Sword Girls – Deep or Shallow?

 

Hello, it’s been awhile but anyone who read the last entry will know why I was absent in these past few months. Also, it’s not like I’m getting paid to do this (yet), or get donations…at all. So I hope no one takes it like I’ve been slacking off because I haven’t.

If anything I’ve been playing a game called Sword Girls. YES, it’s really called that; this game needs to be given an award for must fucking dumb name ever possibly given for a game. It’s so bad I can’t even say its name aloud with a straight face and I don’t think I ever will. Anyway let’s get to the meat and potatoes because like me I’m sure you got a bunch of things you need to get done.

Sword Girls is a Collectable Card Game hosted by ChangYou and according to its Facebook page, its growing in size for the devoted…how many of those people still play the game is anyone’s guess. The  game has been through 2 Closed Beta tests since last year that I got to partake in both. Sadly I didn’t get to spend much time in the second part, thus lost my chance to get a special promo card for getting 100 wins in a week (maybe I’ll be lucky and they’ll offer it again in some other way). ANYWAY MOVING ON.

The game has four factions. In their most basic form there’s Academy (Beat Down), Vita (Tank & Spank), Crux (Walling & Buffs) and Darklore (Power at a price). There is a story revolving around the four main girls but I’m a reviewer, I write for people that could be short on time so I don’t do fluff so if you want the story details look them up. Google is your friend.

There are several cards you need to get used to. Characters (they give out the orders and can even effect which cards you can use), Followers (think of them as your characters soldiers) and Spells (various effects that run a wide gambit). There is a fourth kind but I’ll get to that in a little while. What you’ll notice on the screen shot I provided above is several numbers on the characters. The first one is Attack (ATK which it will be referred to henceforth). ATK is how much damage this card will deal to the enemy follower.  The one in the middle is Defense (DEF is what it will be referred to as from now on). DEF determines how much of the ATK is nullified before being taken out of the third number, Stamina (STA is how I will refer to it from here on out since that’s how the game has it in shorthand). STA determines how much damage a follower can take before they die. In an interesting note, DEF can be taken into the negatives and you’ll deal even more damage to the unfortunate soul.

Your Character only has Life to worry about in numbers. Once this hits zero you lose. Size is another factor you have to take into consideration. This is the Sword Girls resource system. If at any point your field size would meet or exceed 10 you can’t play anymore cards from your hand. Size also has combat significant. When a follower is killed the Character who was controlling the Follower at the time loses Life equal to the Size of the Follower. Speaking of followers, as long as there is a Follower on your side of the field they will be attacked. If no Followers are present, your Character will take damage equal to the Size of the enemy follower.

I will go on with attacking and cover Spells a bit more but before I do you must know something. Cards are placed down in a time limit of 30 seconds. Once both players are ready (or time runs out) all the cards are revealed and then…a COIN FLIP determines who acts first. Yep, that’s right, the Random Number God will determine if you’re worthy of acting first. Also, see the five zones on each side? Well, the cards have to be placed in number order. So sadly you can’t take Card A and just slap it in Zone five to avoid it from taking a hit to something that eats cards in Zone one for breakfast. If you want to keep it safe you got to clog up Zone one first with something else, which might be counterproductive since it could force you to use a card in a way you didn’t want to just so you can have the card you wanted to play avoid being a victim.

Speaking of order and chaos one thing you got to keep in mind is that no matter what, before any of your Follower can attack your Spells activate first. So if you really need to heal someone and if the opponent gets first strike, chances are you just wasted a card. Speaking of inopportunity, YOU DON’T CHOOSE WHO ATTACKS WHO OR WHAT EFFECT EFFECTS WHO! So if your Follower is feeling stupid they could attack the worst possible opponent while leaving the weakened Follower alive longer and possibly kill the stupid person who was stupid enough not to finish them off. Your spell could affect the unintended target. As for more on attacking when your Follower attacks an enemy follower, if they survive they will be counterattacked by the target.

Now I know what a good deal of you might be thinking. “Why the hell should I play this game when I cannot control anything!?” As strange as this might sound reading it at first you have more control then you realize. You’re probably laughing so just get it all out of your system now before I go on. Are you done now? Good. Now as I was saying, the real planning as it were is all done during the deck building phase. You know, figuring out how you want to win. As of yet there doesn’t seem to be too many ways to assure victory (Debuff the enemy to death, buff your Follwers to crazy heights, Size manipulation to kill the opponents in fewer turns are all I can think of off the top of my head). As for the randomness factor of battles you can think of it as a more action packed poker.

