Meh
- The artstyle.
- The negotiation and combat mechanics is a not my thing.

Will give it another try once I have time

Beautiful throwback art, slickly animated with lots of personality. The world-building is surprisingly deep, with three very different perspectives and settings in the same sketchy sci-fi world. The story is interesting too, with a handful of different branching points to encourage replayability. The depth and length of the story also adds a slightly prohibitive aspect to replays vs something like Slay the spire, but I assume rumble or daily challenge mode offer a stripped-down experience closer to those roguelike loops. The card play is a lot of fun, with each character offering distinct approaches for negotiation and combat, with a couple of build types to aim for on each side.

so there's two things that are on my mind about this one

1. the framing of the characters' stories makes the game seem like a series of tabletop rpg oneshots and i really like that

2. the obligatory sts clone elements -- daily challenge, ascensions, the unlock treadmill -- are just detrimental. i grew up with mtg, i'd read set spoilers on the weekend before prerelease tournament day. i promise you're not going to overwhelm me if you give me access to your comparatively tiny pool of cards immediately.

so, i don't know. in a lot of ways the game is great, but what do the cookie cutter gameplay elements do for it except for inflate playtime for those who will bother with it? i know i'm not gonna, anyway.

Eins vorneweg: Ich habe Slay the Spire nie gespielt.

Griftlands allerdings habe ich sehr gerne gespielt. Die beiden unterschiedlichen Kartenspiele Verhandlung und Kampf sind unterschiedlich genug sodass der Wechsel zwischen Beiden lange motiviert ohne dass man die Lust an den Duellen verliert. Ich persönlich habe dabei die Verwandlungen bevorzugt, da sie sich von anderen Kartenspielen doch deutlich abheben.

Neben dem soliden Kartenspiel überzeugt Griftlands aber vor allem durch sein Story-Telling. Man kann die Geschichte von 3 verschiedenen Helden spielen, wobei sich die Geschichten jeweils so stark voneinander unterscheiden, dass man hier wirklich sehr sehr viel guten Story Content geboten kriegt.

Während der Geschichte wird man immer wieder von zahlreichen NPCs konfrontiert und fast immer hat man die Wahl ob man ihnen helfen oder schaden möchte und dann natürlich noch ob mit Worten oder Gewalt. Dadurch gestaltet sich jeder Playthrough einzigartig und die Entscheidungen die man trifft haben sehr spürbare Konsequenzen, denn jeder einzelne NPC gibt dir einen mächtigen Buff oder Debuff je nachdem ob er dich liebt oder hasst.

Die 3 Stories sind alle gut erzählt, spannend und zahlreiche der Charaktere sind sehr gut geschrieben. Die Story motiviert einen somit eigentlich am meisten. Dieser Fokus ist hier noch viel stärker als in Hades, einem anderen story-lastigen Roguelike.

Allerdings geht dieser Story-Fokus so weit, dass es frustrieren kann, wenn man stirbt und die gesamte Geschichte noch einmal von vorne beginnen muss. Klar, man kann andere Entscheidungen treffen, aber grundlegende Story-Pfeiler ändern sich natürlich nicht.

Ehrlich gesagt hätte Griftlands für mich überhaupt kein Roguelike sein müssen. Als stinknormales Story-Spiel, in dem man vielleicht auch zwischendurch mal speichern und neu laden kann wenn etwas nicht klappt, hätte Griftlands genau so gut wenn nicht sogar besser funktioniert.
Denn obwohl man neue Karten freischaltet und somit in weiteren Playthroughs neue Möglichkeiten hat, und die Story-Komponente für weitere Playthroughs im Brawl-Modus minimieren kann, verspüre ich nicht wirklich die Motivation Griftlands weiterzuspielen nachdem ich die 3 Stories durchgespielt habe, denn wie bereits oben erwähnt, lebt Griftlands von der Story deutlich mehr als vom Gameplay.

A really interesting alternate take on the deckbuilding roguelike genre, though one that I think has too many moving pieces for me to stick with it in a meaningful way. I guess I can't "unlearn" Slay the Spire to say for sure but I certainly don't remember feeling overwhelmed by it in terms of the language and concepts it presented, and there's something a little too... much about Griftlands that is discouraging for repeat plays.

The length doesn't help, though it thankfully allows for mid-run saves, as otherwise that would be just as prohibitive as Returnal in that department if weirdly not moreso. It's a very slow-paced, narrative-focused roguelike with great worldbuilding and aesthetic, taking cues from the likes of TellTale's adventure series and Mass Effect to add interesting complexity to a card game, and it feels amazing when those elements come together. When I ended up killing too many people through the fights I was picking and gained notoriety for being a murderer, I actually felt it in the mechanics.

The conversation "fights" are also a refreshing spin on the formula; I don't know that it's a perfect metaphorical representation of conversations, but the simple act of differentiation from normal combat encounters makes the length and pace of this go over a lot better. Managing two separate decks is also interesting, but again maybe a little overwhelming.

It might be the kind of game where I'll just have to play more runs in order to get comfortable enough with the mechanics and options; and like Slay the Spire, numerous cards unlock for future playthroughs after a run is over, so maybe I would eventually find that perfect groove. I just don't know how often I'll be doing that due to the length of an individual run. Super cool though, and Klei has proven they can work with a multitude of genres and be quite successful at any of them.

