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Griftlands - Klei's sci-fi deck-building roguelite

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
https://www.pcgamer.com/we-lost-an-open-world-griftlands-and-gained-a-card-game/

We lost an open-world Griftlands and gained a card game
The trade was worth it.

My first mistake is eating the pickled talons. My second mistake is getting drunk. Griftlands is the kind of RPG where every action has consequences. But it's also a card game, so the consequence of being drunk is having a 'slurred speech' card in my negotiation deck and a 'tipsy' card in my battle deck.

Let's back up a little. Griftlands is the new game from Klei, of Invisible Inc. and Don't Starve fame. When it was first shown during the PC Gaming Show in 2017it looked like a neat sci-fi RPG with a comic book art style and some turn-based, Final Fantasy combat. It was going to have an open world, factions, an economy, and procedural generation.

Not long after that Klei announced they'd jumped the gun on Griftlands, and were going to retool it before they showed it again. At this year's PC Gaming Show they brought out a Griftlands with the same aesthetic, only now it was a narrative RPG where fights and speech checks were replaced by a card game. It basically swaps the invisible dice rolls of attacks and manipulation for a hand of Slay the Spire.

The bar where nobody cares you're a slug
At a dive bar called the Grog n' Dog a friendly one-eyed slug person offers a range of jobs for bounty hunters like myself. On the city map I trundle over toward one that seems easy, a package pickup, but an encounter stops me before I get there. Another of the city's friendly slugfolk, named Rug, has a proposition. He's about to open a restaurant, and is testing his recipes on strangers.

Foolishly I choose a pickled talon from his menu and it does not agree with me. Then I've got two choices. Berate Rug, which will make me feel better but will make him like me less, or promise not to tell anyone his food made me sick, which increases his respect for me but leaves me with an ulcer—a two-point card that goes into my negotiation deck. Like a curse in Slay the Spire (or Dominion, the tabletop game that popularized deckbuilding as a format) this ulcer will hang around in the deck wasting space and reducing my odds of drawing something useful.

I take the ulcer because it's nice to make friends, but regret it almost immediately. The patron for the package job is a shifty bandit, and when I try to haggle with her it's time for a negotiation.

We appear opposite each other surrounded by circles that represent our arguments. In the outer circle there's a number for resolve—conversational hit points—and the bandit also has targets representing different amounts of money she'll add to my payment, each with their own resolve total. I've got a handful of cards like 'fast talk' and 'threaten' that whittle away the resolve of whatever I play them on, and deflections that reduce the severity of the wordplay she flings back. And of course, in my first hand of five cards there's that ulcer wasting a spot.

I start by targeting those piles of cash, but by the time I've added 19 bucks to my payment I've also lost 10 resolve, and realized that this resolve total will carry over to the next negotiation. Meanwhile, each pile of cash I win adds to the bandit's Impatience stat, which buffs her damage. Deciding it's not worth haggling for more, I target her resolve directly to win the argument rather than drag it out.

Now I'm worried about going into the next negotiation underprepared, but I did see on the map that the Grog n' Dog offers drinks to regain resolve. I duck back to the bar, share a few with a dog-headed smuggler lady (another NPC who I'm informed now likes me), and gain back all that resolve. Only now I'm low on cash, and slightly drunk.

The package I've been sent to pick up is at another bar, and it quickly becomes apparent why the bandit needed to send me. She's been barred by the dogman bartender, Wrux, for not paying her bill. Before I pick up the package I'll need to pay him off. This would be a negotiation challenge, but it's locked off. I spent too much money on booze to be able to cover her tab, and the only option left is to threaten the bartender with violence.

First, I back out of the conversation and look around the bar. Standing upstairs, lounging, is my mate Rug the slug. The chef who sold me a dodgy pickled foot is willing to sign on as a companion for a very low rate, which is all I can afford, and will fight at my side. There's also a guard by the bar who sides with Wrux the dogman, though if I had more money I could bribe him away to further improve the odds.

Combat plays out even more like Slay the Spire than negotiation did. I can see exactly how much damage is coming in and play defensive cards to mitigate it, but have to balance that with playing my own attack cards. The difference is I've got an ally, and while I don't control Rug he blasts away every turn before the enemies can act.

Wrux's guard has an ability that increases his damage potential so it would be sensible to target him, but Mr. Sensible and I parted ways a while back. Still, the fight goes surprisingly well. That 'tipsy' card isn't really an impediment—there's always something else to play instead. Our foes' hit points drop below the panic line that makes them surrender, and it's over.