I’m not a math person but I can see that quite a bit of probability comes into play and those who will take the top ranks in number of wins will more than likely have a high understanding of Mathematics. However since things are still random that Mathlete is still as vulnerable to the wrath of the Random Number God as the rest of us not-so-educated mortals. They’ll just be able to circumvent it better on average and will more likely blame themselves for misplays (unless they’re conceded as all hell) than those of us who can’t see through the illusion of no control.

Speaking of controlling stuff I never did get to that fourth kind of card. That fourth kind I was telling you about (for some stupid as hell reason) also falls under the Spell classification. These are Material cards. They cannot be placed in the deck and have no effects of their own, but what they do have Is the power to be made into new cards. Each time you fight, win or lose you get these at random (well, you ALWAYS get these but which ones and how many are random). Doing Dungeon runs will grant you materials you can’t get fighting people and will give you a copy of the Boss card for your own use if you’re victorious over the dungeon ten times (or once if you’re some no lifer who manages to be the very first person on the server to beat the Dungeon). Of course it’s to be expected that the Boss character will be gimped to hell and back in some way (as I speak I have yet to run through a Dungeon that many times to obtain a Boss card).

As for match making the game assures that you’re matched with someone who has about the same Deck Points as you, so unless you decide to play at off hours or such, if you’re poor as all fuck you won’t be running into Mr. and Ms. Suitcase unless they take all the rare cards out of their deck that mommy and daddy bought them and sink down to commoner level. That’s right newbies, no need to worry about running into them unless you happen to be loaded or a dedicated (read: no life having) player. Oh, and in case no one is currently available you’ll be matched against an NPC.

Alright, it seems like I’ve been all sunshine and farts up until now and that’s because I save my complaints for last. Everything has its downsides and if it didn’t it would be too good to be true. First off is the “Booster Packs”. I say “Booster Packs” because one card for 25 Tokens is not a pack! Before I go further into this I just like to tell you the Token to Dollar conversion rate just to put this into perspective. $1 equals 100 Tokens. Let’s say, for whatever reason you want to get 100 cards. That’s going to cost you (mind you this is the price of NORMAL packs) $25 (2500 tokens). And the worse part about that is it doesn’t even assure you that you’ll get a Double Rare. The pull rates for those are so fucking abysmal it’s not even funny! And the less said about your odds of getting a TRIPLE RARE, the better. Worry not! If you want a Double Rare that badly and don’t have a trust fund, or some illegal trade to help feed your love of this game you can always CRAFT FOR IT! Yep. With some exceptions ANY CAR YOU WANT can be crafted. So, how much would you need to make ONE Double Rare? Well this YouTube video will show you. Mind you its sped up, I don’t even want to know how much of time or money this person wasted just for this ONE CARD!:

Another gripe I got relates to match making. The system is flawed grossly but only because this game is in its infancy and could be fixed with just more players coming into (and sticking with) the game. It’s barely been out a week and we already have some no lifers who have netted 500+ wins. How is this achievement in wasting your life relevant you might ask? WELL IF YOU STOP INTERUPTING ME I’LL TELL YOU! You see the game seems to have a system where it separates people who have netted 500+ wins and those who are still under this amount. These people now have very few human opponents to play against and I’m sure a few of them are Mr. and Ms. Suit case. I don’t envy the person who isn’t so well funded who must face off against them or just an NPC. This problem isn’t helped that even your Dungeon fights are taken into account for your wins. So if you really like to grind Dungeons you’ll find yourself at 500 wins before you know it.

If those issues aren’t bad enough then the one thing that might ultimately kill the game before it had even a chance in the states would be the server instability. I’ve had difficulties getting into different channels since the start. Some days better than others, but really this shouldn’t be happening in this much. I’m sure they’re on it but if they don’t hurry up and resolve the issue the game is going to get a reputation about shitty servers and that will be the beginning of the end for Sword Girls in any English speaking Countries and beyond. I don’t care if they got to bring the servers down for two weeks; they better fix it with quickness. And speaking of servers would it kill a Maid to allow us to see how many people are currently IN a Channel before we enter it?

BOY I did a lousy job keeping this brief. By now I’m at least five pages in on Microsoft word and 2000 plus words deep, not counting the title.

Judgment: Despite all the gripes I have I would recommend this game to people, but I cannot heavily recommend it at this point in time due to server instability. ChangYou, I know you need money, but before anyone (besides that already gave) gives you any serious change you need to FIX YOUR SHIT! If you’re going to head in to stay long term, unless you’re loaded to the gills I suggest making four accounts and get a feel for each Faction and deciding which one you’ll want as your “Main”. If you plan on spending no money you better be prepared to grind for Dungeons and Materials to expand your collection. If you end up wanting to rock or at the very least sample all four at once you can’t go wrong with the Delux deck. It gives you the other three decks at a nice discount and some exclusive cards.

