izigame.me

UPDATE: Since posting this review, the game has received a massive balance patch that undid a lot of the problems I'd had with it. The review is kinda obsolete as a result, and I dont want to re-write the whole blasted thing. Look, just go buy it. This is excellent.
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Well this is a weird one. This is good... and can at times be bloody brilliant... but there's some very odd factors here that can create a feel that some players just wont jive with. While at the same time, RNG can be high. Yet it isnt quite as high as it can seem at first. Sort of.
It took me awhile to figure out what I wanted to write about with this one, because it has an issue that I just couldnt quite put my finger on, but I think I've got it now: This game is a slow burner. A freaking CHAOTIC one, but still, a slow burn. A long haul. In other deckbuilders (most of them anyway) individual battles and such tend to be very short. But not this one. An individual fight can go on for quite awhile, many rounds, with each round potentially involving a lot of individual card plays & other things before you decide to stand (or bust).
Now that's fine, but when you combine it with the nature of Blackjack itself, it creates a sort of sensation that you dont have all that much control. At least, for a time. See, the decision-space that you have available to you is entirely dependent on what cards are showing up, one by one. This being Blackjack, you cant draw a card, look at it, and just not play it (except when you can). So unlike almost all other games in this genre, you are, for the most part, not presented with a hand of cards where you make choices from every single round. Rather, cards are drawn, they Do Things, and you decide to hit or stand. The opportunity to make decisions (that arent just hit and stand) is, therefore, very erratic. You have to grab cards between fights that CREATE those decisions in future fights. And that, I think, is part of what can make this feel too RNG focused at times, because that just aint how this genre normally works. And when you add that to the fact that runs can be darned long, well... yeah.
There are actually a lot of types of decisions that you can have though, IF you pick cards that offer them. For instance, some cards will offer you choices the moment they show up. There's one card that's like, Geralt from the Witcher or something, and when he shows up, you get to burn one of the cards your opponent currently has played. Sometimes this will whiff, sure, if it's the first draw of the round. But other times, this choice can have a big impact. Or maybe you draw something that's like, okay, this is going to copy a card in your discard temporarily, choose which one. Other cards are more controlled. "Exploit" effects are found on some cards, and this wont do anything at first. Rather, it's an option that can be activated when the card is ALREADY played and sitting there. Like, one of my favorites is just "AI Generated Card", which has a random value when played, but also has an exploit effect: activate it to create another AI card... which is again randomized (could be a negative value even) and dump it on your opponent. What's that? They already stood, with a full blackjack? Well too bad, now they bust maybe because you just dumped a bizarro 9 onto their side. The third type is "handy" cards. You dont normally have a hand of cards in Blackjack of course, nothing that you're holding and waiting to play, until these show up. These you can indeed hold, and just play whenever, which produces the tactical options it sounds like it does. These are the main types of choices that can be available to you DURING each fight... there are of course other choices between fights, events and such.
The issue with that of course is that if your deck just doesnt have many cards in those types, you wont be making many decisions during a fight, and the deck can feel like it's just on auto, just based on luck, even if you're winning. It also means that the early game... which can be long... DEFINITELY feels like not much is happening. But also, there's the Advantage system. To use an Exploit card, or play a held card, you must spend an advantage point, and getting those can be... strange. Unless you're playing on just the starting difficulty, you'll choose a weird chip thing after the first fight, and this will determine how you will actually get advantage points during fights. And these are... all over the place. Certain chips can make it very easy to get points. While others are very situational. And a couple just seem utterly worthless. This can have an ENORMOUS effect on the RNG factor of the run. A bad chip means that even if you've got a lot of exploit or handy cards, they might simply not be able to do anything, and that's not a good feel. The chip concept honestly feels a little busted, and I could see some players just restarting over and over until they get one that doesnt suck.
The other big issue, at least so far, is the decks. Different suits do different things when they are involved in scoring a blackjack. Hearts will cause healing, and the others do... things that arent healing. Seriously the deck that starts with the heart suit cards seems like the one that's actually, truly viable... the others always feel like I'm trying to fight King Kong with a butter knife, they're just so darned ineffective. Since the game is so long and there's a high RNG factor, that means a lot of attrition, and healing is bloody rare... unless you are using heart cards, since any blackjack score is a chance to heal when you've got some of those involved. I mean really the decks just feel ridiculously lopsided. The not-hearts ones absolutely dont feel like they're worth anything. Heck one of them, the "nothings" deck, doesnt do anything at all! That's not very interesting. This part of the game, the deck choices, seems like it needs a revamp, really. And the non-heart suits need some sort of buff. Just SOMETHING to make them not feel so terrible. Or just, you know, balance the non-heart healing better. Something, I dunno.
Other than that stuff, the overall gameplay is pretty wild. The cards can be all sorts of loopy, you never know what weird thing is going to happen next, and everything is erratic. At one point I deleted my opponent's entire deck, just burned the whole thing away, and the remaining rounds consisted of her just saying "I'M OUT OF CARDS" over and over again. And sometimes your own cards will sort of work against you, depending on the timing of them showing up and such (as expected, considering the nature of the game).
There's a lot more I could say here, like talking about the events & shops and such, the different paths, that one stupid boss that wins by losing over and over, or other things. But if you're interested in this one, I'd suggest having a look at some full runs on Youtube. It's very hard to give a sense of what this one is like just from reviews.
If it meshes with you, you'll probably love it, if it doesnt, you'll probably hate it, not much inbetween, I think.