Trials of Fire
Usually the keywords in the Trials of Fire summary make me yawn. "Roguelike card battler". There are hundreds of them. The exception is Slay the Spire, although I've only played that for 40 hours rather than the hundreds some people do. This game seems to share a lot of similarities, even though it looks different. There's an overworld map where you find events and make choices, except that this looks like a board game rather than simple lines. It has a pretty deep combat system where all sorts of things synergise and affect each other and a wide variety of abilities. It has really strong artwork and I can see lots of replayability in the heroes and cards you unlock over time.
Pros
- Nice unobtrusive background music
- Card effects during battle are really nice
- Your heroes level up, which allows them to replace or upgrade a card
- Looks awesome
Cons
- I still find the mechanics slightly confusing in the way willpower is presented. For example, you can discard a card to increase global willpower, or it gives that specific hero the ability to move, or if you don't use it, that hero gains armour. It's flexible, but it's quite difficult to tell what's going on.
- When there are two arrows on the screen, I don't know which is the main quest and which is the side quest