Amazing deck building roguelite with some RPG decision making in the mix, it takes a lot of concepts and ideas from Slay The Spire but makes them better.
You can either fight your way through or talk your way through, each character has it's own way of playing for both talking and fighting and both ways have a lot of different builds to try with the decks.
Each character has it's own story that arch over a few day, you follow some scripted events and between them you mostly choose your own adventure, choose what quests to take and how to tackle them, choose which NPCs
to befriend and which to antagonize, all of your choices affect how you are gonna play that run.
Lastly it will take you a while to complete everything the game offers in terms of unlockables such as cards or perks.
Really interesting game that's worth keeping an eye on and a must play if you like roguelikes, deck builders or, even better, both.

A fairly highly customizable deckbuilding rougelite and the third game I've played by klei that is one of my favorites in its genre (along with Mark of the Ninja and Invisible Inc). Combines the usual battles you see in the genre with negotiation battles with a separate deck and its own gameplay elements as well as the ability to make friends and enemies through your actions.

There are three different characters to play as with their own cards to unlock but also their own unique passive features and card keywords focuses to build their decks around. Each has their own story to play through set in a unique area as well as having a more linear mode where you remove the story elements to complete a chain of jobs and boss fights over the course of a few days (while still being able to hire and befriend people). You can unlock a set of three random cards to choose from by completing quests or battles/negotiations (or you can take none of them to get bonus money), you can find merchants that sell cards, pay to have cards removed from your decks, and you can buy "grafts" that will give you permanent bonuses in combat or negotiations sometimes with negative trade offs. Characters you meet can be neutral towards you or can come to like, dislike, love, or hate you with certain dispositions making them more likely to help you or aid your enemies, charge you more or less for favors, be more accepting of negotiations against you, and characters that love or hate you will give you a passive bonus or penalty as long as they are alive.

Combat involves you drawing and playing cards with your available action points to do damage, add defense to yourself or allies, or to create a variety of status effects like bleed, counter, injure, impair, scorch, charge, draw, combo, etc while trying to either kill your enemies or to bring them down to a panic state of health where they will attempt to surrender. Accepting surrender might change events, cause them to like you, or cause them to show up in later events or just around the world. Killing your opponents will cause them to drop a card assigned to them but if not killed in a remote locations can often lead to friends of theirs hating you. The battles have a good variety of combat animations and nice to see touches like character blocking attacks with their weapons when they have built up enough defense to avoid damage.

Diplomacy battles are a more unique feature where both sides have a core argument they seek to protect while destroying their opponents, these battles also use your character's resolve instead of their HP. You try to play cards that damage your opponents arguments, play side arguments that fill a circle around your character and provide a variety of benefits while they remain in play, and stack composure onto your arguments so they avoid damage. There is some nice variety in these depending on the kind of characters you go up against. A military or police like character might try to plant evidence on you, giving you arguments that give you penalties if they manage to destroy them, thieves might create arguments that steal your cards, merchants keep inserting bribe cards into your deck that you can try to ignore or pay the cost in money to help destroy their arguments, cultists might have weak attacks but their side arguments can start to target all of your arguments at once for high damage. Going into negotiations where you are trying to be intimidating will add cards to your deck that give a bonus to your more aggression based cards. Having allies, pets, or friends in the area won't see them join you like they do in combat but they will appear as side arguments giving you helpful effects.

Cards have an experience value and once they hit that from using them the required number of times you will be able to upgrade them. The higher value cards give you two options to pick from with them usually either favoring different playstyles, having different passive benefits, or giving you an option of a more stable or random effect. Many of the default cards you start with have a much wider variety of upgrades that it will choose two options out of randomly, some just making them a bit better, some being more useful for a certain playstyle, and one possibility greatly increasing the effect of the card but permanently destroying it once used to give you more control of your future deck.

There is a good amount of customization for your playthroughs. In addition to the story modes just having different quests, side activities, paths, and boss spawns you can unlock permanent bonuses that stick with you between playthroughs, unlock powerful perks that you can choose three of to have active when you play, new card sets are unlocked for each character giving a wider variety to unlock while playing but also allowing you to turn sets you don't like off, a large number of mutator options can make the game easier or more difficult (even removing those character bonuses you unlock over time), and both modes of play have seven different prestige levels to play on with each higher level making the game more difficult in different ways (also supporting a beginner and story focused mode).

Looks good with good animations, writing is often entertaining, variety of deck types to focus on for each character, negotiation battles and making allies and enemies is a nice change up for the genre, and there are a lot of ways to change up how the game plays.

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1495215057227051010

I'm torn on this. Got addicted to it in late early access, beat Sal's route twice and lost many more runs. Her combat mechanics like combo and bleed stacking just felt so good. Beat Sal again and gun man for the first time when full release, but didn't feel the same grab. Slug man's mechanics just feel clunky and unfun to me. I don't feel quite enough control over what sort of deck I build. I suck ass at Slay the Spire, so maybe I just suck at this too. or maybe I just need to go get good at STS.

Somewhere in the possibility space bracketed by 80 Days and Sunless Sea/Skies there lies the perfect synthesis of mechanic and narrative, a game that assembles stories so fluidly as you play that you can't tell where the bespoke attention of the writers ends and the emergent storytelling of your particular playthrough begins.

Griftlands is not that game, but it reaches towards it as an ideal. It makes each run feel like its own little story with a grace Invisible Inc never managed, and the individual relationship with each NPC in each run makes the world feel alive in a way that outsizes the relatively simple social mechanics involved.

The deckbuilder mechanics are solid, too. It's not up to Slay the Spire's standard yet, but then again I haven't unlocked everything and Slay the Spire isn't even up to its own standard without everything unlocked. I'm sure I'll come back to this many times in the coming years.