izigame.me

There is a lot to like about this game, hence my play time... tho I do admit I left the computer running with game on several time. My actual playtime is probably around 200 hrs.
There is great charm. Good variety of gameplay, ranging from simple enough for beginner of this genre of game to extremely complex for those who gets thrills out of combining different mechanics to pull off some of craziest combos.
While there is a lot to be praised about, the flaw becomes more and more evident as you play on.
First seemingly most trivial yet extreme flaw: Dice Art.
When dice is rolled, it only shows 1 of 6 side of dice with an icon to indicate what will happen when you activate the dice. I've seen some complaining about dice icon itself, which I don't think is an issue. Eventually, after 1-2 hours or so, you get a good grasp of what each icon does without much thoughts.
What I find lacking here are several.
1. With reroll mechanic pretty much universal with all character, it's very inconvenient to figure out which dice contains a face you want or not want to take risk on by rerolling it. For example, let's say you would draw 6 dices, and all of them are different and contains critically good or critically bad face. If they would all share 1 purification face (main action for attack/healing in this game), and that's what they all rolled, you could potentially have all 6 "same" dices yet all of them are very different from each other. What you have to do is to proceed to inspect every one of them just to decide which dice you want to reroll, play later in sequence, etc. This level of mundane inspection is detriment to this genre of game of rogue-like where people are having fun discovering unexpected synergy between different items and actions with very little investment in each run since it resets itself whether you win or lose.
2. Lack of flavor. Without card art (or dice art in this case), all dice "looks the same". This also ties back to above point of how all different dice could potentially roll the same face, but more than that, it makes the game flavorless and unexciting. For example, let's use the game most well known in this genre, Slay the Spire. Heavy hitting card comes with an art of main character beating the crap out of monster or some sort, making it fun! But let's say we replace that with an icon of a sword and number +40 next to it. And let's say that's the case for every single cards you draw in the game, making your hand looks like just as series of icons and numbers. All the sudden, the game loses much of its excitement and charm. And that is the problem here. You are playing with hand that says "+2, -6, +5, +7, +1" I am usually happy as long as gameplay is good, and don't really care about graphics or artwork and such, but this is such a huge flaw that I cannot overlook.
Second problem, the amount of RNG is insane.
For example, let's say you have draw pool of 20 dices. You draw 5 dices each turn. You have 1 absolute OP dice in your pool that is essential to your build. In theory, you will draw the dice at the latest at 4th turn, right?
But no, let's say the dice you are looking for only have 2 faces of said effect out of 6 (that would be most common case on Risky Dice, the one with usually the most powerful battle-ending effect). All the sudden, you are looking at maybe even having to wait until 12th turn. Again, I do understand that there are some effects on card that helps you with this, such as choosing the face of dice, reroll, draw, etc. But even those are not guaranteed effects since they are just a face/faces on dice with 6 faces. I know RNG is the part of the game especially in this genre, but even than it is extreme to the point where I only win/lose run out of pure luck more so than any other game in this genre.
Third problem: Most fight scales as battle goes one, but there is no way to scale your HP.
With above said reason, the battle could drag on way longer than what you would like because you are just never getting the face of dice that is crucial to your build. But no, dragging on battle is almost never an option with exception of first 2-3 battles of run. After first few battles, enemies comes with mechanic that scales as the battle drags on to basically make the battle unwinnable. There are enemies that fills your dice pool with negative dice, eventually making your deck unplayable or even kills you. There are enemies that just stacks you with debuffs to the point where you can no longer heal yourself. There are enemies keep priming itself to detonate and damage you when it gets killed. There are enemies keep buffing itself to the point where it could end up doing damage enough to one shot you. In any fight in this game, if you cannot end the battle in 5 turns or so, there is a good chance you already lost the battle.
But your HP is set at 7. No way to buff this. No way to scale this in mid battle. This is it. And this works against RNG aspect I mentioned earlier to extreme. Let's say you just couldn't roll the face of dice you need to end the battle. Battle dragged on, and the enemy was buffing your self damage to 20. You roll the batch of dice, and you get self inflicting dice of 1. Normally, okay that's the damage you can manage even considering bad RNG. With debuff from the enemy, that dice now does 21 damage to yourself. All the sudden bad outcome of the die is not just damaging you. It is now instant death dice. And let's say that die has 3 faces that inflicts self damage. Now you have dice that kill you 50% of times it is rolled. That is it.
There need to be some more reliable way to defend against this other than hoping to draw right dice AND roll them on right face AT the right time. With absolute no way to increase your HP pool of 7, the room of error is almost non-existent. You must draw multiple right dice and roll it the right way to win the battle, with timer ticking before scales goes out of your hands, all while one bad roll will kill you.
You also notice a lot of enemies especially toward late are designed around this 7 HP pool, most of them capable of dealing around 6 damage any given turn. Again, the problem is they scale. Even if they scale one time on turn 1, you are potentially fighting an enemy that is capable of one shotting you starting turn 2. Do you think you can draw and roll the right face of dice that can defend you against that in turn 2? You could. But also you may not. And if you don't, you lose the run.
Also, this affects boss relic, relic with powerful boost but also with drawback. Some of them will have an effect that increases damage you receive. My advice? NEVER EVER take any relic that increase damage received even by just 1. When you do, now most of late enemy can potentially oneshot you before you can have any way to build toward your combo.
I hope that review doesn't come across as hating. I love this game hence such long review. I love the way they decided to go for dice instead of cards as fresh air in this genre. I love many charms it have, and I can tell a lot of love have been put behind this game. I am a bit puzzled with lack of dice art given how much love was given to this game, and I hope devs see it is something they must work on.