Except, on the final turn, two 0-cost cards appear in my hand labeled 'execute'. I can finish off these combatants or spare them. I choose to spare them, and Wrux hands over the package, though he isn't happy about it. I wonder what the consequence for killing him would be? His children swearing revenge? Cops on my tail?

That done, I return the package to the bandit and collect my pay. She's impressed, and now there's a third NPC who likes me more than they used to. I've made one enemy and three friends. The guard seems neutral—maybe he's too professional to have feelings. I still have an ulcer but I feel like I've come out ahead. That sense of decisions having consequences is one of the things that makes a good RPG, and Griftlands has it.

Griftlands is in alpha right now. You can play about 80% of the bounty hunter's campaign, and there are two other characters with their own campaigns planned. This alpha version is on the Epic Games Store, but once it goes into Early Access next June it'll be on Steam as well. Everyone who buys the Epic version will get a Steam key when that happens.

My first reaction to seeing what Griftlands had become was to be a little disappointed. An open-world RPG with its own economy and faction system lost, replaced by another deckbuilder. But I've played enough games that spread themselves thin just so they could justify putting the words "open world" in the description, or that had procedural elements but repeated them so often the new combinations were clearly Frankensteined out of the old.

I can't mourn the Griftlands we didn't get because I trust the people who made Don't Starve—one of about three survival games that don't suck—to know when a game is enjoyable and when it is not. The Griftlands we got is more like Card Hunter without the free-to-play cruft. It's not a revolution but it is a game that will help keep the urge to start playing Hearthstone on the regular at bay, like the Lord's prayer keeps away demons and sinful thoughts.
 

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I has a sad Klei abandoned the RPG but I am hopeful it will turn out a fun game anyway. Interesting comparison to the fairly little known Card Hunter, which I have been recommending every now and then as a neat little tactical combat/card builder game with a charming pnp style.
 

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2019/07/16/griftlands-early-access-review/

Premature Evaluation: Griftlands

90


Premature Evaluation is the weekly column in which Steve Hogarty explores the wilds of early access. This week Steve is still MIA, so Brendan is playing Griftlands, a roguelike card game mostly about arguing.

You can buy drinks for reprobates in Griftlands. The mingling crimefolk of this sci-fi card game hang out in bars and harbours, lounging on static screens hoping to sell you stuff, or waiting for a fight to break out so they can jump in for either side. There are hairy bouncers, froglike bartenders, and scar-faced bandits. Cultists, bent cops, and bounty hunters of all kinds. This is basically a card game based on the pondlife of Mos Eisley cantina, and as a deck-building roguelike of Slay The Spire flavour, it’s too short-lived to confidently recommend just yet. But it has enough character that I’ll happily pull up a stool and sip my spacejuice as developers Klei finish things off. And while I’m at it – bartender – drinks for all my new friends!

Maybe the direct comparison to the current lord of card games isn’t fair. Griftlands isn’t as brush-strokey as Slay The Spire, for one thing. It’s got a cartoon look somewhere between Samurai Jack and Titan A.E. And there are moments of story embedded among the card-fights. As a former derrick worker called Sal, you’re out to kill Kashio, a crime lord who ruined your life. But Kashio is likewise out for your blood, among other factions keen to mess everything up. Most of this is established in bits of dialogue. You’ll sometimes see underlined words and if you hover over them you’ll get a handy explanation of the lore jargon. I think I last saw this in Pyre, and it’s a good trick for introducing the nonsense words of videogameland.



It isn’t quite as welcoming when it comes to explaining the card game parts. There are really two card games going on here. Quests typically go one of two ways – you end up fighting or you end up negotiating. They’re both still framed as card-based conflicts, it’s just that there’s a card game for violent battles and a slightly different card game for chatty battles in which nobody will come out dead. The quick and dirty tutorials leave you to figure out the finer points of number-smashing and health-restoring, especially when it comes to the negotiation game.

These talkfights are hard to understand at first. Basically, you need to bash a big number called your opponent’s “resolve” until it reaches zero. But both you and the other debater will play cards to slot “arguments” into orbit around that central health number. These “arguments” are power-ups or damage-dealers that do things every turn (if you play Slay the Spire, they kind of act like the Defect’s orbs).



Simply speaking, it’s a drain-their-health-before-they-drain-yours deal. You eventually get a feel for it, but the presentation makes it seem over-complicated. And it’s full of card-jargon that tests even the vocabulary of a seasoned card-flinger. There’s “influence” and “dominance” and “composure”, you “expend” cards or “improvise” them or “replenish” them. Even with the hover-over explanations offered for each term, it can get confusing. For example, some cards say “play this to increase your influence by two” but exactly which digit increases amid the numbers peppered on the screen, is not offered.

