Squeenix Voice of Cards: The Isle Dragon Roars - JRPG Told Trough Cards

[Abu Antar]

THIS is what Yoko Taro was talking about earlier in the year. There's a demo on Steam.

About

Developed by the creative team behind the beloved NieR and Drakengard series, including creative director Yoko Taro (Drakengard series, NieR series), executive producer Yosuke Saito (NieR series) and music director Keiichi Okabe (Drakengard 3, NieR series), as well as character designer Kimihiko Fujisaka (Drakengard series), this new tabletop RPG will spark players’ imagination with a unique way of storytelling.

In Voice of Cards: The Isle Dragon Roars, players will venture through a story set long ago in a world shrouded in mystery, guided by the narrative voice of the Game Master (voiced in English by Todd Haberkorn). Set in a world of swords and sorcery, the game is told entirely through the medium of cards. Players will follow the protagonist as he sets off on a journey to defeat a recently reawakened Dragon, that is threatening the land and its people, in hopes of securing an immense reward. He is joined on his travels by his companions; Mar, a monster very attached to him, and Melanie, a black witch with a grudge against the Dragon. Players will need to make choices throughout the story, as well as join in turn-based field and dungeon battles that unfold on a board, in the manner of traditional tabletop RPGs.

 

[Lyre Mors]

Holy shit, that's coming up quick! Day one, baby. Looks very interesting. Interesting enough that the card thing isn't actually turning me off. And of course that music is already sounding godly.

EDIT: Oh wow, from the sounds of it the cards are mainly just used in aesthetic presentation, without deck building elements being present. Man, I hope this is the case. Not only would I much prefer it that way, but the butthurt will be glorious.

 

[Abu Antar]

I played the demo. This is indeed not a card battler. Everything is made up of cards, but the game itself is a jrpg through and through.

You buy equipment, there are towns and a world map. There are six elements. Combat is turn-based. You characters level up and gain new abilities and spells. The soundtrack is what you would expect from this team. I like almost everything about this. What I hope will be addressed in the full version (even if it's coming up real soon), is the difficulty. In the demo, it's non-existent. I hope this was just to give the player a glimpse of what you get to see in the game.

Edit: Ignore the controller button prompts. I played and controlled everything with the mouse. One other thing that needs improvement is the amount of clicking that needs to be done. It's too much double clicking.

Some screens:

 

[Lyre Mors]

Played through the demo too and had largely the same reaction to it as Abu Antar.

It really does feel like the demo is just giving the player a glimpse at the possibilities this kind of presentation and gameplay can provide, and if so, I can't wait to see how far they take it. There is a great deal of potential here. On my way to - and while in - the featured demo dungeon, I started to think to myself "well, in a lot of ways this is a very stylish grid-based top-down JDRPG with a lot of potentially unique and interesting mechanics sprinkled throughout." If they ramp up the difficulty in the full game - or at least give us the option to - this could end up being something very special gameplay-wise.

Narrative and presentation-wise, I can already tell there's going to be more than meets the eye going on here, and really appreciated our first glimpse of that with the unlocking of NPC backstories through progression. Most of these cards that are added to your "collection" had a very Taro-esque description of the NPCs, item, or monster, which instantly causes you to think back on the sad weapon stories from Nier and Nier: Automata. Had a few pretty subtle unexpected laugh-out-loud moments throughout the demo too - in particular a certain stubborn door in the dungeon. I find the artwork beautiful, and the overall look of the game is just pleasing to the eye, especially when in motion.

Another good sign for me was about an hour or so after finishing up the demo, I found myself craving more, and feeling the urge to explore more of what this game is going to have to offer. It definitely has a major PnP RPG vibe going for it that is very appealing, and I'm sure that entire concept is going to be toyed around with a lot throughout the game.

Finally, I am very relieved this isn't a deck-builder/deck battler, and have a feeling this whole game being difficult to identify at first glance angle was Taro doing his thing again. It's likely going to end up stirring up a lot of shit, particularly with things like the Steam rating. I love it, and couldn't help grinning about it as I went through my day. I thought back to an interview I read with Yosuke Saito (the Executive Producer for Taro's games, and his friend) where he was referring to a couple projects that Taro was working on. He mentioned vaguely one that Taro had tried pitching to him several times, but he kept turning it down time and time again, until finally giving in.

According to Saito, Yoko Taro approached the producer about a year ago in 2019 and said, “I want to make this kind of game” with a proposal. Saito was completely against the idea and strongly objected. However, Yoko Taro was persistent enough and even had prepared an hour-long presentation to persuade him.

In the end, while it wasn’t easy, Saito gave in to Yoko Taro’s enthusiasm and green-lit the game’s production.

I'm pretty positive this is that project. And I can see why. And I'm very glad that Taro convinced him in the end. I eagerly await October 28th.

 

[Abu Antar]

Here's a stream I missed. It starts at 2:30:00. There's a live translation, but I think there's a lot she doesn't translate. Or she just ignores fluff. Watching now, seems like they talk for over an hour.

 

[Thac0]

So, it is a classical JRPG with gorgeous presentation with good writing, and possibly some nice twists in story and gameplay?
This is currently my most anticipated game by Square.

I really like that they are lending those small projects with no big brands attached to their talent again. Hiroyuki Ito on the dungeon crawler, Yoko Taro on this. They used this process during their golden age, to not have their talent burn out on endless Final Fantasy, to great success.

 

[Carpincho Pampeano]

I forgot to check out the demo, i don't usually play card trash but this one may be interesting if underneath the cards visuals is still a traditional jrpg.