Well, now I’m going to see if I can’t get in at this time and if you like a donation of any amount would do because I’d like to expand on my collection of Maids a bit faster.

Well, as always I implore you to not take my words as Gospel, so after reading my thoughts give it a go yourself. Tell me what you think.

EDIT: Due to some rather....interesting criticism I was inspired to do a follow up, so click on this if you want to read it. 

BattleCraft – A Game For People Too Busy to Hardcore Game But Want To

I needed to show I’m still alive and College hasn’t fully eaten me yet. As some might know I LOVE card games but my love of them won’t stop me from tearing a shitty one a new hole if it proves it needs one.  This so happened to be in Beta testing so I decided to give it a shot.

With that in mind I will not be giving anything resembling a Final Judgment until the game is in full release, at which point I will reveal the gamer name I play under on the site in case you want to challenge me to a fight. Battle Craft is a card game that presents itself as a “game for busy people” ( so let’s keep this in mind before I go further) and it shows. The battles are quick and furious. Once you sign up you get to pick a deck to start with from a few Clans. Once then they game will fling you into a tutorial mode where you’ll be taught the basics and given cards for advancing through the tutorials so you can start tweaking your deck with new cards- Oh, where is my head!? Let me show you the two kinds of cards you use in game to build your fighting machine. You are to have 8 of both kinds in your deck.

This is one of the Hero cards. Hero cards of course are your foot soldiers who will deal the bulk of the damage to your opponents Heroes and your enemies Morale while trying to keep yours high. Four of these are picked at random from your deck. Before I go further let me explain a basic of the game. You and your opponent start off with a set amount of Morale and Energy depending on your level  (30 until you hit level 15, then it becomes 50). The goal of course is to get it to 0 or lower. Each time a Hero attacks they eat into your energy (indicated amount by the green lightning bolt). If you run out of Energy all other attacks and abilities will come out of Morale. The fight ends of course when this hits 0 or you kill all your opponents Heroes. The Fist shows how much attack power the Hero has and the Heart is HP. The icon on the upper right hand side shows what faction it belongs in and the one on the upper left hand side would have a B in it if the card is bound to your account.

This is a Support card. You attach these to your Heroes to help turn the tides of battle. You will notice four symbols on these. In descending order we have Clan (the one on this card is Unaligned so it may be used by any Hero), an Hourglass, A Blue Lightning Bolt and a Green Lightning Bolt. The Hourglass will have a number on it to show what turn it activates (these can only have their effect activated one time), the Blue Lightning Bolt will show its Energy cost if it takes effect before your Heroes slug it out and the Green Lightning Bolt works when your Hero attacks. Unlike the Hero cards, all of your Support cards are available before all Hell breaks loose but keep in mind you can only assign one per Hero.

Once all cards are positioned and confirmed the fight begins. Each Hero takes swings at the one across from them until a winner is decided. It can get more complicated than that, but I wanted to keep things simple for now and save a more in depth explanation once it comes out of Beta.

The game does have a Marketplace where you can buy AND sell cards on Auction for Shards (the in game currency) or use Hydra Cash (the premium currency) to buy booster packs (most boosters can be bought with just Shards) or Shards. If you want to play in the higher ends of play you’ll need cards from Booster Packs, but fear not, the game has implemented a Ladder System insuring you won’t be constantly bullies by higher ranked players. If you got someone in the low end with a really powerful deck, don’t worry, they’ll be out of the lower end soon enough unless you get silly and join a Tournament then prepare to see that dude again.

If you want you can craft some cards you need, but the materials required are other cards and materials that you could find in Daily Challenges. They drop randomly, so unless you got the patients of a Saint you might go mad hoping the Random Number God will toss you a bone.

Now for a point of concern. The packs. As of now I feel that they might be asking for too much money for the packs (in terms of Hydro Cash). $3 for 6 Cards in the Platinum pack sounds like a sweet deal but I wouldn’t mind getting at least 2 more out of it. Players can offer you cards in Private deals (for free if they’re generous enough), but in order to get these you must become a Member. Yeah, I know that look on your face going “HOW ARE THESE FIENDS GOING TO MILK ME DRY!?” Fear not, you only need to buy Hydra Cash at least ONCE and only $5 at the very least (smallest amount they’ll take) and you’ll have access to everything Marketplace wise.