I understood the negotiation shouting matches eventually, but there were irksome moments, like when a lot of things happen during the enemy’s turn. They spit out their actions in such a way it’s sometimes hard to tell what they’ve done. Digits bounce and splash around the circular argument track, the enemy does a bunch of things in quick succession, and you’re suddenly 12 points less in health and clueless. This will probably be updated with a ticker tape history of cards and actions, the kind a lot of card games have. But for now the more complex negotiation battles feel a bit disorganised.


The combat cardfighting is more straightforward, but mostly by virtue of being similar in structure to Slay The Spire. There are straightforward attacks. Defence cards to weather incoming hits. Status effects like “bleed” and “stun”. Anyone who has sliced enough throats with the Silent will be able to get into the flow of this cardicuffs a bit easier. It’s a competent take on the (will he say it) Spirelike (oh no he did).

There are some differences. In a fight, you can get your victim down to their last sliver of health and then accept a surrender (which I’m guessing means not over-shooting your late attacks, and accidentally murdering them). Or you can execute them with a final special cardblow. But this may have consequences. I once killed a big metal-armed wookie-looking fella early in the game, and a new card was added permanently to my deck – the “killer” card. From now on, when I’m negotiating with somebody, and the “killer” card comes up in my hand, all my chat-attacks will be extra intimidating. I’ve basically got the ability to remind shopkeepers I’m a stone-cold monster.



There are a bunch of cards that work in thematic ways like this. When I said you can buy drinks for your pals, I didn’t mean indulging in some round-buying flavour text. You click on the people standing around in a bar and buy them spacegrog, and this will you get some “resolve” back (your chatting health). But you also get the “tipsy” and “slurred words” cards, which will be added to your decks, takin’ up schpace wiv ‘em, thosh dam shtupid cardsh. If you eat a big dinner in the pub, you get health back, but also a “bloated” card that does the same but costs more effort to destroy in the middle of a fight. You basically spend two points of energy to fart.

But drinks are good. They also make a person like you., and if they like you enough you’ll get a permanent boon (and if they hate you, a penalty). I had a slug of star gin with Yunni the pencil-pushing bureaucrat, who now loves me, and grants me 4 extra health points. Sadly, that is offset by a woman called Alo, who hates me for killing some hairy loser earlier who she says was her “friend” or whatever. Earning Alo’s hatred deducts 4 points off my max health. So, in terms of friends and nemeses, I’m breaking even. Let’s get another round.



This network of friends and enemies is the most interesting part of the game so far. Having pals matters in other ways. I was once attacked in my crappy bedroom by a red-clad assassin called Zyn, but I let him live after slicing his torso up a bit. For some reason, this endeared me to him, even as he fled. The next day, I went to a bar to have an argument with a bandit. Just another job. But I noticed my would-be assassin, Zyn, standing on the balcony overlooking the tavern. He was just there to drink. When the argument began between my target and I, the assassin popped out from one side and “flustered” the bandit by shouting something vaguely supportive my way. This was a neat little piece of twine stretching from one part of my card-tale to another. Later, I’d be on my way to hire a goon for another, more violent job, when Zyn would approach me again and ask to come along. He’s a good lad, that bloke who tried to murder me.

I like this sense of consequence, and the mingling with degenerates. At the end of an in-game day, you get to rest up and see who likes you and who wants to shiv you in an alley. The next day you might be asked to intercept a hostage transport, only to find one of the guards you’ve been hired to ambush is your old pal Yunni. But even then you might be able to leverage your friendship and convince her to hand the prisoner over.



I expected Griftlands to be something else, based on early trailers and hints. To go some other route with its tactical battles. And part of me is sorry to see that Klei did not do something un-cardlike for their battling. On one hand, boiling all negotiation down to a series of tit-for-tat card flopping feels like it takes away some potential for a real story to emerge from this interesting land of cyber-eyed frogfolk and slathering bonejackals (the animation is cool enough for me to want a 20-minute per episode TV show based in this world). But on the other hand, it’s great to see the consequences of my out-of-battle decisions leaking into street arguments and bar fights, via bloaty cards and supportive hecklers.



