Yukes has brought us a turn based strategy card game titled Neverland Card Battles. The game features multiplayer via Ad Hoc and customizable card decks. The single player storyline follows a demons VS humans tale. The only hope for the humans is the Dominators. Dominators can utilize special powers from Spectral Cards. You begin your journey as a Dominator named Galahad. Galahad is the character but the cards are the real star of the show here. As you progress you’ll gain access to different cards that you can build a custom deck with. In all you can have up to 3 decks that you can arrange for different situations. You will be asked which deck to use at the start of each level. Configuring decks correctly is where you can really set the game up for your advantage.
The rules are similar to any strategy based card game. Each card has special abilities for defense or offense. You can only have a limited number of cards in your hand that you can play. Cards on the board and in your hand have a turn by turn cost associated with them. The points system used for the cost of cards is based on the number of squares that you have under your control.Control of the land means a lot in this game. If you do not have enough land to foot the bill for the cards you have in hand you will be forced to discard some.
The first few levels serve as tutorials for how to play the game. The learning curve is not terribly steep. The overall goal is to reduce your opponents HP to 0 before you hit 0. Getting to that goal can be hard. Each opponent you face is different and the AI seems to have a good grasp of which cards to play. So you’ll have to adapt your strategy accordingly. As you progress through the levels they will add more things in to consider for winning the game. I think the difficulty progression is done really well. The game does not get overly frustrating and as your skill increases the game continues to provide a challenge.
There is some repetitiveness in playing this game. A lot of the time you will be just trying to get more territory so that you can actually use your cards. The beginning of each level can make the turns a challenge to stay awake for. After a dozen turns you will be able to start engaging with your opponent on a competitive level. When a battle does take place between your characters and the opponents nothing spectacular happens. You are given the opportunity to select a card to play if applicable and then the characters perform a 2 second battle and the HPs are taken off accordingly. If one of the characters loses their entire HP they are removed from the board. The moves are pretty much all the same.
The presentation of this game is lacking for me. Graphically the game is below that of many average PSP titles available today. The graphics lack sharpness and the gotcha factor. Nothing here really grabbed me. I thought more would be done with the cards or at least the battle scenes. The soundtrack did not help either. Don’t plan on being blown away.
I feel like the game’s biggest strength is the multiplayer which is only ad hoc so sadly I did not get to test it. I could see this game being really fun playing against others. Having another human in the room would at least add some exciting animation during a battle, especially if you get one of those animated game players that jumps and dances around acting out every moment of the game.
Final Verdict
I cannot recommend this game to anybody really. The story is good but playing the game is just not enough for me. I think playing an actual strategy card game is far more entertaining. Neverland Card Battles poor presentation and tiring game play cripple a good storyline. Limiting the multiplayer to ad-hoc also cripples another would be strength of the game.
Score
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