Shogun Showdown
A genuinely unique 'card' battler
Why
- Deep gameplay and plenty of replayability
- Makes some big changes to the card battler format that pay off
- Cool pixel art and varied scenarios
Why Not
- You want a game with a clearly defined/visible endpoint
- You're heavily motivated by story
Impressions
This is a great game which clearly lives up to its overwhelmingly positive reviews, but after ~3 hours I'm dropping it.
It's not the game; it's me. The gameplay is great; moving from the typical many cards/few upgrades to few cards/many upgrades (and cooldowns on cards rather than drawing) delivers something that feels truly different to other card battlers. Despite the limited selection of cards, the upgrades you can apply to them, varied enemy types and inherent abilities of the protagonists combine to provide more than enough of the variety needed for a successful roguelike. Most actions will consume a 'turn', decreasing the cooldowns of all your cards while allowing each enemy to make their move. You'll need to constantly balance dealing with immediate threats, ensuring you don't leave yourself open for a counterattack and leaving resources to deal with the next wave.
The pixel art looks great, and the background music is an excellent fit for the style they're going for. Runs are varied by not just the gameplay above, but alternate/randomised paths to the Shogun, as well as a week system where after defeating the Shogun you advance to the next day, increasing his difficulty and that of all other enemies. The devs clearly know how to make a good roguelike, had a unique idea and implemented it well.
So why am I dropping it so soon? Well, I'm unfortunately not a uni student anymore, and unlike Cobalt Core there's no clear ending point/story to Shogun Showdown. In CC there was a clear story, which advanced with almost every run and was clearly going to have a conclusion in some reasonable amount of time. Shogun Showdown definitely has a story, but it's delivered in a kinda souls-like fashion through bits of flavour text. After my 3 hours I didn't know much more than 'Shogun bad, we kill', which was kinda obvious from the title. Though the ramping difficulty of the week system is probably a godsend for people looking to sink 100s of hours into this, it's not something I'm willing to invest that much time into when there are so many other games to play (and my heart really belongs to the Spire anyway).
Despite dropping it 'early', I had a lot of fun trying out Shogun Showdown's fresh take on the genre, and I'd wholeheartedly recommend it even to people in a similar situation to me of not having the time to dedicate to finishing it.