Thanks to INTI CREATES for the review code
Title: Card-En-Ciel
System: Steam
Price: $24.99
Release Date: 10/23/2024
Story
In this Card-battling RPG adventure, you take control of Neon, a detective who enters a virtual reality and befriends someone needing their aid to rid the virtual world of all sorts of bugs! This ends up feeling like an Inti Creates crossover of sorts, kinda… See, a bunch of Inti IPs do appear in this game, but a bunch of parody/imitators of other popular IP show up here as well.
So while you may end up running into Umbraclaw and Gunvolt characters, you’ll also run into characters from Not Secret of Mana and Not Digimon, among other worlds meant to be an IP they don’t own the rights to. It really feels odd seeing the characters discuss the lore behind an IP that flat out doesn’t exist, which makes it apparent to me that Inti clearly would have gone with crossovers with the real deals if they could.
Otherwise, the main story is pretty much nothing to write home about. You see character development between the main duo as you go along, but with the world themes not correlating to many real games, the in-world scenarios are uninteresting, though they definitely try to get really far out there at points with silliness.
Presentation
Card-En-Ciel continues the Inti standard of a sharp anime artstyle, with the pre-dungeon menu being a very animated rendition of Neon’s assistant girl, to give an indicator of that character design habit. Still, being that this is a game about a bunch of worlds thrown together, the art styles do vary slightly, but are close enough that the assorted cards in a deck and different enemies don’t really look too out of place from Neon. Yes, Gunvolt and Kuon look nice together in a hand of cards!
With that said, the worst part of the presentation comes from the visual design of the dungeons. Just a bunch of dull, boring squares meant for you to fight enemies on, and even when in a different world, the squares don’t get all fancied up to match that world. Oh sure, there are plenty of Muses with theme songs that kick in ala Gunvolt, and those moments make the background interesting, but otherwise the dungeon maps are very generic and dull looking to the point I could throw 2 screenshots from different dungeons at you back to back, and outside of the floor layout you wouldn’t be able to tell much of a visual difference.
That being said, while the battles aren’t too distinctive with their backgrounds either, the Muses have a bigger visual impact here, along with the enemies you’ll run into. Boss fights often have a very fancy cut-in effect showing off the Muse’s animation, and even your own cards can trigger back to back assortments of cut-ins depending on which cards you pick up along the way. It makes the battles very chaotic at times, but once you get the hang of the combat loop it won’t get in the way for too terribly long. It helps to make the endboss fight of a world a lot more memorable than the random enemies you fight leading up to one.
When it comes to the sound, Card-En-Ciel has a solid assortment of tunes. Lots and I mean lots of vocal themes for all the Muse action, along with pretty typical battle/dungeon themes that didn’t really irritate me lead to a decent OST, even if it isn’t one I’d personally buy. Feels like the music theming leans more on the Gunvolt universe side than the Blaster Master Zero tier stuff I prefer for my Inti music, but that isn’t a bad thing at all.
What might be irritating to some is the voice acting. Inti has been doing English dubs a lot lately and Card-En-Ciel is another solid one with a good set of voice actors, including some that reprise their roles from Umbraclaw or Gunvolt whenever you get their appropriate cards. The voice work in dialogue scenes is solid, and the VAs clearly give it their all.
The problem with the VA is that if you don’t rush to turn the combat dialogue off ASAP, you will be overwhelmed by the constant chatter every turn. The same quips and phrases over and over as you draw a new hand will drive you absolutely insane, and they just never stop in battle! While I get what they were going for, I at least wish they made the cards have more dialogue variety so their repetitive cries wouldn’t drive someone insane.
Gameplay
Card-En-Ciel is a Roguelike deckbuilder, where you go into dungeons based on different worlds and fight with a randomly generated deck of cards, which grants the power of both attacking and movement. If you want to discard an individual card, you’ll move one tile in the direction that card indicates, and in combat enemies will have a countdown to using their attack, so being able to move out of the way before ending a turn (which makes the enemy pull off their attack regardless of countdown time) is handy. To beat a dungeon, just clear a certain amount of floors and take on the end boss, growing your deck for that dungeon in the process.