I’m not sure how it stands up to playing over and over right now. I’ve played through twice – once murdered, once victorious. When you get snuffed out you have to start again but you’ll unlock new cards for the next run. You do get a chance to start again from the morning you died, but only once. Or you could carry something over to the next run, like a higher max health, or a random card. Right now there’s only a few days. New playable characters are planned, and even Sal the bounty hunter doesn’t have a finale yet (they say what’s here is 80% of her campgaign). But hers is a story I’ll happily continue when it’s ready. For now, pull up a seat, Yunni. Settle in, Zyn. Another round on me.
 
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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/...trouble-with-everything-being-a-card-game-now

Griftlands, and the trouble with everything being a card game now

It was a surprise, on booting up Griftlands - the latest from Don't Starve developer Klei Entertainment, now available in a PC early access version from the Epic store - to discover that it was a card battler. (Though I suppose you shouldn't be surprised that any game is a card battler in 2019.) From early trailers I had expected something closer to a tactical role-playing game exploring this ramshackle, piratical offworld of bounty hunters, fish people and black markets. What I found was a beautifully illustrated tale of bitter rivalries, tough friendships and hard calls - like a scruffy science-fantasy Banner Saga - blended with a randomised deck-building roguelite, clearly inspired by the excellent Slay the Spire.

Not that Klei doesn't have form for taking inspiration. The genre-hopping Vancouver studio knows not only how to skip up onto a bandwagon with style, but how to bring something of value aboard with it. Its releases have followed many an indie trend: stealth in Mark of the Ninja, crafting and survival in Don't Starve, team tactics in Invisible, Inc., colony simulation in Oxygen Not Included. But they have all distinguished themselves by bringing original ideas and cleanly designed, hard-edged systems to the mix. These games have real bite. Invisible, Inc., in particular, is a near masterpiece.

Griftlands, while a sharp piece of work even at this early stage, is different. It feels like the card system has been parachuted onto the game rather than laying the foundations of it.

The alpha presents you with one (not quite finished) storyline of an eventual three to play. This is the tale of Sal, an impetuous bounty hunter out for revenge against the crime boss who sold her into indentured toil on the oil platforms. Rather like an Invisible, Inc. campaign, the story is dictated partly by script and partly by chance, with your picks from the semi-randomised missions on offer determining the direction of your build as well as the shape of the plot, and offering chances to take on extra risk for extra reward. Plus there's permadeath, so if Sal buys it, you need to start again. It feels too crafted, meandering and long-form to be called a true roguelike, but it does have a lot in common with those games.

The most interesting thing about Griftlands is its web of personal relationships. All the colourful characters can like, dislike, love or hate you, influenced by your actions in the story and whether you make time to just buy them a drink. Love and hate come with buffs and debuffs, and characters' attitudes to you might change the flow of the story, too.

This theme is reinforced by the bifurcation of the card gameplay into two strands: battle and negotiation. Battle plays out very similarly to Slay the Spire, which is to say like a mashup of Magic the Gathering and an early Final Fantasy. You can see your opponent's intention for the next turn, so can make moves to pre-empt it or defend against it; the fun comes from finding synergy between cards to build combos, though you can only do this in a single turn and it might be a while before your deck accommodates it. You are always at the mercy of the draw. If you reduce your opponent's health below a certain point you can accept their surrender, or choose to execute them, which can have interesting consequences down the line. As in Invisible, Inc., killing is a serious business in this game.

jpg

Battle will be instantly familiar to Slay the Spire players.

Negotiation is a rather convoluted attempt to apply the same card system to the art of conversation, used to haggle over bounties, talk your way out of situations, or talk others into them. You and your opponent have a health equivalent known as resolve, which translates into a 'core argument' which must be attacked and reduced to zero for you to prevail. You can also set up satellite 'arguments', which have their own mini health pools, apply various buffs and effects, and can be attacked separately. There are different schools of negotiation, from diplomatic to aggressive, that play into this. It is conceptually a bit weird and hard to grasp at first - but boiled down to the basics, it's like any other card battle.

The problem is the tenuous link between the well-worn, refined mechanics of the numbers game and what is actually supposed to be happening. It is hard to get excited about 'fast talk', 'deflection', 'instinct' or 'threaten' cards when you have to do a mental leap to translate them into 'attack', 'buff defence', 'draw new cards' and so on. The problem isn't as apparent in battle, but it's still there - the card concepts are for the most part very dry. Because Griftlands, I strongly suspect, didn't start out as a card game, there's a disconnect between systems and ideas, a forced awkwardness that's like someone speaking a language they've only just learned. It's a far cry from the exquisite dance of concept and execution in Invisible, Inc., a beautiful machine for creating cyberpunk spy adventures. It's a particular shame when Grifltands' art and characters are so evocative.

