izigame.me

7.5/10 It's kind of like Iron Oath, but with heroes that use small decks. Surprisingly deep and rather satisfying to create complimentary decks... but a lot the depth is unnecessary. As others have said, you basically just refine your "deck" into a couple really good cards and rely solely on those. The game dramatically encourages this style of play due to skill nodes that reduce deck size and nodes that copy existing cards (saving you 4-5 levels spent on upgrades each time you copy one).

Pros:
- Deep game with lots of gear/deck/talent options
- Actually has a combat log. Huge plus, though it doesn't actually detail how it calculated things
- Some really cool combos available between heroes in the group
- Music is pretty good
- Seems to be a good variety of starting decks to suit all kinds of playstyles
- Good character art; it's not too anime feeling though it's got that influence. Kind of like Legend of Vox Machina, which is a compliment

Cons:
- Buggy. Many cards simply do not function correctly, or combinations don't work correctly. Many of the more complex characters' mechanics are inconsistently implemented, forcing you to spend hours deducing exactly what stacks with what by scouring the combat log. Turrets are particularly egregious, with a huge list of crippling issues/inconsistencies I won't get into here
- Game's complexity mostly serves to waste time
- Only 5 save slots. I've now had to delete literally 10 save games to make room for more. Very unfortunate because I'd love to go back to some to look at what I did with card/gear choices
- Big issue: no text/UI scaling. Card text is borderline too small until you actually click on a card to make it bigger (wouldn't be an issue but sometimes you literally cannot make a card bigger). Other text is tiny and there's SO much room to make it bigger at any resolution. People have repeatedly asked for it for YEARS on the forums and the devs always say it's planned, but never improved it
- Severe imbalance between heroes and if you accidentally choose a crappier hero to start, you're stuck with them unless you restart (if you're not sure, go with Pierre the mage guy or Catherin the cleric lady for a great start and *extremely* versatile build options that can fit into any group)
- Many legendaries are a trap. Low level gear with low/mid level runes will often be *far* superior, which is hugely disappointing since there are so many legendaries
- Card mechanics aren't explained well, especially for the more complex classes with lots of keywords.
- Getting new cards takes a long time and is largely random. I'd like more control here because a single good card can literally make or break the whole group's strategy
- Doesn't seem to have gotten much post-launch support
- AI controlled allies are extremely stupid and constantly move around even when it's very detrimental to do so. Pets aren't... quite as bad, but still waste attacks on empty tiles or something else dumb
- On top of previous issue, pets are a drag to use because they slow down combat and there's so much in the game, you'll want to be blowing through easy fights with area damage. This means your pets get maybe 1 whole weak hit in before the fight is over. In boss fights, your pets aren't smart enough to move out of attacks and you can't realistically keep moving them with skills, so they'll die, either severely hurting the summoner or literally exploding on your group. So pets kinda suck in normal fights and kinda suck in boss fights. Sad

Editing after 40-some hours: I'm really enjoying it now. What I like is having a vision for what your decks will be, then slowly refining your decks and gear over time to make that vision a reality. There's still too many unnecessary steps, but I'm getting faster at playing too. Ended up being one of the best Steam purchases of the year for me, up there with Dream Tactics.