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Its an okay game, its just not particularly deep or interesting. The main problem with this game is that you can spam cards to win. You never feel like you have done anything particularly clever so its not satisfying when you win and the battles feel repetitive very fast. It lacks the depth of of a game like Yu Gi Oh!: Legacy of the Duelist which has trap and spell cards, summoning, tributes, and effects which adds strategy and allows you to be creative. It also doesn't allow you to make theme decks. If you're new to card games I'd give this a go (when its on sale) otherwise try the Yu Gi Oh! game I mentioned above or Sentinels of the Multiverse.
System Crash is a cyberpunk-themed card game with simple, but satisfying gameplay mechanics. The game offers an atmospheric cyberpunk setting with great writing, gorgeous art, and a soundtrack that sets the mood perfectly. Deck building in System Crash is very simple and is easy to learn, and the actual card-play is fun but tends to get a bit repetitive after a while. There are story and dialogue choices, but they ultimately lack any meaningful impact and don’t change how things pan out for the most part. The UI is probably the weakest aspect of the game with a lack of widescreen support and little to no feedback as to what card is selected, which caused me to play the wrong card by mistake on numerous occasions. Gameplay can also be a victim of RNG at times and some matches require a few retries because of this. I also loved to see a local multiplayer option at least as the game can be immensely fun when played with others, but sadly no form of multiplayer is available. In the end, System Crash may not be the deepest of collectible card games, but offers a well written cyberpunk story coupled with beautiful artwork, and can keep you entertained for quite some time. I can wholeheartedly recommend the game.
SYSTEM CRASH CAN BE AN ECLECTIC MIX AT TIMES, BUT ITS ENTERTAINING JUMBLE OF IDEAS ISN'T LIKELY TO LEAVE CARD JUNKIES FEELING DISAPPOINTED. Players deploy assassins to the streets, they employ hackers to siphon data from secure servers, and they install virus programs to further undermine their opponent's conflicting operations. And despite all of this, System Crash is a card game that feels a lot more like Richard Garfield's Magic: The Gathering than his cyberpunk-themed hit called Netrunner. Its backstory is peppered with evil corporations and heroic "runners" vying for dominance in a futuristic city with its in-game cards representing everything from informants to turret systems, and street-level coppers to military-grade assault mechs. And yet the gameplay itself is still quite familiar as you assign 'Agents' to the lanes in front of you and watch them do battle with opposing troops backed by equipment or supporting tactics. Like Magic, each Agent has an attack and defence value as well as a keyword, special ability, and (usually) a flavour snippet. Anyone familiar with card games of this style will have absolutely no trouble diving into their first session and overall things are quite easy to get to grips with. The applaudable living card game model that developer Rogue Moon Studios has adopted here is an unfortunate rarity in digital card games at the moment. You're given complete freedom in the main campaign module to do whatever quests you want in order to earn credits and aside from a basic 'four of a kind' rule, there are very few policies that you need to follow when constructing decks. Assuming that you can afford it (and you're crazy enough) System Crash has absolutely no problem with you filling your deck with as many rare or "Elite" cards as you want, so if the idea of a grip full of rampaging Patriot Mechs appeals to you, then go for it! There are many gameplay hours in the default campaign, even to the point where it gets a little tedious, honestly, but the enticing theme and attractive artwork will maintain your interest even when your main deck looks complete. There's not a huge amount of troubleshooting needed between missions either, so if you're the sort of player who likes to create one strategy and tweak one particular kind of deck to the moon, then you won't be hugely penalised for it. The potential strategies in the core card pool are all fairly straightforward though (with the aggro/hacking rush being extremely strong right now) and it won't be long before you've seen everything that the AI enemies have to offer in terms of approach. The campaign storyline attempts to keep things fresh by weaving a typical conspiracy yarn and aside from some occasionally ropey dialogue, it does a decently entertaining job of it. I just wish I could understand why some cards don't have flavour text. It's a simple inclusion that can do wonders for world building and in a digital card game; where you have the space needed to display such snippets, there is simply no excuse for cards looking empty like this. Some players might further lament the lack of multiplayer mode, but the biggest potential gripe with System Crash has to do with the originality of its premise because let's face it; the game doesn't really do anything that Magic: The Gathering hasn't already done many times before it. System Crash can't compete with Magic's fluid card play either. It does successfully meld in pieces of Netrunner whilst also borrowing some nice bits from Hearthstone, and yet System Crash feels more rigid because of its strict adherence to phases. There are no moments when cards can be played out of turn, units are limited to four slots on the board at once, and if players don't keep up with the in-game cost/power ratio then they'll quickly find themselves falling behind. Nevertheless, Rogue Moon Studios has clearly created a very generous package with the budget it had available and it's one that marks a promising departure from the commerce-obsessed trappings of the wider genre. Read the full review at my blog » [http://www.celjaded.com/review-system-crash/]