There are different types of cards to play, and all use your points up in differing ways, while leading to plenty of good combo opportunity. You have your typical attacks, which deal damage to the opposing foe, but you also have cards that deal Break damage; basically, it cuts down a secondary meter that severely weakens the enemy when depleted, allowing you to do extra damage and completely negate their attack. Like other card games, you have cards that help your deck by letting you draw more or pull off an effect rather than an attack, and as a final bit of help, you have yellow Action cards that if timed to go off when an enemy performs an attack, will lead to a timing event where if pulled off correctly, you dodge the attack and damage the opponent.
Honestly, this is a pretty fun gameplay loop! Yes, you could just rush to the floor boss and speed through a dungeon, but then you’d have less cards to pull from and the action meter of the floor would increase, making the floor more dangerous in the process. So you have a fun little risk/reward system right off the bat, and the combat is fun enough I always found it worth clearing out floor tiles of enemies to gain more cards and upgrades, and one of said upgrades can be a health refill, which becomes very crucial as you near the boss and you inevitably take damage from tougher foes. The battle system in Card-En-Ciel is really darn fun, the roguelike nature of a dungeon run is solid, and the presentation is fun enough, so just why did it take a bit longer for me to get to this review?
Well, that would have to do with how despite the fun loop of Card-En-Ciel, it still manages to feel like a slog. A really, really big slog. Different difficulties for dungeons is a big help to mitigate frustration from a last-minute dungeon loss, (with the easiest difficulty providing extra continues) but there are times where you may feel like you’re doing good with a run only to encounter an enemy or the end boss and realize your deck doesn’t have good cards to counter it.
Yes, you can run away and yes, you can continue to build your deck, but that just means the dungeon runs take longer with your deck being partly determined by luck. Despite only having three floors to it, one early dungeon took me 30 minutes to clear because my deck was weak and I had to go around the boring looking dungeon just to buff it enough to survive the boss. On the other hand, I got a great deck in another dungeon which made me clear it out in 15 minutes no problem. It just feels weirdly inconsistent, and if it wasn’t for the ability to suspend a dungeon run for later, I’d feel like the game is impossible to pick up and play.
Thankfully, there are a few other non-story related things to make the game a bit more fun. There’s PVP, which I was eager to try until I ended up waiting and waiting and realizing I just couldn’t get any players to fight me, nearly a month after launch. Bummer, but if that takes off or you get a private match going, I can absolutely see that being the best part of the game by far, since the combat system is good enough to work in a 1v1 setting. There are also Daily and Weekly dungeons randomly given to you, letting you unlock more stuff and gain EXP for trying them, but since that’s more of the same dull Dungeon structure of the main game, this is really a thing I can only recommend if you want to go all in for the long-haul.
Conclusion
In the end, Card-En-Ciel was a game with a really, really fun combat system, but dungeon design that’s just painfully boring, and a weird, unfulfilling crossover structure that mixes both real games in with copycats of other IP, which makes me wonder what the heck Inti was going for with that idea. If the dungeon layouts or backgrounds were more interesting, I’d be able to deal with the tediousness at points, since as a deckbuilder roguelike I really did have fun with the game. Sadly, the times I’d play it I’d have to basically binge it for a long session, since these dungeon layouts are just a dull chore to deal with.
If there was some sort of combat gauntlet to take on right away (skipping the dungeons for nonstop CPU battles until you lost), or if PVP was more populated so I could try that, I’d absolutely see myself playing this a lot more and having way more fun with it. But as it stands, Card-En-Ciel is just a decent time that will ultimately appeal to you more if you like Inti’s style a lot and are willing to deal with the bland barriers in the way of a very fun combat system.
I give Card-En-Ciel a 6 out of 10.