A shame; the way they make their open worlds with lots of little things to collect and do are oddly pleasant to play for that. Definitely something only I really enjoy, I realize, of course.
Agreed. One reason I loved Majora’s Mask was that the game was dense. Every square inch of the game was used for something and in a lot of different ways. I also appreciated a checklist for my collectables so I could pinpoint what I was missing, but that’s rather off topic. I lean way away from open world games now both for excessive time commitment and most of it is just empty space.
Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla scratched an itch that few other open world action RPGs have been able to for me (of course, they were copying Witcher III, which did it far better). Despite everyone saying all their games are the same, I haven’t enjoyed any of their other ones like I did those three (oh, except for Watch Dogs 2). If Shadows is the same thing again but in Japan, I’ll be satisfied.
I’ve been curious about the hype for this game. From what I know it seems like a card game like poker. The popularity of it must mean it’s quite engaging though.
Im very curious as well. Was looking into it and came to the same conclusion; it’s just a poker with weird rules and some nicer graphics. Its advertised as a deck building game. Now I don’t know what a deck builder game is, but imagine something like pokemon or magic the gathering? But what’s the fun in combining this with poker? And isn’t that more fun with real, physical cards and friends?
It has lots of modifiers and rules and your hand is a dynamic deck of cards (not just 52 default cards) and so you get the dynamic gameplay and synergizing strategies of a game like Slay the Spire.
It’s poker solitaire - you have 24 blinds to beat (getting 4 played hands attempts [two pair, four of a kind, etc), and 2 discards of up to 5 cards, per blind). The hand played plus the cards in the hand result in a multiplication formula to give you your point value. It’s pretty straight forward.
Every 3rd blind is a boss, which has a special debuff of some kind (like all diamond cards adre debuffed[provide no points and do not trigger special abilities), or 1 in 7 chance for a card in your hand to be dealt face down)
You beat the point target of each blind, and after every blind you go to the store to buy additional cards or things that modify your deck, like a tarot card that allows you to turn 3 cards into spades (making it easier to play flushes), or increase a two select cards by 1 rank (so, turning 2x 6s into 7s meaning you now have 6x 7s in your deck and 2x 6s, making it easier to hit 4 of a kind on 7s).
Then there jokers on top of it, which have even more crazy effects than modify your hand point values
The first 3 blinds are 300, 450, and 600 points
The 24th blind is 100,000 points.
So you need to develop your deck and jokers at the shop after each blind to continue to make your hands played more and more valuable, because that 100k blind isn’t that far away.
At its core it’s just a fun arithmetic game (a default pair hand is 20 points and a 2x multiplier. Then you get a joker that says +4 to multiplier of played hand contains a pair. So now when you play a pair you get 20 pts at a 6x multiplier).
It’s as simple or as complicated as you want it to be.
A lot of the fun comes from your own personal challenges. Like, just starting a run and getting a spectral card that turns your hand on to all 8s so you just go “fuck it, I’m gonna try to turn my hand into all 8s and do a 5 of a kind run”.
Oh yeah, and secret hands too: 5 of a kind, Flush House (full house with all cards of the same suit), and Flush Five (five of a kind, all same suit)
You might like it, you might not. I personally can’t see why people say it’s so addicting, but it does keep me busy on my train ride to work.
I got it on my phone, and it has taken up more of my life than I care to admit. It’s similar to slay the spire. Highly recommend to anyone who enjoys strategy games.
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Aktywne