Another grievance I have is with the card art. Once you get in you’ll notice in a good deal of cases the background is repeatedly recycled which drove me INSANE. It still does grind my gears, but it’s in Beta (and an Indie Project) so I’m hoping the backgrounds will become FAR MORE VARRIED once fully released. If any of you developers are reading this the same-y backgrounds aren’t professional and make your game seem like a “fly by night” operation. This ALMOST turned me off from the game before giving it a shot because I couldn’t help but wonder “if they’re too lazy to change up the background on each card do they really have faith in their product? Is this a real project or a scam?” Varied backgrounds means you care enough about the details to get me to invest and not changing up CONSTANTLY is sending the wrong message on a subconscious level!

There’s a bunch I left out, but that’s only because if I told you EVERYTHING I think you wouldn’t try it or yourself. Go ahead, sign up and give it a shot. The game is seriously starved for a strong player base, and if you like it then you could pass word to another friend and get things rolling. The place is small, but I have yet to run into any douchebags.

P.S. The lower in rating you are the more Shards you get. You’ll get a lot more Shards in the lower ranks, so don’t get discouraged if you keep losing. That will pay for itself with access to more power.

downWorld: Puzzle Battles Meets MMO

No, that title was not a typo I was too lazy to correct, that’s how it really is. A little tucked away game in the corners of the world wide web my associate Aron bought to my attention so I thought why not give it a spin.

downWorld is an MMOPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Puzzle Game henceforth) merging together puzzle games and RPG elements. Before I go further I must stress that this game is currently in beta, but with what I have ran into so far I am compelled to write a review. Well, let’s get started.

Gameplay: Like I said it’s a Puzzle game with RPG elements. You can equip different gear to increase the damage you deal and reduce the damage you take from each color bubble. The gear and levels will also increase your HP. If you have played any puzzle games before of this caliber then there is nothing I can say about the basics (and in the time you spent reading this if you didn’t know how to play this kind of puzzle game you could have learned how to). The things to know is that the white crystals generate Flow (turns out this Flow is used in another game they run called ourWorld which predates this game). Think of Flow as Mana. Also, these bubbles do no damage, so you either get Flow or inflect pain. Flow’s used to preform special moves…yes this game has special moves which run the gambit from damage to protection. If you want to use them, just click on their symbols.

The black box pieces will strike out an entire column. The damage you deal with those depends on how many and what kind of bubbles you popped (think multi-elemental damage). If you manage to eliminate four or more of the same color bubble (connected to one another in a straight line) you get an extra turn (this counts those black boxes and Flow crystals).

Also, there is a multiplayer. You and some people can gang up on a creature, but beware of drop in’s. If you’re in the middle of a puzzle and have an opponent on the ropes all someone has to do is run into the monster too and its HP goes up. There is a stealth mode to prevent this from happening BUT I shouldn’t have to do this. Get on fixing it before the full launch, please!

Also, the enemies when they lose (unless they remove this once the Beta ends) explode into a bloody mess. I didn’t know puzzles could make you burst. When you lose, you become a skeleton. Lame.

Artwork: Usually, I don’t go near this segment, but since the art styles of ourWorld and downWorld were rather…unique I feel I have to touch on it. It’s horrible. Aron and I couldn’t bare to look at the games characters any longer than we had to. I was hoping that what I saw was just a place holder until the Beta ended…looking at ourWorld, I was sadly let down. To ourWorld’s credit the animation is more fluent than in downWorld…but this is not my chief complaint. The thing that bothered me the most was…

The In-Game Advertising: This…this would be the thing that made me want to eat the souls of the people who made this game. Each time you move to a new location you have to sit through this video promoting something…EVERY TIME YOU CHANGE LOCATIONS! They do this to try to encourage you to pay for Elite status where you get all kinds of perks (I wouldn’t know what they are or if they’re worth it, no money to see).

I know they need to make money but the way they “ask me” to give money for a month or three of no ads feels less like asking and more like bulling me into making the purchase. Imagine in real life going from point A to point B and between each point you’re slammed with an advertisement which you were FORCED to see through to the end, Could you imagine if you REALLY need to use the bathroom but this douche bag refuses to move till you hear his nonsense that you have no interest in? Me neither. They need to make the ads less intrusive. What’s wrong with having the ads appear every three map moves?

Judgment: I liked the idea of a combat puzzle game, but the horrible graphics and even more horrible ads getting in the way they pretty much guaranteed that I will not recommend this game to ANYONE! Who knows, they might shape up. I plan to post this in their forums and watch the fireworks. I feel like I gave this game far more attention than it deserved. As always I encourage you to try the game for yourself if you desire. If you enjoy it, that’s fine, good for you.

And now, for the obligatory YouTube video..