not every card played during the turn like Finisher for attacks.

Ranged Combat is underwhelming, For 1 energy you get either a Neutralize+, 5 damage + a small amount each turn, 5 damage +3 Block, 9 damage, 5 damage + 8 over the next turns or just 4 damage. The flexibility is nice but I don't think it justifies the difference in power with cards like Ball Lightning, Twin Strike or Dagger Throw, I think you could raise its damage by 2 and the upgrade damage by 1, this way it's always at least a Strike.

Masked Performance is quite weak without its upgrade. It can't be played Emotionless, the Melancholic effect is strictly worse than Ranged Combat which already isn't great, The Sap is difficult to follow up on when the card costs 1 to play already.
Suggestion: add Performance from the start but make it Exhaust when played using Encore, The upgrade removes the exhaust part.

I think Soul Crushing Mask is well balanced. On its own it's a better Strike, with Emotion it's a better Sucker Punch or Thunder Clap.

Setup seems balanced but it's exactly like Fan Swipe with +1 cost and +4 damage. Upgrading with +1 Follow-up instead of +3 damage would make it more distinct and would match upgrades like Blade Dance and Cloak and Dagger.

Yuya's Blossoms looks above average. It lets you control your Emotion and gain a weak amount of Block for 1 energy but it also applies 5 Countered, which will deal from 8 to 10 damage over the next 3 attacks.

Flow of the Masks blocks for 12 for 1 energy in Melancholy, reduces an enemy Strength by 9 or strips 3 Artifact charges in Anger. In Joy it's a weak reuseable Piercing Wail. I think you could increase the Strength reduction and Block to 4 and trigger it only 2 times in Anger and Melancholy, reducing them by 1 Strength and 2 Block while buffing Joy by 1.

Donning Masks is great, It lets you enable any Emotion effect and the related effects are not bad on their own. The upgraded Joy effect in particular is quite good, letting you get 2 turns of mini Phantasmal Killer and 2 flexible Shivs.

Mask Storm could deal 6(8) damage when Emotionless. This would let it make Popularity on the first turn of combat.

The start of turn Emotion Powers look underwhelming. They do nothing immediately and need a few turns to match their base game equivalent for Hannya and Uba.

I'm not sure if Rational Strategy is balanced. 15 Block is more than Leg Sweep, Protect or Glacier but it doesn't come with their secondary effect. It's also 15 less than Impervious. I love the idea but I'm not sure if it's balanced.

Melancholic Ogress looks OP. It gives a standard amount of Block and enables low-cost Melancholy cards. It also applies Trapped which is better than Poison.

Sacred Rite "Okina" is nice. It's a nice complement to cards that are powerful only with Emotions, it's a great card on turn 1. In Melancholy it's equivalent to Iron Wave.

One big downside that Reckless Masks and Sacred Rite "Okina" have is that their Block is applied after the attack, which matters against the Spikers in Act 3.

Kokoro Roulette is quite strong with card draw, especially when upgraded. You can easily weave it into a turn to enable a different effect of a card and the Popularity gain is great for some cards.

Raiden Mask is strictly worse than Caltrops. I don't see why that's needed,

Trap of Kuchisake seems OP. I would translate it to "Deal X*10 damage over the next ~3 turns, apply X Weak and add an Emotion bonus".

Menreiki Form looks very hard to pick. When you draft you usually pick cards that benefit from Emotions and not just emotion-changing cards. On 4 energy Menreiki reduces your energy by half and make it very difficult to play most of your cards. Some of the best Emotion cards also cost 2, they are still difficult to play with this Form.
In a deck buiilt around it it's probably OP. Never-ending Crock makes an easy infinite.

I really like Melancholy Mask and the other conditional Performance, it's a nice way to make a payoff for the Emotion.

Thank you for the detailed comment!
One becomes blind to some of the faults and accepts them for what they are, so suggestions and ideas are really appreciated!


Water Iris' Beatuy:
I see where you are coming from. It does nothing the turn it is played (as intended), but I suppose the payoff is too weak for its cost. I'll take a closer look at the card in my future runs and see if I can find a nice way to improve it.

Crane and Tortoise:
It's supposed to be (a bit) weaker than Neutralize due to its modal nature and being able to give you what you need (assuming you have access to the Emotion you need). If it's too weak even despite that, I may raise its numbers a tiny bit.

Retreat:
Hm... given all these problems are at least tangentially related to the Popularity Loss, maybe I'll make Popularity Loss free for the first use/ the first round of combat/ if you don't have the Popularity buff (which would also make these cards playable for other characters/ without Kokoro's starting relic).
I'll give it some more thought and test out if this makes these cards better, without breaking them.

Emotion Bound:
Nothing but modal cards in your starting hand is a problem, yeah. In the latest version, I made Kokoro Roulette (Gain a (random) Emotion) an Innate card, so that should hopefully help out with decks that heavily focus on modal cards.
I've been thinking about maybe letting Control Emotions also let you choose and Emotion on play... I should probably add that.
I've been looking for a way to get the keywords on the modal cards to show up on the base form, but had no luck yet getting it to work. It's something I'm working on, so hopefully, it'll be there in one of the updates!

