Card Hunter

Anybody in the beta for this? http://www.cardhunter.com/
I received a beta invite about two weeks after signing up.

Interesting concept and captures some of the tactical side of D&D. The randomness of the card draws can be frustrating, though; some fights you just wait for some good combat cards to no avail...

Not much real role-playing involved, but a fun diversion. Some of the higher level battles are quite challenging.

Been in the beta since the beginning of the year. It's definitely come a long way in the last six months. Like you said, no role-playing, and honestly I find the "story" rather weak. I'm enjoying the mechanics of it a lot though.

The randomness can be a problem on occasion, as it is with any game. However, part of the tactics of the game is using what you get. Draw three moves and no attacks? Move out of range/sight until next round. Furthermore, a big part of the strategy is deck building and interaction. Not drawing what you want? Give your priest more deck cycling (Inspiration, etc). Equip non-weapon items with attacks. So on and so forth.

If I have one critique of the game, it's that early on when you don't have many items you can't really fully engage in deck building. Sure, you can buy items, but gold is rather scarce and you really need to keep most of the items you win (they don't sell for much anyway).

Also, I'm not a big fan of multi-player in any game, and Card Hunter is no exception. As it stands I feel MP is a bit biased towards pay-to-win. You get a starter deck with decent items for free, but you'll still be losing a fair number of MP battles until you get better cards (hint, if you can, get the dwarf deck, easily the best). Rewards are mostly random, but winning MP matches can guarantee better items depending on how many you win each day. There is a rare shop, but the prices are so high and sell prices so low you'll be grinding for gold a lot for one item (boring, IMO).

LightPhoenix said:

If I have one critique of the game, it's that early on when you don't have many items you can't really fully engage in deck building. Sure, you can buy items, but gold is rather scarce and you really need to keep most of the items you win (they don't sell for much anyway).

Click to expand...

I've been playing for a couple of months, but I agree that the game can be tough at the start when you don't have many items/cards yet. Actually it is a rather weird version of the Free2Play business model: If you want to spend money on this game, it would be best to spend that money early on, when you get the most bang for your bucks. Buying the extra adventures, a month of Card Hunter Club for getting extra items, and transforming some pizza into gold to buy chests and items will get you started quicker. But once you played the campaign through twice, you rarely find new items any more, so paying for them wouldn't be worth it. Of course the game now ends at level 20, and will go until level 50 later.

I very much like the tactical turn-based gameplay, which is in fact somewhat similar to 4E D&D, just with random cards instead of powers. As LightPhoenix said, the skill is in building a deck for a specific battle, the same equipment isn't optimal for every battle. Using cards that cycle through your deck faster is part of that deckbuilding, and helps with the randomness.