This is clearly a game that has a lot of depth to it. There are five different deck archetypes with substantially different play patterns, which can be either mixed and matched or played on their own to create a stunning diversity of builds. For better or for worse, I mostly didn't engage with those builds. I just beelined to the most broken thing I could find and smashed my way through the rest of the game.

To be clear, this isn't a complaint. I love a game that gives the player the tools to break it in half, and my experience even once I'd found a few infinite combos was far from rote. Between extra enemy health bars, death effects, and combo-disrupting status ailments there was still plenty of strategizing to do on my way to killing the final boss in a single turn. And the fact that I was able to strategize, overcome those obstacles, and win so thoroughly even so is a mark of quality.

I do still think this game does put a bit too much of a thumb on the scale towards the power of its high-end cards in story mode. Every color has at least a card or two (rare and demanding though they may be) that completely cracks open the economy, and since you carry a single collection through the entire game this means that most players will eventually have a deck of tremendous power even if it's not quite as broken as mine. In a way, the card set seems more tuned towards a run-based game than a collection-based game.

It's possible that this actually does address that issue. There's a run-based mode that I never got around to trying, and it may be that that's where the game balance most thoroughly shines. But if that's the case, why hide it away?