It's alright. The price is super fair. However, I do think that some people think this game is more than it is, which is 95% deck builder, and 5% "RPG".
What I mean by that is that
a) The story doesn't have much depth to it, and neither do the choices you make. This is very basic stuff.
b) There really aren't many RPG elements to this game. The only difference really comes from the gear and cards you choose to play with.
No matter what you do in a run, you will inevitable unlock the same items and same cards, with some very minor variations, like choosing a heal or a different card. The heal is great early on, but basically useless in the end game. There are a few other choices like that, most of which affect quests and some rewards, but 99% of the cards you use in battle are unlocked by simply levelling up. The nice part here is that you can easily refund skill points to experiment, the more annoying part is that some very few fights require your deck to be slimmed down to the bare minimum in order to beat them.
I also did not really enjoy the check point system. Having to repeat 2 or 3 fights, because there is no way of resting or going in a different direction, is just tedious. I get the intention, but I disagree with it. Also sometimes you're in fact NOT healed, despite unlocking a "hidden" check point (mostly before major bosses), which is a weird decision, since after dying you do respawn with full HP.
The various skill trees offers you - in theory - countless replay value. You have 3 characters, each having several different foci, and you can't unlock "everything" at once. Your mage could be a supporter, a direct damage bomb or dish out dots left right and center. Your archer could go for debuffing, constant reloading or big damage, your warrior can be a veritable tank, a group shielder or a berserker ... to name just a few possibilities. Then, you have to decide if you want to spread the cards around evenly between characters or focus on one or two, maybe concentrate on card draw or simply put everything into strength and create a warrior that hits for 100 damage every 2 draws (the game doesn't have turns, it uses a time-based system). Items allow you to change up your entire playstyle here, giving you meaningful choices to progress and tackle challenges.
That being said, since I haven't tested most cards, it seems some are obviously far better than others. I tried making rot work, because I'm stubborn, but it never felt really good. Too slow to apply, too costly. I tried making the archer work, but never really could get her balanced between shields, self-buffs and actual damage. She takes ages to get to meaningful damage, she is limited by needing arrows. The mage on the other hand constantly needs the OTHER 2 characters to play their cards in order to generate mana, then often dumps it all for one ability to deal more damage, but there is no choice here. You HAVE to spend that mana. You can't choose NOT to. The warrior on the other hand is a BEAST. He is quick to ramp up, especially with the most powerful item later in the game (that does however require you to get the "bad" ending, though I'm still not sure that IS the bad ending) due to constantly increasing his strength and later on starting with a high amount if you want to. He has insane shield generation while ALSO dealing damage, so you do not have to choose between survivability and offense. Your offense LETS you survive. And with certain cards and items you can easily hit enemies for 100+ damage. And it only costs you 3 turns to do so. Many of his abilities and items just complement each other in a good way, so much so that I think the game would have been easier with that character alone on the battlefield.
Now, the stuff I didn't like that much. Animation quality is rather basic, graphics are as well, though the hand-drawn style can be charming. Readability is an issue with many enemies on screen, especially if you use an ability that takes several "turns" and the enemies get to act multiple times before you do, but you don't know WHAT they're going to do. To remedy this, you could display the next 2 actions as well when hovering over the intent, they're very basic descriptions anyway, but I'd like to know whether it's worth using the 5 turn damage nuke now or if that actually kills me, because the enemy doesn't die immediately, and gets to act 3 times afterwards.
The written text is fine, but rather boring and still has some typos and grammatical peculiarities in it, voice acting is fine, pacing, imho, isn't. The first tutorial area is relatively short, then the subsequent zone takes forever, while zone 2 is split into 2 parts that cannot be accessed now, so it's more zone 2 and zone 4, while zone 3 has some of the most infuriating fights ever, a real difficulty spike for no reason. All the while the bosses somehow become easier? And less interesting. The boss themes in zone 1 were phenomenal, but after that it's downhill for some reason.
The game just gets less interesting the further you go on. In the beginning you only have a couple of deck choices, but that limiting factor somehow elevates the game. Later on you have unlocked like 50 cards, but you can't ever possibly use them, because the deck would be way too bloated. I struggled with anything around 30, so you need to slim down, but then ... why have those cards unlocked in the first place? If my mage is a "rotter", ideally I do not want to respec every other fight, because suddenly the rot abilities are not only useless, but downright detrimental to my overall gameplan.
While dying resets you back to a check point, quest progress generally stays the same, as do your unlocked cards. You do, however, not gain additional XP by defeating the same enemies twice. That means you can basically softlock yourself, meaning a respec is necessary (it's free, though). Strangely enough, though, your PERMANENT upgrades are NOT reset. There are certain cards in game that permanently increase your stats or their damage. You can theoretically farm enemy encounters as often as you like and create instant kill cards. Increase the damage of 2 cards by 1 for each kill with these cards ... got me to around 50 damage with that card without purposefully farming. Another card lets you increase your warrior's max HP by 1, which is also an "infinite" stack, making you slowly stronger over time. It's an interesting choice. Or a weird one.
The final fight is ... not that interesting. Since the game lacks readability and infos on many abilities, AND zooms out a lot, it just becomes a race against time without much thinking. Just dish out the damage, redraw and hope to get your 100+ damage nukes. And then, depending on ONE choice in the game that isn't even an RPG choice, but a gameplay choice, you get 1 of 2 endings. And at least one is rather anti-climactic. At least let me have some fun with THAT ending, instead of wasting my time.
All in all, the low price really helps to recommend this game. It's somewhat unique as a whole, but not in its parts. There is nothing here that you haven't seen elsewhere, but at the same time nothing quite like it exists.
Beware of bugs, but at least the devs are actively patching. Still, always bad for a 1.0 release if you need to release 10 hotfixes in 5 days, and things are still broken. Translation is also at best serviceable, especially the beginning is rough. All in all it feels like they had greater ambitions, but ran out of time and money. I still recommend it, but it's clear to me that they had planned more.