Accelerator:
... you're right. I just wanted to state how the keyword is too long already, but keywords are for first time players, so they need all the info.
I'll try to put in all the required info in a concise way.
Yes, Accelerator only counts the cards played after the Buff is on the player (by design).

Masked Performance:
This card was reworked a couple of times, like a Performance card that gives 1 stack for any Debuff (which was terrible), making it 0 cost (which I didn't like), but the best I could come up with was the state the card is currently in (which I don't even like flavor-wise, because the card called Masked PERFORMANCE does not even have Performance.)
I have to admit, I like your suggestion more than the current card, so I'll probably steal your idea accept your suggestion.

Setup(+):
True. I was really stubborn about not giving it multiple Followups, but even I can't clearly remember why.

Yuya's Blossom:
The thing with Countered is that the enemy first needs to attack you in order for the damage to happen, so I want that effect to be a bit more powerful for the price point. If it Countered goes out of control, I may consider decreasing the amount of it on some cards (like this one).

Flow of the Masks:
I'll take a look at it. When I tested it last, I was happy with the numbers as is, but I'll try out your recommendation.

Hannya/ Uba/ Ko-omote Mask:
They are uncommon cards, and a lot easier to play than Demon Form. I'll take another look at them. If I change anything, I'll probably let them activte their effect on play, too.

Rational Strategy:
Originally, this card gave 12 Block, but doubled its effect on Emotionless. Which would again be doubled with New Mask Of Hope.
I may have swung the nerf hammer too harshly.
I'll take another look at it. If I change it, I'll probably give it another secondary effect on Emotionless (and never have it Exhaust).

Sacred Rite "Okina"/ Reckless Masks:
Like I mentioned at the beginning, I became blind to this fault. I'll change the effect order.

Raiden Mask:
I added it for Turtle Support, mostly (and because Kokoro has a counter move in the fighting games).
Maybe I'll rework it to be a bit more interesting, but I agree, I rarely pick this card, myself.

Trap of Kuchisake:
I'll take another look at the card.

Menreiki Form:
I agree that it's hard to pick, but It's supposed to be a situational, yet very powerful card in the right decks.
It's pretty much a card that reads "from now on, always choose 1 cost Emotion enabling cards, and cards that synergize with them". So it (kind of) forces you to rethink your deck building strategy.
I have had runs with it alongside Emotion Amplifier and Fleeting Emotion before. It's very much (intentionally) busted with this combination.

I'm glad you like Melancholy Mask and co.!
Melancholy Mask in particular is the reason why Encore works the way it does now (and why the other two Rare conditional Performance cards exit), so it's nice to see the card itself is liked, too.


Thanks again for all the input!
I'll try out some of the ideas and see if it breaks the balance in any way. If I'm happy with how the changes play out, they should be in the next update.

I feel like there ought to be more ways of gaining popularity, in order to make going for popularity explosion or popularity loss a viable build path. Right now, there's 6 cards that spend popularity, and 4 cards that give popularity in small quantities (2 of which require a certain emotion and one is kokoro roulette). The main way to gain popularity is attacking, so the 3 follow up cards could be considered to be popularity generators as well. Even still, you are losing popularity to enemy attacks, and so it is likely to take many turns to get the first popularity explosion. So you are left with one option which is Noh of Darkness, which as a singular rare exhaust card isn't something you can build around.

Maybe a skill that gives a chunk of popularity, a power that increases popularity gain, and/or power that gives popularity each turn.

Popularity is a little bit like mantra, but watcher has a card that gives 5 mantra.

I really don't see why Menreiki form needs such a harsh penalty or even a penalty at all. Sure, it's good with Fleeting Emotion, but how are you gonna play Fleeting Emotion with 1 energy? It doesn't seem realistic to build around this outside of sealed deck custom mode.

Thanks for the suggestions! ^^
I haven't really worked on this mod for a long time (except for the run modifiers), so I'm a bit hesitant to try and balance cards out of fear I will break the entire balance. ^^;

From what I remember, my intent was for Popularity Explosion to be mostly a mechanic to be used against Bosses (and Elites that let you set up), so it taking a few turns is intentional.
Token cards worked well enough for me to gain the popularity needed, and once I had Popularity Explosion active, it was easy enough to chain into another one the following turn (or the turn after at the latest).
I can take another look at it and see if my memory is right or not, but I'll probably not touch this area. Popularity Explosion generates huge value, so it should be somewhat difficult to achieve.

Menreiki Form is quite harsh without an Energy relic, I agree. But once you have one (or have the card upgraded (preferably both, even)), this card is very powerful.
Not only with Fleeting Emotion, but also Never-ending Crock (and Enraptured Hyottoko to a lesser degree), as they become free (delayed) card draw with delayed Energy gain.
You have to prune a lot of non-Emotion-granting cards from your deck to make best use out of it, but Menreiki Form is generally worth the cost (in the right deck, at least. Not every deck wants this card).


To be fair though, this was my first mod and definitely could need some more tweaking from what I've learned from my other two mods.
While I doubt I'm going to change anything, I'll check and see if your suggestions have more merit than I thought.
So thanks again for leaving your comment. ^^