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
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