This isn't just Klei's problem, mind. Even Slay the Spire, as great as it is, suffers from a lack of flavour in its cards - not how they work, but their titles, their artwork, the ideas behind them. It is easy to see why Magic's slow but implacable journey towards cool and the phenomenon that was Blizzard's Hearthstone have excited a generation of developers about the possibilities of card game design. But it turns out that crafting well-balanced decks full of synergies and tactical options is one thing, but designing exciting cards is quite another.

jpg

Negotiation takes some getting used to.

What these games miss - as they try to surgically separate the fascinating tactical mechanics of collectible card games from all that grubby business of opening blind packs - is that a big part of the appeal is in the collecting, which is to say that a big part of the appeal is in the cards themselves. For a card game to sing, the cards need to express thrilling ideas and to be covetable objects; you need to feel excited to see a favourite turn up in your hand. In Magic and Hearthstone, the cards are characters, and they overflow with personality in their florid illustrations and witty text, in the match between function and concept that excites the imagination. Small surprise that Blizzard, the undisputed champion of high-impact skill design, should get this right, or that others should find it so hard to match it.

Griftlands is an unusual, promising game from a supremely talented team, and there's already much to enjoy in it. Its card-game systems serve it dependably, even if they don't take flight on their own. But it's a reminder that, in the greatest card games, the deck isn't there for you to build your game world on. The game world should be built into the deck.
 
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Little torn on picking this up. Probably will just because it's so cheap and Klei hasn't made a bad game yet, but on the other hand I watched a decent chunk of gameplay before it was available on Steam and it looks kind of plodding and not as interesting as Slay the Spire or even Monster Train. The concept is cool, deckbuilder with a campaign and story and more stuff padded around the cards, but I dunno. Still, it's Klei.
 

Damned Registrations

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I've been playing it for a while, it's certainly better than that monster train crap everyone is fawning over. But this wasn't on my radar before it was a card game so I wasn't butthurt before even playing it.
 
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Buddy bought me a copy so I've played a little. Thus far feeling pretty positive, down side is the campaign and events look to most likely be locked-in and the same every run. The majority, at least. Rewards may differ and some side-stuff may differ but that's a shame regardless. Thus far the feeling's fairly good though, pretty easy but I'm also on the easiest difficulty since they've got a ripped off ascension system and it's not unlocked for me yet. Probably won't go too nuts playing it in early access and will wait for release to go balls-deep because I burned myself with Don't Starve and Invisible Inc by going too hard too early when the release version was significantly better, but I'll dink around some more.
 
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First run complete, got a win. A fairly easy win, too. Could stand to have more difficulty even before you unlock higher difficulties, but eh. The structure of the story seems to be more CYOA than completely linear, quests and encounters can differ based on your choices even though making the same choices will give you nearly identical quests. They are still expanding that but it's a notable difference from StS. Speaking of StS, the cards aren't as interesting. Deck archetypes aren't very outlandish for Sal (Also with zero card unlocks. Once I won my campaign I unlocked a stack of additional cards so I don't doubt that'll help spice things up) or that special to pilot. While you would unlock cards and relics in StS for each character, it was a handful of cards. Maybe around 8. In Griftlands, it looks like there are 60 (!) cards to unlock for each character, so starting out your cards are really basic.

All that rambling about unlocking is the biggest knock against playing it currently. The way the game's set up you end up unlocking a significant portion of the game via repeated play, which isn't inherently awful in itself but if you want to dump a bunch of hours in during early access and then your progress gets wiped that'd fucking suck.

The sandbox campaign stuff is kind of a mixed bag. Right now it feels a little too barebones. It feels like they need to either tighten it up and make the sandbox/freeform stuff (Like relationships with NPCs) more mechanical and crunchy, or leave it mushy but expand on the flavorful events and stuff that happens based on it. The system currently is kind of a mix of the two, with some options to raise/lower reputations and take some nearly useless-sounding actions with the NPCs, as well as the NPCs getting occasional events with you. At the end of the campaign it felt like the reputation system amounted to a hill of beans, got ambushed a few times by a hostile, got a positive event or two from a friendly, and then you get some minor passive bonuses and penalties based on it.

