Banners of Ruin

This game reminded me a bit of Deep Sky Derelicts; it is a party-based Darkest Dungeon-style rouge-like strategy card game with RPG elements. Instead of exploring Derelicts you are a party of fantasy animals navigating through the streets and alleys of a dangerous city in a quest for revenge. The core gameplay consists of fights with guards and such, in which you play cards from your hand to have your party members take actions, gaining loot (more cards) and experience but also potentially losing health and party members, neither of which is easily replaced. The game is relatively short - a complete run through the city (all the way to the final boss) takes maybe 5-6 hours. Being a rouge-like, dying and replaying it are part of the intended experience. There is enough variety in what happens during your voyage through the city each time to keep things interesting for a while - and you gain 'experience' through runs that unlocks new character classes and abilities, creating a feeling of progression. The game is not terribly difficult though the difficulty does ratchet up significantly during several boss fights - which is frustrating in that once you've got the hang of it you're left breezing through the regular fights just to try and knock over these difficult parts. The mood is quite athmospheric (think a dark fantasy version of the Wind in the Willows) and one of the strengths of the gamer. Though there isn't any story as such and the designers clearly went for a less-is-more approach with the story (we never even really find out what you are seeking revenge for) lots of the events you encounter in your journey through the city conjure up a vivid setting. Short version: A well-made but short strategy game - I got about a week's worth of solid entertainment out of this.

The game has a fun deck-building concept with room to strategize over card picks, and whether or not to spend money on party members vs resources. That plus the unlocks/upgrades for each class type that carry over to future games adds both replayability and, more importantly, a desire to replay to get those unlocks, even after beating a playthrough. Which is good since this is a rogue-lite where you will repeat the game. And it's a relatively short game, so losing doesn't make you feel like you've lost an enormous amount of progress. However, I wish there was more variety in the street cards and scenarios that come up. There's some limited shuffling of street cards, but ultimately every playthrough feels like it has a too-similar structure with X cards until fight 1, Y cards until fight 2, Z cards until the boss fight, etc, where you encounter the same fights across playthroughs (sure, they might swap fight 1 with fight 2, but at the end of the day it still feels like grinding through the exact same fights over and over). Would have increased replayability for me if they made things even more random, even whether or not you see any fights in a particular city section. The art style, music, and sound effects are all good. There's not much story to speak of, as the focus here is the card game -- not plot. Of note: when using an xbox 360 controller connected to PC, the controls have some bugs. Not enough to prevent playing the game, but enough to cause a few frustrating moments (ex. not being able to scroll or select at certain points and needing to resort to wildly flailing the invisible mouse pointer to highlight the right area). If you enjoy deck builders and games like Dominion, give it a try. Ultimately, a good concept with some things done right, but a lot of room to improve.

+ beautiful art-style and soundtrack + interesting lane mechanic in combat and party mechanic for a card-game + variety of different playstyles and cardcombos + deck-building is more reliable and less gambling than in similar card-games, because of character specific cardslots for weapon- and talentcards - there are misleading descriptions for card-mechanics - a bit more variety for the soundtrack would be good - not enough animations - the "alley"-mechanic for progressing through encounters should be more maplike in terms of visualization and could need deeper mechanics than a simple "count-down", but the basic idea is fine - art-style and scenery are too good for having no in-depth story elements and no voiceovers - extreme ramp-up in difficulty for some fights - characters must be unlocked through tavern-encounters with is not in line with experience- progression, there are also not a enough encounters towards hiring characters in general All in all I want more - I am very intrigued by the setting, the lane combat mechanic as well as the composition of choosing characters, talent- and weaponcards, which reduce the randomness you have to face in deckbuilding by a reasonable amount.

Incredibly fun. One of my favorite parts of the game is thinking up devastating strategies to melt opponents' HP and armor down to nothing. Artwork is stellar, music is thematic, and the game keeps it light with bits and pieces of humor in some of the card art. I highly recommend this game, truly; especially if you like Slay the Spire. It has enough similar elements to feel familiar without making it feel like a copy of the game with the levelling system, party and formation management, and equipment. So far, it has decent replay value in just the gameplay itself- I've beaten the base line already, but I've yet to do the substory within, and haven't gotten all the unlocks, which to be honest, isn't that hard, but I personally don't find that to be an issue.