Games worth discovering

A card game in beta that's worth checking out

4K View2023-09-28

I've played dozens of online card games in my life, but the genre is getting quite stagnant to say the least. Mobile card games especially tend to oversimplify what was simple to begin with, so I thought I would never find anything new in this category of games. But I found this one - Epic Card Battle 3.

What's good about it

1) Card stats

The first thing that catches the eye is the abundance of stats on cards. In primitive card games you have only the standart - power, toughness, tribe, cost and effect. I like complexity in games, but even I was pleasantly surprised how the cards look here. Apart from regular stats, creatures here have - action speed, class, damage type, resistances, faction and race which are separate, different layers of defence and so on. The number of variables on each card increases number of ways to make cards different and unique which is the core element of any TCG.

2) Combat mechanics

The combat also surprised me, because it changes the usual format of starting with 1 mana, drawing, attacking, passing turns and the usual. Here you start with 6 mana (in standart mode) and you play your creatures and spells at the same time as the opponent. You see the cards only after they resolve, which adds a huge mindgames element to the gameplay and creates room for non-perfect play. You draw a big portion of your deck, which eleminates the boring "lost in draw" situations - you always have some combo avaliable to play. There are only several turns to play and then the cards go into autobattle mode until one player wins. This is also a new take on the mechanics which solves the issue of a boring "top-deck mode" that some classic card games often end up as.

3) Game pacing

As a result of having a limit to play your turs, the games are usually very similar in length - you never win or loose too quickly and no game is a long and tedious draw. You play your combo, see the board state, develop further and play counters, then finalize with some other fixes and answers. Whoever was better at it - wins. You can even afk the final stage of the game if you need to. Fast matches are perfect for me, because I usually game at work.

Whats bad so far

1) Beta

The game is still early in the development, so some translations, ui design and stuff like that is lacking in some parts.

2) The art

The art by the most part is very pretty, but I fell like it was somewhat Ai-assisted, so it looked quite similar for some cards. Also the factions and races are not different enough. Most creatures are just hot babes, which I won't complain about, but they look the same. You can't see if it's, human, elf, dragonborn or undead girl. It's just a girl in armor with booba. Atleast make the skin color distinguishebly different.

To conclude it all - this game is worth checking out for tcg players who are bored of the same old format. It's refreshing to see a game, that's not afraid to be complex. This game has great potential if they put enough time and effort into developing it. And if they add different game modes, such as Battlegrounds from Hearthstone - the player count will surge.