The card leveling system is also underwhelming. Basic/starter cards get semi-randomized upgrades so it's sort of a crapshoot what your options will be (The ones that delete them from your deck are almost always good. Except for the defense cards because there looked to be fuck-all non-basic defense cards without unlocks), but rares/uncommons will have the same options every time. Leveling up cards is easy, a row of pips on the card shows you how many times it needs to be played before it'll level (After the combat) and then it remains leveled up for good. The upgraded cards are usually minor though. Another point of damage here, reduced mana cost there, etc. Useful but nothing that jumped out at me for some deck-changing upgrade. Just to compare it unfavorably to StS once again, StS card upgrades are harder to get and feel much more precious. There are mechanisms to stop you from just farming some poor slob in a fight for half an hour to level up your cards, too. A fatigue debuff eventually pops up and stops further XP gain.

Overall... It's no StS but I did have a good time. That first run took me around 5 hours, and that was including reading all the fluff and story as well as reading all the cards/cybernetics and chatting. Once you know what you're doing and you're moving at a decent clip I could see a Griftlands run taking an hour or two. The extreme focus on unlocking means I've got even more reason to wait until the game's finished just in case they wipe progress, but I am looking forward to playing more and I'm interested to see how the game behaves with more cards unlocked and on higher difficulties. Which are also, unfortunately, unlocked. Just like ascension in Slay the Spire, looks like it's a climbing scale of around 20.
 
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And a quick rambling post since I played and won a campaign with the second character!

Second character does get a completely unique campaign (New map, story, NPCs, events, etc etc etc) and a few new mechanics (Coin-flipping, charge-meter on his pistols) which is nice for variety. You can upgrade/swap his coin at various points during his story to change the mechanics of it a little, a hell of a lot of his cards are based on the coin/face of the coin/flipping the coin which is sorta neat, but it's unique to the negotiation deck. His pistols, obviously, are unique to the combat deck. It LOOKED like you could change your pistols (There was a separate screen for it, much like the coin) but it never came up during the campaign, so I assume it's something they're going to add later.

His campaign's a bit trickier to start than the first character. You don't start off as strong and it feels like there are more random negative events, but he also seemed to ramp up in power faster after leveling some cards and drafting some more. Also got a really kickass relic fairly early. As with the first character it feels like too much of his cool shit is hidden behind unlocks because you can see a few potential deck archetypes but the cards you have access to are so basic in the first run that you're just left making a goodshit deck. Goodshit decks are usually better/more reliable anyway, but it's less fun than shooting for the moon.

Got a slight better understanding of the boon/bane system too and was more willing to murder people. Complaints about the sandbox stuff held true in his campaign as well, though it went a little smoother now that I had a better understanding of it and was experimenting more. Still feels like it needs more work to make it more lively. I'm not really sure why it has a 97% rating on Steam at the moment honestly. I'm not some die-hard "PUNCH ME IN THE DICK, YEAH, YEAH!!!!!!!!!" card-grog but Slay the Spire and Card Quest still seem way ahead of Griftlands. The one distinguishing feature of Griftlands is the light RPG trappings around the card battles which is where it feels like they really need to focus. Again, the card battles very well might get more interesting once everything's unlocked, but the RPG shit is the one area where other deckbuilders aren't competing. Only other thing sort of like that is, I guess, Shandalar.
 

Pope Amole II

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but the RPG shit is the one area where other deckbuilders aren't competing. Only other thing sort of like that is, I guess, Shandalar.

Gordian Quest, released this spring. Kinda the same stuff as this but with blander plot and even worse cardgame execution.

I sorta liked Griftlands but, tbh, the card element has nothing to do with it. It's rather badly designed and it doesn't really improve the game in any way - it could've been using any other kind of roguelite/turn-based combat and would've fared quite the same. Story, writing and visuals are top-notch, though, so it was simply pleasant to play this as a more or less of an RPG experience. Did 3 runs - talky merc, talky spy and brawling, 30-ish killcount merc. The last one was especially easy but that's probably due to system being rather shallow - it's not that difficult at the start and gets even easier with practice.
 
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but the RPG shit is the one area where other deckbuilders aren't competing. Only other thing sort of like that is, I guess, Shandalar.

Gordian Quest, released this spring. Kinda the same stuff as this but with blander plot and even worse cardgame execution.

I sorta liked Griftlands but, tbh, the card element has nothing to do with it. It's rather badly designed and it doesn't really improve the game in any way - it could've been using any other kind of roguelite/turn-based combat and would've fared quite the same. Story, writing and visuals are top-notch, though, so it was simply pleasant to play this as a more or less of an RPG experience. Did 3 runs - talky merc, talky spy and brawling, 30-ish killcount merc. The last one was especially easy but that's probably due to system being rather shallow - it's not that difficult at the start and gets even easier with practice.
Just looked Gordian Quest up, even though you say it's got a blander story and worse gameplay I'll toss it on my wishlist for a potential deep sale just because I'd probably like to take a look at it eventually. And since it's early access too I guess there's the outside chance that it improves.

