Today, I'm going to show you my preview of a game that had more or less caught my eye. It's about Temperia: Soul of Majestic, a duel game with cards quite taking the style reminded me of the Triple Triad that we come across in FF8 as a mini-game. Does the comparison stop here, is it worth it? Here is my overview in detail and always so factual.
Note: We were initially provided with 100 card packs, 5000 resources to craft, and other bonuses. I will come back to this later, but it is important to keep this in mind for what follows.
Graphics & atmosphere
The game offers us some really interesting and well done illustrations of the different creatures that can be seen on the cards. The minimalist effects that we will rub shoulders with during duels will be appreciable as the emphasis on not putting kaboum effects to hide X or Y defects is in good taste. As for the sound environment, nothing to complain about, it is impeccable and will give its charm to the game, while punctuating your duels in a very good way.
Gameplay
Rule of the game
A game consists of a turn by turn where you place a card on one of the 9 squares of the board. Each card has a value on its edge and, potentially, an element and/or effect that will change these values depending on the square or the equipment assigned to it. Because the game offers us elemental affinities which will either boost your card if it is of the same element, or create an elemental shock and have effects such as a rotation of 1 to 3 moves in the values of the card. To put it simply, you can end up with 9 power on the right, whereas it was on the left previously.
Following this, you will have to lay down card after card in an attempt to "take" the adjacent card(s) by laying down a high value card. Nothing could be simpler on paper, but with the effect combinations that can take, remove and modify values, the "elemental advantages" at the top of the board that everyone can use, but which are limited to a single common use for the two, it will therefore be necessary to be judicious, especially given the overpowering effects such as blocking a space, reducing the power of a card for X turns, inverting cards randomly, etc. It will therefore be possible to take cards with a chain effect on the cards already taken, in short it will be wiser to be careful to take a card that has managed to take another, rather than an isolated card.
We can therefore change the situation at any time by also modifying cards on the board with equipment that either increases the power or lowers it in function, which can break card chains easily. There are different types of equipment, which can be applied, for some only on the creatures on your side, for others on those of your enemy (we see the opponent's cards), or on the field, each equipment card having the one of these three rules. The ultimate goal is to have taken more cards than the opponent: easier said than done!
In the facts
The game offers us a fairly well done tutorial with a combat phase against a bot to get your hands dirty. We will go through a quick deck creation etc... once we are let loose in the game, we realize one thing: we need a pack of cards and therefore to do a significant number of fights for the missions in order to unlock various resources. With the packs offered, I had many equipment and legendary, epic or mythical creatures, which is important for the future. Note: you can only have a limited number of certain cards, the excess will be converted into ED, a resource to make them.
During the creation of my new deck composed of 20 creatures and 20 equipment, I am imposed certain restrictions on the level of the cards, but nothing too bad (a minimum of common, uncommon and rare cards). But this is not very embarrassing, it will be necessary to manage well during the game, nothing more. Once my deck is done, I start a game, and there, I realize something.
During the game, we draw cards and we change the ones we don't want (Mulligan). During the thirty or so games that I have been able to play, 99% of the matches made are clearly unbalanced by the high quality cards that I have received and the victories are totally devoid of challenge or even satisfaction. It was really an unpleasant experience when you ask for a challenge or when you like having an opponent of the same size in front of you.
Packs and creation
You can get packs with in-game currency, or simpler: buy them directly. It's quite reductive, but the more packs you have, the better your chances of having powerful cards. Out of 100 packs I must have had 1 legendary (gold), 5 mythical (bright red) and 7 epic (pink) a significant number of rare (blue) uncommon (green) and common (grey). Surplus cards are automatically turned into resources to craft more that will cost quite a bit for the highest qualities. But this will allow you to have many other possibilities depending on the deck you want to create. But again, it will be very long if you don't want to spend money on this game.
Many other things can be unlocked via missions, like avatars, or with money like map outlines, etc... but this will remain cosmetic and therefore will be purely a personal choice and not mandatory.
Summary
Temperia: Soul of Majestic is not a bad game, far from it, and it should appeal to those who played it on FF8 and FF14 for example, by offering a card game that differs in a very clear way and in the good sense of a Magic or a Hearthstone. The big black spot remains the cards that will be hard to access or with a lot of luck for the most powerful, which will require relentlessness and games that are mostly lost in advance against opponents who have paid many packs. In short, it will be up to you to see if you want to invest in a game that is unfortunately biased by its pay2fast side.