 

[Kaivokz]

I like deck builders a great deal, but I am also enjoying the deception.

 

[Abu Antar]

Nice.

 

[abnaxus]

 

[Baron Dupek]

Japanese devs releasing PC game with garbage DRM?
What else is new?

 

[flyingjohn]

Gee,i hope there isn't any global conspiracy about power outages going to happen in the coming months before denuvo is removed.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Have you guys tried the demo? How is it?
I think it's great that Squenix is branching out again lately.

 

[baud]

Have you guys tried the demo? How is it?
I think it's great that Squenix is branching out again lately.

I tried it a little before it crashed on me, the presentation makes a lot of efforts to look as if it's a board game, reminding me a little of hand of fate (excluding HoF's combat phases), but the game system is full jrpg.

 

[Lyre Mors]

Extremely disappointed to read in reviews that the game is only like 10-14 hours long. Like, kind of shatters my hype type of disappointed. Also apparently a complete lack of challenge and little creative use of mechanics until the final dungeon. Really not sure if I'm going to be getting it day one now. Guess I was wrong about this one.

 

[Shackleton]

Extremely disappointed to read in reviews that the game is only like 10-14 hours long. Like, kind of shatters my hype type of disappointed. Also apparently a complete lack of challenge and little creative use of mechanics until the final dungeon. Really not sure if I'm going to be getting it day one now. Guess I was wrong about this one.

LOL, did you delete your post saying Yoko Taro was going to revolutionise card games with this game and if it was another cash grab you'd pay some sort of forfeit? I remember reading it and thinking it was a bold statement. Caught the positivity bug off Fluent

You could have got a special tag for that

 

[Lyre Mors]

LOL, did you delete your post saying Yoko Taro was going to revolutionise card games with this game and if it was another cash grab you'd pay some sort of forfeit?

Drunk post I deleted before I even read a review.

It's also not a card game. It's a JRPG with a card aesthetic. And yeah, it caught me off guard that Taro would take such a unique presentation and squander it until the very end of the game.

 

[mediocrepoet]

I'm a bit surprised anyone was hyped for this. The demo struck me more as a missed opportunity.

The difficulty is ridiculously easy, which might be rectified in the full game since the demo seems to be a sort of prologue, but the cards aren't randomized at all, so it's just a different presentation of attack, magic, etc.

The gems mechanic doesn't lead to any attrition because they regenerate with each action so unless you're needing multiple abilities that require more than one gem, there's no attrition or meaningful decision to be made. The easy difficulty compounds this because there's basically never a reason to choose anything than the most damaging attack you have.
I had one character who got knocked out once because of what an optional encounter turned into, but the character didn't die and faced no penalties from having been downed. The monster was killed on the immediate next turn and everyone levelled up which brought the knocked out character back to full hp.

Beyond all that, the pace is SOOOO SLOOOOOOWWW and mildly clunky. I liked the narrator and music, but the pace is so slow that it's sort of like watching paint dry. If the pace was picked up so you could play it more at the pace of a traditional roguelike and the difficulty was increased by A LOT, this could be a great game. Instead, it's more like baby's first RPG.

 

[Abu Antar]

I'll admit that the storyfag in me was hyped the most for this.

 

[mediocrepoet]

I'll admit that the storyfag in me was hyped the most for this.

My inner storyfag is dead and gone, tragically. Anyway, it sort of sucks since the art, music, and presentation is all pretty cool.

 

[Duraframe300]

I'll admit that the storyfag in me was hyped the most for this.

Not sure why you would be hyped in any other way tbh. Gameplay isn't exactly Yoko Taro's biggest strength.

Automata being the exception, of course, because Platinum.

 

[Saark]

Extremely disappointed to read in reviews that the game is only like 10-14 hours long.

Same, actually. I'll buy it regardless because any Taro/Okabe work deserves financial success, but it's certainly disappointing that the game is this short.

I'm a bit surprised anyone was hyped for this. The demo struck me more as a missed opportunity.

I think most people expected the Demo to simply be a bit of a visual representation of what the full game will be like, and if those core systems were developed properly they could provide a bigger challenge and more flexibility in terms of how to build each character and develop your party. Since there was barely any promotional material available, people tend to fill in the blanks, and it's not too difficult to imagine how the foundation that was shown in the demo could be used for much more than what seems to be the case in the final product.
I certainly didn't expect a grand adventure lasting 80+ hours, but hearing that it basically competes with your run of the mill adventure game in terms of length, and most of that will probably be padded with random encounters and the mini-game, tempers the expectations quite a bit. I don't think anyone expected this to be a fully fledged jRPG, but it seems to swing too far to the other side and be just another cute little side project that can barely fill 2 afternoons worth of gaming.

 

[Lyre Mors]

I was expecting something more like 30 hours, with difficulty options and some mild replayability. I'll probably buy it on a deep sale someday when I want something relaxing and low-effort to play, but even my admiration of Taro and Okabe has its limits (see Sin O Alice).

Hoping the second project he's got going on alongside this one has more substance to it.

 

[Abu Antar]

Played almost two and a half hours. If you played the demo, you know what to expect.

Game is easy, but at the start, there is a forest area off the beaten path that will offer a challenge. I got a few potions and gold, while fighting in there.

My guess is this will take me 20ish hours to beat. I'm not in a hurry, like reviwrrs tend to be.

Overall, everything looks, and sounds fine. The speeding up patch will also be welcome.

I will probably not write much more until I beat it.

 

[Latro]

Looks like Taro subverted expectations by tricking everyone into thinking it’s a card game