Recent reviews by BestMango

Best EDF by far, many more unique enemies, far more variety of weapons, so so many good quality of life changes for every class like additional slots for support gear for air raider, grenades for ranger etc meaning you don't have to give up a weapon slot to actually help your team, the story is the most ambitious yet with a crazy plot twist about 11 missions in, yet to find a single trash throwaway weapon which was common in previous EDF games, people complaining about the epic games sign in used for cross play are actual clowns, its 1 button if you already have epic games store on your PC, or two buttons if you don't, and it still uses steam overlay, I hate how dense mob mentality can be. This game is a gem and the best EDF by far and it does not deserve a negative rating for not being steam exclusive.

When I purchased this game I expected it to be just a fun little one off indie game that id enjoy for a few hours but the game is incredibly addicting though and fun, the build, level and enemy verity is insane which makes this gem highly replayable.
I adore games with simple graphics when done right (CDDA is one of my favourite games of all time) and the sprite work is done well enough that I can usually tell what im looking at first glance, the effects and sounds though simple give the feeling of such impact, the gameplay loop of freely being able to build your wizards spellsets and passives and choosing which portal to progress through is the perfect mix of strategy and characters builds mixed with the healthy kind of RNG in levels and items and the depth of the enemies is actually really neat, they are more then just sprite swaps they are almost all unique with different attacks, abilities, resistances, lore and underestimating them can end your run, such as, running into a level full of ghosts when your damage is all physical and ghosts have 100% immunity to physical damage, meaning you have to pay attention to what portal you choose to go through. Honestly when you start the game you might be overwhelmed by the amount of choices in spells and passives, but pick a build archetype like say firemage and build it out and you'll be experienced enough to start mixing spells with a few runs.

I can actually only think of one gripe which is easily fixable, there's summons in the game, random summons and summons that can summon more summons which is fun and all but it makes it real hard to tell who tf is a friendly and who is an enemy without hovering each individual in the room, the simple fix id recommend is some sort of tiny UI element over friendly sprites to know at first glance.

Games a gem, in addition its early access done right because the game as it stands could easily be a finished game with a ton of content but the dev wants to add three times the content to an already really fun game, straight 8/10 could be 10/10 by the end of EA.

This DLC is actually great, the new lords are fun to play, the new content they added for free into the game is very welcome and was highly requested, people who are complaining about the price confuse me since the pricing has basically always been like this and if you don't want it then don't buy it and you still get all the free stuff added into this patch. Mob mentality really going strong in these negative reviews.

This game is fantastic, and ill address some criticism and blatent lies near the end, I love competitive and stratergy games and this game scratches both itches and is the most unique and satisfying card game ive ever played, and ive tried many different card games and none of them have held or interest me like this one.

The best info I can give you is the game isn't as complicated as it may seem, the mechanics are very intuitive and so is the deck building, it has a very good tutorial which can be skipped, I bring this point up because I remember when I first saw artifact I thought it would be horribly complicated and take a long time to learn but I honestly got the grips with it after my very first game.

Artifact also rewards creativity better than any other card game ive played, possibly a meta will come out for the "best decks" but ive yet to see those op cards that everyone will have in their decks, thats because with the combinations of 4 colours (which are the 4 different play styles) which can each be combined in any way possible, with the combination of 5 different heroes and 3 boards, decks can vary massively and all be competitive. There are preferred cards such as Axe always being sold high, but having an Axe in your deck doesn't mean victory or id argue even increase your chances since Axe himself has his weaknesses. There is so much more depth to the game, I haven't even gone into the details on items and equipping them to your hero, but if I can say this game has huge depth but is also intuitive enough to learn at least the basics after one game, that must be some pretty genious game design.

Now to address the criticisms and some lies in the reviews
- The game isnt Pay to win, the cards you buy are used in casual decks against friends and strangers, friends can borrow each others cards and (eventually) trade them, to anyone who has never played card games as a hobby this may seem weird, but believe it or not artifact is the cheapest card game to be released. PC gamer recently released a good article on it if you need more information but artifact is not just the cheapest digital card game but also the cheapest compared to real card games.
- You have to waste 15 dollars on 1 card, No most cards are below 30 cents in price, the few exceptions are the insanely popular cards such as Axe and Drow ranger being fan favourites, you can also sell your own cards to aquire others, trade commons for tickets to earn more decks.
- You can only play draft mode if you buy tickets, No there are casual versions of every single mode, you only spend tickets if you want to be in the draw for rewards.
- There is no ranked, This is actually true, but valve released this information a long time ago that there would be no rank ladder and only competitive tournaments, and they also added in community tournaments in game that can be hosted with over 100 people so thats where you find the competitive scene, after playing in 2 tournaments, they are an absolute blast.

A lot of the comments make me think of players who are possibly too young to remember the days of having to buy physical cards, the process of opening a card pack getting your random cards + a guarantee of a rare one, sellling and trading the cards away for others that you actually wanted, this is an experience that valve set out to replicate from the beginning, and as stated before artifact is the cheapest card game whether or not you choose to believe people have grinded game time for cards on hearthstone when the fact of the matter is you HAVE to buy all of hearthstones expansions to be competitive, and by speaking as someone who has played MtG, hearthstone, gwent, even pokemon and yugioh back when I was young, this is the most fulfilling card game to me, and at 32 hours into the game ive yet to spend a single dollar and I have multiple decks with huge variations so thats what I can speak from personal experience.

So do yourself a favour and research the game yourself, keep in mind its easier than it looks, and take everyones compliments and complaints with a pinch of salt, because card game communities always feud and kids always complain about money, but if you like stratergy or card games I highly recommend to at least give it a look or you might miss out on this gem.