I do wonder about how difficult Griftlands gets after unlocking stuff though. Not only adding ascension levels (I forget what Griftlands calls it. Prestige? Sounds right) as the most direct route of increasing difficulty, but even once you have all the cards unlocked. Having another 60+ cards in the draft pool would likely add difficulty in itself just because it's harder to keep your deck consistent. And on a slightly related note, that brings to mind one of the weaknesses of Griftlands compared to Slay the Spire. In STS the acts and bosses have more distinct character and flavor and encounter design, so after enough play you can start valuing cards differently at different points in the game. Not wanting to go too heavily into card spam in case the final boss is time eater, keeping your eyes open for any AOE near the end of act 1 because act 2 has so many more group encounters, etc. After a couple Griftlands runs I basically didn't see any encounters/bosses that punished or were especially weak to any strategies. I think the merc faced a boss that punished card spam a little bit, and that was essentially it. Though again that's just comparing Griftlands and STS directly as card games where STS pretty easily wins.

100% agreed on it being pleasant to play though. Even as I bitch about the card upgrading not being as impactful or interesting as STS, when I'm playing Griftlands it has a really satisfying groove to it. Do a quest, do a few negotiations/combats, level up a few cards, get a reward, get a time-limited encounter, visit the shops, repeat 2-3 times until you face the day-end boss, start over again. The biggest downer is there's very little thought going on during that whole process. Also agreed that the card system doesn't factor into everything else much. One area where you kind of see it is in the "Kill reward" cards characters have. If you kill so-and-so you'll get THIS card! That has potential to be interesting (Player's greed being tickled to kill an NPC for a card that'd work well in his deck, with potential world-sandbox ramifications on the murder) but a lot of the cards in question are "Items" which burn up after 1-3 uses. So even for a good item card you're not eyeing a character and thinking about killing them just for the immediate gain. And even if you were, like I was bitching about earlier the reputation system's not got enough teeth to feel incredibly important anyway. In ascension 0 with no unlocks at least.
 

Damned Registrations

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There's a bunch of mutators you can apply to a run as well. I tried a couple runs (one by accident, forgot it was still on) with the 'everyone dislikes you' flag being set. WAY more difficult, suddenly lots of people will hate you and there's nothing you can do, everything costs more, negotiations are all a decent chunk harder, etc.
After a couple Griftlands runs I basically didn't see any encounters/bosses that punished or were especially weak to any strategies.
Mechanical enemies are immune to fire and bleed, which are both pretty viable strategies otherwise, and take double damage from piercing attacks, which are otherwise fairly crap. Enemy piercing attacks can really ruin a defensive strategy, AoE stuff will wreck you if you're relying on a squad of allies/pets, there's a bunch of stuff like that. There are strategies that are pretty much foolproof though, and negotiation seems a bit more shallow despite all the extra mechanics. I made a deck with the spy that was utterly broken, infinite combo on turn one 90% of the time, and you can get pretty crazy stuff going in melee too with the right cards.

What impresses me about it is the variety of novel ideas. Most of these games have a ton of stale cards that just do varying amounts of damage and seem afraid to ask the player to understand mechanics more complex than simple damage over time or damage buffs. Griftlands gets creative, cards that trigger from inside your deck when you meet a trigger condition but can't be played normally, lots of extra resource types that are entirely optional like combo and charge and overcharge and influence and rigged coin flips... it needs a lot more polish and more content for the campaigns, but you can see the foundations of a great game in there.

StS is overrated imo. I played it a lot while it was the entire genre, but after playing a bunch of variations on the theme it's lots it's charm. Too many things are just generically powerful, like shuriken/kunai or anything that gives lots of energy or card draw, so everything feels kinda samey. The special mechanics like poison or karma (does Ironclad even have... anything? Exhaust?) fall apart in harder runs and you're left relying on the same generic damage/defense/card spam strategy.
 
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StS is overrated imo. I played it a lot while it was the entire genre, but after playing a bunch of variations on the theme it's lots it's charm. Too many things are just generically powerful, like shuriken/kunai or anything that gives lots of energy or card draw, so everything feels kinda samey. The special mechanics like poison or karma (does Ironclad even have... anything? Exhaust?) fall apart in harder runs and you're left relying on the same generic damage/defense/card spam strategy.
Good point on the mutators, I haven't fucked around with them yet myself but I guess that is true. Somehow feels worse than just flat out increasing the difficulty, though.

