Overview
This is one of SNK's games from the whole Capcom and SNK team up. Now, SNK making a card game? They only do fighting games. You would be surprised that this is considered one of the best card games ever. Let's just get to the review of strangest vs. game ever
Graphics 9/10
A very nice looking game. The cards themselves are very good looking. They all have very nice looking drawings on each card. Some are really great, like Yamakazi and Zero Akuma. None of the card effects will blow your mind. There really basic like a flash or sparkly stuff. The world is great. Very pokemonesque sprites. They’re most definitely better then them at that era. Everything is very colorful. The drawings are the real winner here.
Gameplay/Controls 10/10
This is what makes and breaks a card game and this game plays beautifully. The game works like any card game. You start with a starting deck filled with all the people from your corresponding game (Capcom or SNK). The cards are split into 2 types: Character and Action Cards. Action cards are your attackers made up of SNK and Capcom. They have 2 stats to keep it simple. BP and SP. BP are your battle points, and is basically your attack. They range from the pathetically weak (Alfred at 200) to insane strength (Geese and Zero Akuma at 1500!). It works very simple attacking. You attack. IF your opponent has any character cards, he can choose to defend. When this happens we use a simple formula. Your attack card's BP minus the defending card's BP. For example, Zero Akuma attacks with 1500 BP. The defending card is Krauser at 1200. The Krauser is ko'ed, and leaves Zero Akuma with 300. If the attacking card still has power, the rest of the damage goes to the player. Each player has a set of Life Points of 1000, 2000, or 3000. Think of Yugi-Oh in short.
The other stat is Sp, or special Points. These points let you play your action cards. These action cards have special effects, like Nothingness, which kills off all cards less than 400 Bp to Laundry, which puts all the cards in your discard pile back into your deck. Power doesn't win everything you know.
Now there is a few advanced moves and that is the team up attack. You basically use SP to use 2 or 3 cards to dish out extreme damage. But it also has its drawbacks. When you attack, your character goes into freeze phase. This pretty much disables your character until your next turn, leaving you defenseless. When you attack with team ups, you can only defend once, and only on the first card of the team-up.
Then there is what's called backing up. Each card shows what cards can be played on another one, which will power it up by 300. The cards that can play on each other each have some sort of relation to each other be it either obvious or really obscure. It can really help make some cards into even bigger monsters.
Then there are the special powers on some cards. Similar to pokemon powers from that TCG, certain cards have special abilities that can really turn around a game. There is 3 types of power, instant, chose, and continuous. Instant is a power that takes immeadility when the situation arises. It can be when it's played or when it attacks. An example would be Akuma's Shun-Goku-Satsu, which KO's 1 character instantly or Morrigan's Life Sucker, which gives the character life points when it damages the enemy. Then there is chose. You can select these powers from a menu and it ends your turn. Examples are Morrigan(P), which KO's one of your guys and raises your SP by 8. Then there is continuous. These cards have effects that stay as long at the card is in play. Examples are Terry's Terry Rush which never puts him into freeze phase or Jedah's P.D.C. which lets you draw a card every time he damages the enemy. The game has simple rules but has tons of strategy. Now let's got on to the playing field and the card battle rules.
Card Battles start off simple. You challenge people, accept and we get going. We then proceed to find out who starts via a random select and the Ump from holding up the flag of the player who goes first. We then go one to the playing field, which looks like this
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[] [] []----Card spaces
You have a deck with 50 cards, and you’re not allowed more then 3 cards of each one. You can only play 3 at a time before you run out of space to put anymore. You lose when a)you lose all your life points b)you run out of cards. You start off with 5 cards in your hands. You draw one normally each turn. Its basic card rules form here. When you win, you get a random assortment of cards.
As for controls, how do you mess up the controls of a card game? Well this game doesn't and everything works very fine.Everythign handles well, the interface is easy and is in o way confusing. Not much to say here
Sound/Music 7/10
Meh, for a handheld game it isn't very important. It's ok for a handheld game. They're 8-bit versions of some SNK and Capcom games. There is a different tune for each of the areas, but there is only one battle tune. The sound effects are ok, they won't get annoying and are varied, but I turned them off just because I could
Replay Value 10/10
Trying to get every card is a must here. Messing around with your deck with different combos. Matching wits with a human opponent is even better. Strategy is truly put to the test. I'm still playing it today 5 years after I got myself one
Overall 10/10
Easily the greatest card game ever.Nothing beats creating some decks featuring some forgotten SNK and Capcom duded and just putting in the fanboys favorites.I would love to see an update for the DS. This is the first in a barrage of reviews by me.
Next up on the chopping list is Match of the millennium, Giga wing, Gunstar heroes(not SNK or Capcom, but still an awesome game), and 1944 and its offshoots. Hope you like my review. Feedback is appreciated
- by el_tri
