Card Cultivation

A game that fills the fantasy of being a cultivator in all those webnovels, while being coherent, understandable, and pretty fun. It has all the staples of the genre (cultivating - duh -, alchemy, spells, artifacts, animal companions, secret treasures, random fortuituous encounters, a bunch of other stuff), without feeling bloated or disjointed; the systems all tie into each other and/or are multipurpose (if you really don't have a use for something you can always sell it). This makes it so you always feel like you're advancing and getting stronger, whether that be with higher quality equipment, better stats, emergency pills or companions to throw at challenges. The caveat is, this isn't really a game you can "lose". Technically the game ends if your lifespan ends, and you lose lifespan each time you die, but there is nothing forcing you into unwinnable fights; running is always an option, even if that means giving up on an opportunity for a few years. There will be times, especially when you're on the boundaries of each cultivation tier, where some seemingly unkillable boss or kill squad shows up to remind you that you're still small fry; if you've prepared enough, you may be able to jump them and get loot above your realm to smack people around with. Most of the time though, it's a reminder that it's time to tuck tail and think up a new strategy, which this game provides plenty of. I've probably spent hours scheming in the in-game wiki/collection page, planning item synergies, skill books to target, or figuring out if the loot I just got is fodder or part of a gamebreaking combo (that often ends up not so gamebreaking after some NPC pulls out their own set or stat line). There is plenty of stuff that's already in the game, and it's well worth its asking price for the current product, which leads to the main disclaimer. This game is not finished; by all definitions and appearances this should still be in early access. Yes, the main campaign has a start, middle and end, but the 4 planned characters, multiple sects, and a lot of post-golden core content is still being developed, or may never be developed. I have not run into any gamebreaking bugs, (or any notable bugs for that matter), and the game runs well enough for its presentation (a tabletop card game), both of which should be praised. There are also missing translations scattered around in the game; not enough to be an issue, but sometimes you'll have to match the pictograms or guess what something is associated with. There are tooltips/descriptions with english names on the intentionally chinese things, but some skills/ability names are clearly untranslated/have multiple translations, so you'll have to guess what they are from the english descriptions. In all, I would highly recommend the game in its current state to anyone who likes the cultivation genre and games like Cultist Simulator which inspired this. While the game cannot be called complete, everything already here works well and is fun from start to "finish". Future development would be greatly appreciated (and it's still getting weekly updates as I write this review), so I wish the developers well.

It's a good game with fun resource management and combat mechanics but there's a lot of polishing left to do. Some of the cultivation paths are either very hard to cultivate or very weak or both. - Spell casting relying on Qi means you only get to cast a few spells before you have to spam potions. - Alchemy relies on running the herb Nurturing and potion brewing (Refine) non-stop for every battle and is very weak early on, so it's hard to make it the primary path. - Artifact Refining and Beast Mastery are the main viable paths outright because you can spam cards onto the battlefield as long as you have enough Qi restoring potions. - Learning Spells, Techniques, Methods and Abilities is too RNG and it's hard to get the books you want outside of the Sword path (which has a sect and a pavilion, though the Reputation points needed for those are too hard to earn as well). - The RNG for book learning wouldn't be a problem if 50% of the books you can get weren't really weak and basically pointless (compared to getting more artifacts or spirit beasts). Suggested improvements: 1. Each major path's books should be buyable somewhere, not just RNG through treasure shop and enlightenment. 2. Sword sect reputation points need to be either easier to earn, or easier to get (more missions or better trades). 3. Potion path should allow for extra Nurture / Refine place unlocks or a dedicated Potion station. 4. The demon king materials are very easy to get from the Battlefield. But this is a pretty cool part of the game, so instead of nerfing it, it would be better if there were more straightforward ways to find the demon king you need or are looking for.

Custom character creation is completely broken — here's the exact build. Drawbacks taken (points gained): Doomed Fate — 20 Weak Divine Sense — 15 Moonlit Land Sealed — 15 Wangchen Temple Sealed — 10 Spellcasting Sealed — 5 Demon-Sealing Tower Strengthened — 5 Poor Affinity with Artifacts — 5 Shallow Lifespan — 4 Poor Affinity with Voids — 2 Perks bought (points spent): Heirloom Treasure Saber — 35 Dragon-Seeking Geomancy — 11 Spirit Furnace Elixir — 8 Medicine Estate Family — 7 Guiding Qi Through Meridians — 6 Void Spirit Body — 6 Mysterious Ancestral Estate — 4 Azure Spirit Body — 3 Bedrock Body — 3 Sharp Bone Body — 3 Diamond Bone Blood — 2 Innate Thick Skin — 1 Innate Brute Strength — 1 Humble Disciple — 1 Why it breaks: The Heirloom Treasure Saber is 3176 ATK / 2540 HP. The strongest boss in the game hits for 1200. Its only real gate is 65 mana per use, so you spend the leftover points on mana and body perks to clear that threshold on turn one, then brew mana pills forever. The saber self-heals, so I lost about 3 HP per fight out of 2540. Sealing Moonlit Land costs you nothing. Herb farming plus the treasure furnace replaces it outright, and that route is strictly better — every planting and every refine hands you stat bonuses on top of the herbs and pills. Medicine Estate Family and Spirit Furnace Elixir carry that whole side by themselves. Doomed Fate is the real joke. On paper NPCs hunt you down every year. In practice you park the saber next to them and they fight it for you. That's not a penalty, it's the best opening reward in the game: free spirit stones, free drops, free cultivation, delivered on a schedule. And it gets worse. Place the saber next to an NPC, line up the direction so their card lands on it, and the attack triggers without costing you any mana at all. The one thing meant to hold this weapon back simply doesn't apply. By year 30 I was clearing every boss in the tower. Full red-tier artifacts, red spirit beasts, 300k spirit stones, 1000 years of lifespan, and a bag of red herbs I never bothered refining. Meanwhile NPC cultivators at 100 years old still have double-digit HP. The game was over before it started. There's a good management game buried in here, but nothing is costed against anything else. Give the saber durability, price the drawbacks against what they actually cost you, and make card-triggered attacks pay mana — that alone would fix most of this.