Things like mechanical enemies are true (Although I could've sworn I still used burn/bleed on them. Or do they just take the area-burn from other burning enemies, maybe?) and AoE stuff is awkward if you're in a group, but groups still tend to be almost zero-cost and come with the mission (At most you spent a bit of cash on a pet) so it's less of something you've built toward. But you also don't get much of a sense of "This is the mechanical part of the story" or "This is the AoE part of the story" which was part of what I was getting at with STS. Feels more like a hodgepodge that you can (Or could, if it made a noticeable difference) guide a little based on mission selection and who you're working for.

STS is underrated because there are people who haven't yet seen the light. It will only be appropriately appreciated when it's included with almost every computer alongside solitaire and billions of people can play it.:rpgcodex:
There are definitely some straight up good/best relics that are ALMOST always (ALMOST) a snap pick. And as you mentioned energy/mana is key in STS, but there are often diminishing returns depending on how your deck's made. Getting to 4 energy is valuable for just about every deck, but going beyond that requires more thought. It is true that harder difficulty tends to punish going too hard into archetypes though, but that's also why I find STS fun on high and low difficulty. High's if you want to wrack your brain trying to put together a goodshit deck out of what you're offered, and low's fun for trying weird things out/going hard on an archetype/score attacking, etc. Ironclad's got armor (I know all of them do, but since he directly turns it into damage it's special for him (Although caltrops Silent does a similar thing)), strength manipulation (Again, used by others but he's got more strength pumping burst damage stuff), and indeed exhaust. But Ironclad's also the simplest class since he's the one you start with. He's also got the slight memes of thin-deck and fat-deck, for Rampage and Perfected Strike respectively. Usually not super strong but they are both fun to play, especially going for ultra-thin Rampage.

God damn it I love STS. My highest playtime game on Steam if you ignore TF2 which you should since a lot of that was idling to mine hatcoin when it was profitable.
 

Damned Registrations

Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
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So you played Undertale on another platform huh? Which one?

Good point on the mutators, I haven't fucked around with them yet myself but I guess that is true. Somehow feels worse than just flat out increasing the difficulty, though.

Yeah the mutators aren't satisfying, but I'm assuming effects like that will get added at higher prestige. It is kinda cool that they're there if you want some of the really crazy ones that totally change things, like having unlimited relic slots but no money or something. They'll probably work them into a random daily challenge thing like StS has at some point.

I had a 'party' build at one point before, I had 3 permanent pets. Was pretty cool until I ran into a fucker with a rocket launcher. RIP pets. Kinda expected that though, I'm hoping they make the archetype more available in the future, there's already quite a few cards/relics/events that work well with extra party members.

Once you've played through a couple times you'll know which chapters have/might have a mechanical boss or even specific missions, so you could pick missions to avoid those types of enemies and build a deck that wouldn't be effective against them (in retrospect I think burn might work but wounds and bleed do not). There's a mission for the spy for example that puts you into a survival fight against machines where you want to kill as many as possible for a bigger reward, and the merc has a similar situation but for robbing people on the road.

I'm holding off on playing more till it's in a much more finished state, no sense burning out when the game is going to be much, much better in a year or so.
 
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I had a 'party' build at one point before, I had 3 permanent pets. Was pretty cool until I ran into a fucker with a rocket launcher. RIP pets. Kinda expected that though, I'm hoping they make the archetype more available in the future, there's already quite a few cards/relics/events that work well with extra party members.
Lucky bastard! Closest I've managed is 2 semi-permanent pets. One actual permanent pet (A robodog, while playing the spy) and then the "Permanent" pet which was a 1 mana card with unlimited uses (Though exhausts when played) to summon a shitty rusty robodog. So one with full pet mechanics and then the other was a card to pull in a cannon-fodder unit. Wanted to go pet-heavy on the merc after getting my alien dog and upgrading it but despite having access to a pet store, it only let me have one pet at a time.
 

Damned Registrations

Furry Weeaboo Nazi Nihilist
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Yeah I had a normal permanent pet, then a card that turned into a permanent pet after hatching, which I was able to make a copy of. Lots of wounds which synergized with my spammy build pretty well, but couldn't upgrade them so it wasn't that strong. Still haven't figured out how to fight the alternate boss for the spy, if there is such a thing right now. It definitely seems like you should be able to side with the boggers somehow.
 

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