Duel of Summoners

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Duel of Summoners

by Other Contributors Oct 3, 2017 | 1 Votes | 1 Played | 0 Reviews

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8 rate

Genres:

T/CCG , MMO

Graphics:

2D

Labels:

Anime , Player vs Player (PvP) , Collectible Cards

Platforms:

Publishers:

Nexon Challenge a variety of different opponents, along with their unique and intriguing decks, some with archetypes you have ever seen before. Not to mention, every single card got their own lovely piece of artwork to make them just that little bit more memorable every time you have them stored in your collection. Play Now Similar Games Played Post a Review

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Summary Gameplay Community Graphics/ Sound Conclusion

Summary

Developed by Nexon and published by Nexon as well, Duel of Summoners is a brand new trading card game that was released on Steam on the 27th September, 2017. This brand new TCG has taken some of its inspiration from Mabinogi – another game developed by Nexon – and when you compare the artwork between the two, it does make sense, considering the anime style; a style that gels rather well with the gameplay of a TCG.

Gameplay

Similar to many games in the genre, they start off with a quick and easy tutorial to get the player to understand all of the controls and the mechanics and Duel of Summoners is no different in that regard. This quick tutorial teaches you how to place down creatures, activate spells, and level-up; all of which are necessary mechanics for the game as a whole that don’t take very long to get to grips with, which is very nice.

During a battle against an opponent, you each have a side of 5-empty slots, of which can have creatures placed into them. On the opposite of one player’s slot will be the opponents and if nothing is in front of one of those cards, their attack will go straight for the opponent’s health bar – which will lead to defeat as soon as it hits zero. To play a minion, you simply have to drag it into one of the 5 slots and providing you can afford its summoning cost, the minion will be played onto the field.

When it comes to the summoning cost, you have a certain resource – be it greed or nature, depending on the type of cards you’re playing – that you only have a finite amount of from the beginning of the game. To gain some more to play more cards, as well as more powerful cards, you’re required to hit the “charge” button, which will give you one of those resources, but will effectively pass one of your actions so you waste a turn. Quite honestly, it’s a nice change to the genre that adds an extra layer of depth that you might not get in other games in this genre.

Spells are simple enough cards to cast; drag them onto the board, pick a target, and away goes the effect, whatever it may be. Levelling up, however is a little more interesting and adds even more depth to this new TCG. With every action you take, it adds experience to your level up bar and once it is finally complete, click on it to take your action that turn to level yourself up to level 2.

The next level brings you more HP, but more importantly gives you a second action, so now you can play more than one creature, more than one spell, or double-charge to gain some more resources. This can carry on all the way up to level 3, where everything else applies; it takes an action to level up, but you gain HP, and can now take 3 actions per turn, which quickly becomes very useful if you have the resources to back you up along the way.

Along with all of these, there’s this rather interesting mechanic known as “revive” that has the player expunge some of their health to bring back any of their creatures that had died previously, which is a very nice addition. At first you end up worrying that you’re using too many creatures and the one left standing at the end of it all becomes the automatic winner, but knowing that you’ve got to make a choice to bring back those monsters of yours or forfeit the match is an added layer of depth that wasn’t expected at first.

Now, what great TCG wouldn’t offer their players the chance to purchase some card packs? I wouldn’t worry; however, as there are of course card packs to purchase in the game, but they are what you would typically expect. After purchasing a pack, you open it and see what 5 cards you gain from it and then they go into your collection. If at any point you’re not happy with a card, however, you can always recycle it for some in-game currency to purchase some new ones with instead.

Community

As of right now, the game only has the built-in Steam forums that come with any game on Steam, but they are typically of too much use in this form. On the upside, there is an in-game friends list for you to challenge and communicate with your friends, so the player isn’t expected to leave the game for that, which is a very nice extra. Problem is, however, other than that, there is very little to the community aspects of the game and it puts a bit of a damper on the game as a whole, unfortunately.

Graphics/ Sound

In terms of aesthetics, the game’s main attraction is the artwork – as should be no surprise – and it’s safe to say that the artwork is a lovely part of the game. All of the artwork in the game is done by some well-known Korean artists and the work that they put into their art really shows and pops when the cards come into play. Honestly, though, the backgrounds when you’re in the middle of playing, however, could do with a bit of work, as they just come across as a slightly blurry mess and not much more.

When it comes to the audio for the game, it takes a rather strange stance for its background music. Instead of coming across as an epic-fantasy score that fits a lot of TCG, this one seems to be more of elevator music in a sense and when you’re in the main menus it isn’t so bad, but when you’re playing against your opponent, it seems like an odd aspect of the game that does well to be muted as quickly as possible, honestly.

Conclusion

Overall, Duel of Summoners takes a few chances here and there; some of them work and some of them don’t, but it’s nice to see a new TCG come into play, especially when most games in this genre are CCG’s, where there is no trading between players involved. Audio isn’t a high point of the game, but the artwork definitely makes up for the whole experience, though. The gameplay is definitely simple enough to grasp within the first 10 minutes, but as you play more and more you’ll come to discover just how much depth is in the game, even in these early stages in its development and that makes it a worthwhile TCG that warrants a decent go.