Banners of Ruin

I rarely post Negative Reviews, so this game really stands out for me in a bad way despite wanting to like it. There are more than a few issues with this game that really hold it back and some that simply can't be ignored. TLDR; - - There are bugs, - The UI is confusing, - It has imbalanced gameplay mechanics - Difficulty issues - Far too random to have any consistent runs - At times just not fun I found myself playing with roughly the same deck on each run, making for a frustrating experience. A bit more indepth... - User Interface I feel the need to call attention to the UI, not only because of its poor design nor its bugs, but because there are instances where the UI will impede the player as well as cause mistakes playing cards. Some cards have a click before you play while others don't. Touching a controller while using MNK causes the cursor to disappear and the screen to conk out. There are no tooltips so navigating and finding things are unintuitive or there are unnecessary steps. Equipment Inventory is a perfect example of this, as it could have easily just been the main party screen. During combat it is difficult to see what status effects do, and how much damage is being done by yourself or the computer. - Basic Gameplay The concept of card playing is built around Stamina & Will, with Stamina being akin to Action Points and Will being Special Action Points. The trouble here is that Will has very, very few mechanics to refill during combat, making it an incredibly finite resource in combat, and Stamina as a resource goes from being too little in early game, to overflowing and abundant late game, so much so you're often left with substantial amounts of unused Stamina. This is poor game design and presents itself in erratic difficulty throughout the run. - Gameplay Mechanics There is a huge disparity in mechanics at your disposal versus what the computer is able to do. You will find yourself swinging for 5 damage while they will have multiple passive bonus effects, will be ramping up damage while triggering mechanics like Unstoppable Bleed effects, Massive Armor regeneration, and one shot damage at the same time. The multiple passive presents another issue with game design. Race Passives represent a small % of the passive pool making it so that you are often selecting from a large shared pool, at which point it felt pointless to even look at the Compendium. More issues are: Randomness is present in each and every aspect of game design making for some very poor experiences and severe difficulty spikes. There's a card Upgrade System, but you will upgrade a single card perhaps once a run, leaving you wondering why the system is even in there. Quite a few card designs are just bad as they're costly for what they do as well as are dependent upon other cards to make the effect work. One run I managed to get a curse and a debuff that had me losing health on 80% of the cards I played, only to be made worse by randomly summoning a Wraith who inflicts more penalties, has a huge health pool, and ramps up to being able to one shot your party members. This was a one off, but it just felt awful and imbalanced. Balance is actually a huge problem in the game as difficulty spikes substantially This one is definitely a pass