Parallel

It can be fun, it can be frustrating, but that is how TCGs are. But fun decks are usually playable on this game and that matters to me. Other TCGs are so full of meta, while this allows some breathing room to experiment on queue. Been playing this on Epic Games platform. wishlisted this on Steam since it was announced. Got it. tried it. love it. Thank you team!

Big fan of the game as a lifelong TCG player, thousands of hours logged on their Epic Games client prior to Steam Release. One of the most interesting mechanics is their 'mana' system, banking. Each turn to make your 'Mana Crystal' (Think Hearthstone) called energy in this game you have to 'bank' one of the cards in your hand (effectively removing it from the game barring specific cards that interact with the bank zone). This puts an incredibly impactful decision point into almost every turn and is quite rewarding to master. There is clearly a ton of TCG experience on the team with interesting mechanics and interactions, all the usual archetypes are present (Aggro, Control, Mid-Range, Combo, etc..) so you won't be shoehorned into any specific strategy. I'd describe the play as somewhere between MTG and Early Hearthstone, which is perfect for my tastes. At time of writing the biggest negative is simply playerbase causing longer than preferable queue times (I see anywhere from 10s-5m higher up on the ranked ladder). Hopefully we see some improvement there with Steam Release and as they exit their late beta and we might be early to a refreshing take on the Genre. If you're a TCG fan well worth the time to explore and follow.

I've been playing Parallel for over a year through their own client. This is the single best TCG outside of MTG and Hearthstone. One of my favorite pieces is the "Banking" mechanic. It has the strategic use of cards for energy (mana) like MTG land cards, but also the "scale from 1 - 10" aspect from Hearthstone. So you have the slow escalation, with a stop at 10, so turns don't scale out of control, yet the strategy of using cards in your deck as your resource. 40 card decks make decks more consistent than MTG, without "flooding" or droughts, while still being forced to pivot when you had a sub-optimal banking options in hand. It is one of the singular differences between average and pro players. It DOES have minor bugs, but these are fixable as all bugs are. The lore is amazing. I have not enjoyed in-game lore like this in a long time. Great concepts for factions, cool "commander" style deck archetypes that really make each deck, even within the same faction, feel completely different. Overall, this game is VERY well done. AAA TCG being ran by a small studio, it's impressive to say the least.

Love the fake reviews lmao.... Game doesn't even work through steam, would love to leave a review of the game but you know...

This game is amazing, been playing forever. You can gain cards by playing, no need to purchase any NFTs to really enjoy this game. The artwork is insane. The lore is incredible (could be a movie trilogy). The updates are great, team continues to improve the game with new cards, U/I updates, and changes to make the meta constantly change. This is THE game I've probably played more than anything I've ever played and that is saying something.

awful to new players, making it impossible to win. Getting matched up with high ranked players with all the cards vs my starter deck. Real fun.... F tier game. No story mode or anything to solo to get more cards, just play ranked and lose to people that already have fully functional decks with strategies.

Interesting mechanics.

I wont even start on how boring the game is, what interests me more are the cleary fake postivie steam reviews. but that all doesnt matter, no one plays this game anyway. only thing good about this game is that the card artstyle kinda had potential. But all ohter aspects of this game are just half baked asf.

GAME DESIGN: 4 / 5 - pretty good game core, like any Magic-type game; the couple new features (commanders usable as units) are not unnecessarily complex but add a nice twist ACESSIBILITY: 3 / 5 - pretty decent UI though the menu organization is confusing; deckbuilding is atrocious PRESENTATION: 1 / 5 - most of the main characters look intentionally ugly in some kind of misguided attempt to be “edgy” — the flavor makes the game unplayable CONTENT: 3 / 5 - seems an early product and there are season tracks and whatnot; nothing overwhelming but seems like it could end up growing into something worthwhile TECHNICAL QUALITY: 4 / 5 - seems bug-free for the most part; some of the animation and such is clunky, as the horrible art bleeds into this VALUE: 1 / 5 - “buy me” is thrown into your face, and expensively, before you know what you’re doing; the early heroes are so ugly you won’t want them; apparently there are NFTs in the game too as if everything else wasn’t bad enough OVERALL: 2.67 / 5 -- You can tell that this started out as an NFT game, even if they've intentionally moved away from that model. Or at least, that's the excuse I * assume * for the incredibly ugly art. It's like they decided, on purpose, to climb back down INTO the uncanny valley for their characters, and made them look like animatronic nightmares from backstage at Chuck E. Cheese's. It's a shame because the production value on the game is very high. Herein is a paradox we see regularly in the gaming industry, especially recently. Leadership that can afford good art, design and coding teams also tend themselves to be "creative" and want to be "visionary" with how they launch projects like this. And they end up with this drivel. Characters that literally no sane person would want to play. I found myself having to LOOK AWAY FROM MY SCREEN on the main menu because they have a background image of a randomly selected character and sometimes the image is downright unsettling, it's so ugly. As someone who has played every competitive card game, physical and digital -- and I do mean every one as it's my job -- for the last 25 years, it really takes some effort to make the flavor of a game the reason I say HARD PASS. Parallel managed to do that. There isn't enough to the game anyway to merit bearing it, but that's moot as the flavor is so cringe I wouldn't play even if this was as good as Magic. As for other things I will just mention you can FEEL in the game client that it's trying to sell you on NFTs. That sense of "the developer is just here to make money" pervades the space, as it often does when the game doesn't come together well. You can tell their focus is on the game shop and on every possible place on the screen they can have you click to buy something rather than on, for example, making the navigation and player experience feel good. Therefore, whether or not they are still promoting NFTs, the game itself suffers from the model. It's just not something worth dealing with, unfortunately. This is one of those projects, sad to say, that I don't think anything can be done with. Way too much effort (and I shudder to imagine how much money) has been thrown down the drain on ugly art assets and clunky menu design. If you handed me this IP I think I'd have to junk 99% of it to try to revamp the game. Frankly I think one would be better just starting over. -- I hope this review was helpful to you. Cheers, - Sir V p.s. Incidentally I played the game about 8 hours. No idea why it wants to claim I only played 0.4 hours.