The good: cartoon graphics, scuzzy atmosphere, a variety of buffs and status effects to navigate. Combat and exploration gameplay is interesting – when the game allows players the chance to move.
The bad: Poorly balanced. Any game in which your team can be stunlocked to death from the first turn is rough, and DSD tries to make every encounter dangerous. Unfortunately, this means that your forward progress is always subject to a wipe solely on the basis of bad luck. The plot is nonsensical. And the game is full of padding as you can only heal by returning to the main base.
Extra credit: DSD might be the first card battler that I felt actually played like an older school, turn-based, menu-based RPG. Introducing decks and randomness to the formula is fun, and I’ll probably explore more games in this subgenre on the strength of the idea.
Final verdict: if I had not been doing this as part of a backlog challenge, I would have dropped this game halfway through. It’s out of ideas by then, and the ending is hardly any different from the rest of the game. This team stretched a few ideas at least 15 hours too far.
The bad: Poorly balanced. Any game in which your team can be stunlocked to death from the first turn is rough, and DSD tries to make every encounter dangerous. Unfortunately, this means that your forward progress is always subject to a wipe solely on the basis of bad luck. The plot is nonsensical. And the game is full of padding as you can only heal by returning to the main base.
Extra credit: DSD might be the first card battler that I felt actually played like an older school, turn-based, menu-based RPG. Introducing decks and randomness to the formula is fun, and I’ll probably explore more games in this subgenre on the strength of the idea.
Final verdict: if I had not been doing this as part of a backlog challenge, I would have dropped this game halfway through. It’s out of ideas by then, and the ending is hardly any different from the rest of the game. This team stretched a few ideas at least 15 hours too far.