Floppy Knights Review (DogFrog)
Amazing turn based deckbuilder, the thing that stands out the most is how insanely polished it is, the menus, animations, transitions, sound effects are so slick and effortless. Great art and music, simple yet charming story.
This game just "gets" what makes a turn-based tactics game good, the importance of movement, enemy ranges, interesting combos, unit variety and victory conditions that have enough variety to feel specific without being polarising unlike other indies that have insanely long survival missions or mission where you cannot spawn other units.
The game also has a really good difficulty curve where all missions feel challenging but only the boss or chapter climaxes are intimidating and grand enough to feel like big events, but the tension leans towards excitement instead of frustration.
The games balance in general great because I frequently find myself disagreeing with the "best card" lists touted by other websites and players. The leader and faction balance however misses the mark, with Monsters feeling under-powered by forcing you into a very specific play style and Hooligans feeling overpowered because of their versatility and speed.
The game also has a generous amount of content thanks to updates (which contain entire new chapters with new units and minor mechanics) and challenge levels, with the challenge levels being the standout, pre-made decks force you to adapt to various play styles in interesting ways, some involve one turn kills, others abusing the fog of war and poison or just using your leader as opposed to an army of minions.
Word of caution though, despite this games cute exterior, its hard, and I mean significantly harder than the advance wars or most other turn based strategy games, and definitely isn't for the relatively inexperienced if you are going for a large completion percent.
The story is also pretty breezy, with surprisingly well written dialog but ultimately the situations are fairly simple and more of an excuse to play cards and beat up baddies with characters being fairly predictable and one note, despite this its very charming and a joy to read.
There simply isn't anything else like this right now, my main problem with most turn based strategy games is that it just seems to be aping the big games (Advance wars and Fire Embelm) in the indie scene, this has its own identity and most importantly they decided to limit their scope and scale, resulting in an insanely polished and enjoyable game.
I'm almost sad that there likely wont be a sequel to such greatness. I can see a Floppy Knights two with basically just "more" stuff being exceptional, with the spooky DLC showing that an entire new faction is basically already complete, a story with a slightly bigger scope but retaining that great difficulty curve, interesting moment-to-moment game play and exceptional polish and aesthetics.
This game wont give you a billion hours like other roguelike card games, its quite linear, but what is here is extremely refined and when on sale it's basically highway robbery for such a quality experience, BUY BUY BUY!