Recent reviews by Talaria

I don't need to advertise how many hours I have played this game, because this review will speak for itself.

Gwent is a Distinctive CCG.

The goal in Gwent is not to bring your opponent's health to 0, but to have more points on the board at the end of the round. There are 3 rounds, and you win a match by winning 2 out of 3 rounds.

You play 1 card each turn and a round ends when both players decide to not play another card (a mechanic called passing the turn).

Card have no mana cost (there is no mana, the cards are your only resource) so you can play any card from your hand during your turn, at any time. Furthermore, each player draws the same number of cards each round and they carry over into the next rounds.

The result is a battle of resource management, where the player who applies his resources better is favored to win the match.

One disadvantage to this system is that it creates a very asymmetric situation between who goes first (blue coin) and who goes second (red coin). The player who goes first is always one card down in the first round, so that when he wants to pass he either passes with a point advantage, or the player who goes second takes the round and ends up 1 round up while being no cards down - meaning he can give up next round and force the blue player to play a card to take the round, thus reaching the final round with 1 less card which is a massive disadvantage.

The way the developers addressed this problem was as follows:

1) The blue player starts with a 5 point advantage.

2) You can only have 10 cards in hand (so when you draw 3 cards in round 2 and 3 any extra cards would be discarded, thus nullifying the card advantage in the case where both players have more than 6 cards in hand at the end of round 2).

While 1) and 2) mitigated this issue, it changed the game drastically.

This game is free so there is no harm in trying it, but let me give you a warning before you invest your valuable time into this game.

The Game Fails to Take Advantage of its Unique Mechanics.

Originally the game was filled with different archetypes with different playstyles. You had cards that stayed on the board over successive rounds and Skellige revolved a lot around losing round 1 while being 1 card up and forcing the opponent to play a card in round 2. You had cards that gave points to your opponent and drew you a card which was a welcome way to gain a different kind of advantage (other than points). Every gold card had immunity and some strategies revolved around this immunity (for example Borkh). You had a gold card that returned to your hand if you lost the round. You had weather decks and decks with weather synergy (whereas they were never playable* after release). These things allowed for very diverse gameplay and each match felt unique and interesting.

*By playable I understand a card that is viable to play against meta decks.

All of this is gone.

Under the pretense that they were balancing the game the entire gameplay has been reduced to simple arithmetics. The mechanics that made the game unique and interesting were removed from the game one after another. While there are still cards that do some of these things, they are not playable. You put points on the board, you take points from your opponent, you can gain points over time and there are synergies between the cards, but after you spend some time with this game you will feel like no matter which deck you choose to play, it is largely the same experience.

The handlimit introduced with the release was another thing that deeply hurt the game but it is too complex to explain in a review and only a handful of people that don't need to read this review would understand it.

The development of this game went through many different project leaders and it shows. If you're looking into this game expecting a better, refined version of the Witcher 3 Gwent - which is essentially what the open beta was - you should save yourself the disappointment.

The Developers Have an Unhealthy Approach to Balance.

1) You can't expect a card to stay the same.
Cards are changed almost on whim. I remember thinking that maybe a certain Monster card would be viable in the future and looked forward to making a deck with it, only to find out 2 months later that it had been completely changed. This didn't happen only once, but several times and it really hurt my trust in the developers.

2) You can't expect the rules to stay the same.
Not only the cards, but they introduce new rules even after the game has been released. For example, in order to nerf an archetype that didn't play the way they intended the game to be played (unitless deck), they introduced the rule that each deck must have at least 13 units. This was introduced months after the game release.

3) Due to 1) and 2), you can't fall in love with an archetype and expect to be able to play it even a few months later.

Gwent Has Two Things Going for It.

The business model is the most generous I have seen in a card game and the card art is amazing.

TLDR: The game had potential with its unique mechanics but most of what made it interesting was removed from the game and they have kept this aggressive approach to balance even after the game was released so you can't expect to enjoy one archetype for more than a couple of months (at best).

A game to remember.

I have an integrated graphic card and a dedicated one and this game simply wont run on my dedicated card. I created a profile on my radeon settings but when I launch the game only the integrated card shows any activity. Cool stuff.

Edit: I managed to fix this using a setting in windows. I searched for "graphic settings" and looked up the POE exe. Then I edited the preferences to use the setting which uses my dedicated GPU.

The game is great so far. The art is beautiful and there is a lot of content. The gameplay is simple but the mechanics behind it are complex and will give you a lot to think about and work on.

Is Artifact for you?

READ THE UPDATED SECTION AT THE BOTTOM

First of all ask yourself the question: do you prefer solvable card games despite their repetitiveness, being in control of every outcome, having a gameplan that you can see through to the end in every match? If so Artifact is not for you.

Artifact is a game that is true to the nature of card games: it does not shy away from randomness. It is essentially glorified gambling (as is any such card game), but at the same time it is as far from gambling as a traditional card game can possibly be, boasting a very high skill ceiling and the most impactful gameplay choices that you will find in the genre. This is due to the innovative and completely original gameplay that it has to offer with 3 boards, cards that can only be played if you have a hero of the corresponding color and initiative (first say) which is a mechanic that forces you to make a choice every turn in which you can play a card. Yes it has more random elements than other card games, but the most impactful one is still card draw. If you're not convinced of this fact yet, the highest win rate in prized constructed is ~78% for a large sample size.

One of the things where Artifact differs greatly from traditional card games is the combat system. You don't get to decide which card battles which unless you have a card that lets you do so. This isn't as bad as it sounds because at high level combat is largely superfluous: you feel like you're doing something at first but as you gain experience it becomes highly mechanical and only a few combat choices actually feel like real choices. The trade off here is increased variance and focus on choices that affect the game at a deeper level than value trading.

Having said that, if you do enjoy unsolvable card games where variance plays an important role, you still need to ask yourself just how much effort you want to invest into learning the game and playing it.

Artifact can be counter-intuitive and demanding. You can't simply play out your cards and expect to win. There are important choices to be made every round: bad hero deployment and the loss of initiative can easily cost you the game. If you are looking for a card game where you can chill and expect your deck to carry you this is not the game for you. There are a lot of card games out there where netdecking and auto-piloting can get you most of the way to a win, but thats not Artifact. Expect fighting for your win, breathtakingly close games and lethal puzzles to be much more frequent than in other card games.

An example of counter-intuitive gameplay is letting a hero die so that you have it spawning on the right turn or deciding to not kill an opponent's hero if you don't want it to be alive at a certain turn.

Update: Valve announced recently that they are reworking a lot of stuff in this game, it will take a long time and therefore I don't recommend the game right now. Card games depend a lot on staying fresh so having no expansions released anytime soon makes Artifact an objectively bad card game. Depending on how they do it I may recommend it after they release the next update.

As far as gameplay goes Artifact is quite possibly the best card game I have played to date (and I have draft tournaments in mind when I say this), but even then I can see that there is room for improvement. I believe they need to reduce the layers of variance so that the players have a more satisfying experience, but it doesn't stop me from enjoying the game. I do enjoy tournaments more because the decklists are displayed (one less layer), so perhaps I would enjoy the game more still if they, say, reworked the shop to be less random.

Other than that, it is lacking features and play modes to sustain longterm interest.

6/10

beautifully designed, highly enjoyable puzzles! the sound, the graphics and the puzzles itself are very harmonious and complement each other to a very high degree to give you a sense of peace and liberation and thus enrich but also facilitate your experience. highly recommended.