As We Descend

I didn't want to write this review, but after giving the game every chance to recover since Update 5, I think it's time. I loved this game. I made videos about it, recommended it to others, and looked forward to every update because each one seemed to expand on an already solid foundation. I understand that games evolve and that balance changes are necessary. Unfortunately, what happened after Update 5 wasn't evolution—it was the removal of much of what made the game enjoyable. Before Update 5, the game had an excellent rhythm. During each turn you balanced expeditions, city management, and resource spending simultaneously. Deciding whether to invest resources, visit city locations, or prepare for upcoming fights created a satisfying push-and-pull between long-term planning and short-term tactics. Progression also felt rewarding. As you advanced through the first two stages, you gradually expanded your roster until you had enough units to tackle the increasingly difficult expeditions and boss encounters. Building your team, refining your deck, and adapting your strategy all worked together naturally. Update 5 completely disrupted that flow. Instead of allowing players to manage everything within a single strategic turn, the game separated city actions, expeditions, and resource spending into different phases. The result was a much shorter, more restrictive experience. Strategy became fragmented, card rotation slowed dramatically, and the pacing became awkward. The UI changes made things worse by removing the ability to lock units out of rotation. Players are now forced to cycle through every available unit, reducing control over team composition and making successful synergy far more dependent on luck than planning. Unfortunately, things didn't improve over time. Then Update 10 arrived. While it technically returned to a structure closer to the pre-Update 5 design, it feels like a heavily restricted version of what once worked. Instead of giving players freedom, nearly every system has been limited. Where players once had multiple envoys capable of handling different city tasks, there is now a single envoy, a single emissary, and only one expedition available. Resource spending, which used to happen naturally as you gathered materials, now requires assigning characters to specific locations just to perform basic actions like removing cards, gaining new cards, or strengthening your defenses. These limitations create constant bottlenecks. Need to recruit a new unit after finding the required resource? Too bad if the recruitment location is temporarily locked because you visited it recently. That means you're forced into a boss fight without the unit you should have earned. Combined with slower deck improvement and fewer opportunities to remove weak cards, the later stages become frustrating for reasons that feel artificial rather than challenging. The biggest problem isn't any one mechanic. It's how all of these changes work together. Less control over deck building. Less control over unit synergy. Fewer strategic decisions. More restrictions on how and when resources can be used. More downtime and less meaningful gameplay. Ironically, resources often pile up unused because you simply don't have enough opportunities to spend them. The game has steadily lost depth. What was once a carefully balanced mix of strategy, tactics, and resource management has become a far more restrictive and grind-heavy experience. Even basic information—such as which locations accept which resources and what rewards they provide—is less intuitive than before. What frustrates me most is that these decisions didn't seem to reflect community feedback. Both Update 5 and Update 10 were available on the experimental branch before release, and I struggle to remember much positive reception. Despite widespread criticism, they were pushed to the live version anyway. I also can't ignore the UI redesign, which added unnecessary clicks while looking less clean than before. Perhaps the biggest disappointment is that so much development time was spent replacing a system that already worked with two successive redesigns that ultimately feel worse. Update 10 ends up resembling an inferior version of the pre-Update 5 gameplay, making the entire detour feel unnecessary. I was genuinely excited for future content like the Sacrosanct Tree. Now I simply don't care, because the underlying gameplay loop that made me excited to keep playing has been stripped away. I can't recommend the game in its current state. At a very low price it may still be worth trying, but for me the strategic depth, player agency, and satisfying progression that originally made this game special are no longer there.