Nowhere Prophet

When I heard about Slay the Spire I got real excited. Then I finally got to play it and it was a massive letdown. Bland art. Uninteresting story. Bland cards. Meh. I loved the idea but the game was as meh as mayo on white bread with tap water. I tried a bunch of other games to try to find what I've been missing. I tried Neoverse (good, but not great; better than STS). I tried Night of the Full Moon (good, almost great). Then I saw the trailer for this game and wanted to play it BAD. I got a chance to try it on Game Pass and... The only real negative here is that the game is glitchy. REAL glitchy. As in sometimes it won't save. Sometimes a UI element will get stuck on the screen. Sometimes it will wipeout all your progress and you will have to start over again. I have found these bugs in every version of the game I have tested. But it still gets five stars because... I thought this was a game where you have one kind of deck, grow it, get wiped out, start over. I thought this was a game where you just play through different random scenarios. It's actually mostly the opposite. As you play this game you can change your starting cards, you unlock different prophets with different hero decks, you get to add different characters to your decks, and those characters interact with the same scenarios in different ways. No matter how many times you get a cheap death, a quick win, or barely survive a terrible struggle, the game keeps you coming back. The gameplay loop is satisfying. The music is enjoyable. The interface is polished. But most of all, the battles are fun! You're always trying to get the right items and combos to get the best synergy, and trying to outwit the OP computer player, and trying out new cards and hero combinations. The sheer number of cards for followers is the most impressive thing. Every time I think I've seen them all there are more insane follower cards with crazy abilities and that keeps the game really fresh. They are all VERY thematic.

Honestly not sure what to say. The game is beautiful, tactical and full of surprises. The love and passion of the team just condenses like sweat on the surface of this games many many many very sweaty, very hungry disciples. Unknown Prophet feels like a tasteful combination of Slay the Spire, Darkest Dungeon & The Banner Saga with a style all its own - from the lore passages to the character portraits there’s just something so warm & unsettling about it all. The game has its faults for sure - progression is hella slow, boss encounters seem pretty divisive, enemy AI is often laughably stupid and the artwork can sometimes be a little hard to read at a glance - but outside of all that the game shines and the devs deserve a massive hug from the universe - if they haven’t already received it.

Fun! But has some minor flaws, which hampers it's replayability. // +Gameplay (fun and original) // +World (I wanna see more games in this universe) // +Art (nice style) // -Progression (it's very slow, also requirments for next upgrade is not listed) // -Sluggish (missing speed up options, after you get used to the gameplay you sorta want to speed things up a bit) // -Balance (Explorers and Echo just seems to beat everything by a decent margin compared to anything else I've unlocked so far) // +-Lanes (I was hoping they whould be a bigger part of the tactics)

TL;TR: first 5 hrs hard, next 15 nice, next 20 run in circles, after that, exaltation then in free fall. ---- The promise looked good, and for the first 20 hours or so kept it well enough. There's some replayability there, but it's far away from FTL, which I saw this game often compared to. Playing was fun for the part, when I didn't felt either raped by the RNG (the unfairness reminded me at Invisible, Inc.) , or the inability to get some synergies between your two decks, your card pool and your items. But yeah, if you manage to get some real nice synergies, pwning is very enjoyable. Of course, the enemy has these synergies build in. I did not unlock everything nor did all achievements. I've read a lot of people complaining over the AI. I too saw moves that made no sense, but that was ok for me, as i did mistakes, too - and there's no rewind last action (always loved that in warhammer, as i tend to missclick once in a while). That points given, the difficulty could/should be lower, or the unfairness compensated in better ways. Yes, I could have played with more focus and energy, and the game forgives only few mistakes. However I still completionisted Into The Breach, which feels superior in every way (except the story). The story is ok so far, but it seems like reading the (very unfinished) wiki helps putting the image together. The devs anwsered two emails and seemed both dedicated and friendly. Though, as a gog-user, I dislike their activity on the steam discussion board. ---- Still hate that gog forbids editing reviews. Please change this soon!