This is a brutally honest review of system crash for the PC: Pros Great soundtrack!! Get the Bundle upgrade while its on sale. It comes with the soundtrack from the game as well, as wallpaper for the pc. If you like industrial music ranging from EDM,ambient and that gritty noisey industrial (Nine inch nails- ish) from early 90s then get this for the soundtrack. Amazing gameplay that is inspired by movies like metropolis restored, bladerunner, I-robot and AI(okay the last movies mention is not as good as the other two...) Story-line rich in cyberpunk and film noir..... Gameplay is easy to understand and it doesnt require you to memorize rules like other card games....(like magic the gathering and pokemon ) Cons For 14 dollars....I feel there should be more cards and missions get repeative at times. and sometimes down right frastuating..... right now, it looks like the storyline takes place in one city...(?) cant confirm other locations Computer AI doesnt take into consideration that you should not stack cards of the support cards and vice reseveral....In other words, You can get slammed by a computer's AI for stacking a card that can damage you for 7 points for example 3 turns in one round....., same goes for player For what its worth I am giving it 4.7 out of 5 and i would of given this game a 5 star rating but if it wasnt for the fact that you can stack or get stacked with the same insane instant cards for 4 rounds...maybe im just complaining you can be the judge of that.
Do you enjoy card games? Are you a fan of the cyberpunk/shadowrun genre? Buy this. My only complaint is that there is not more from the developer.
Great game, very enjoyable mechanics and writing. If you're a fan of cyberpunk or card games, definitely give System Crash a try.
If you've been following some of my recent reviews you'll have noticed that I've been on a bit of a deck-building / collectible-card game binge recently. Given that, I thought it was probably a good time to digitally dust off my System Crash steam key, especially since I'd only played it for an hour or so previously. And because it's also almost four years old now and I really should give it another shot! System Crash is an indie deck-building game / CCG from Rogue Moon Studios. It's set in a stereotypical cyberpunk world, inspired by Blade Runner and Neuromancer in particular. CYBERPUNK M:TG. ISN'T THAT NETRUNNER!? When I started playing it immediately reminded me of the old Netrunner table-top CCG from the 1990's, created by Richard Garfield, who also created the much more popular Magic the Gathering (M:TG). While I suppose this is the closest there is on Steam at the moment (though there's a free fan-made version of Netrunner available elsewhere), and while it definitely does sort of similar in art style and setting, the gameplay is definitely different enough to enjoy on its own merits. The card-based gameplay is also wrapped up in two campaigns (plus a third if you buy the Underworld DLC), each comprising a large number of story-based missions. The core card gameplay forms the combat sequences in each of these missions and is the only real interactive gameplay, but, apart from the odd grammatical error here and there, the writing is actually pretty good. CARD BATTLES The core card gameplay is fairly simple. Battles are one on one. At the beginning you see your starting hand of six cards and can redraw it up to two times if you wish. If you don't like the third hand, then bad luck; you're stuck with it. (Actually you're not; there's no penalty for conceding the hand, so just concede and try again!) Each turn you draw a new card from your deck and your credit pool maximum increases by one, up to ten, and is refilled. If you can't draw a card when you have to, you lose. Each card has a cost in credits to play, which are subtracted from your current pool. Played cards are either instant effects; agents, of which you can have four active at any one time; timed support cards, of which you can have three active at any one time; or modifiers, of which each agent can have three good and three bad at any one time. Discarded or used-up cards go to your archive. Agents have points in attack, health, and armour. Normal damage is reduced by armour, with the remainder being taken directly from health. When an agent's health drops to zero or below, it is destroyed and the agent card and any modifiers attached to it move to their respective archives. They sometimes have special abilities, though these tend to be much simpler than some of the M:TG abilities: haste, armour piercing, extra damage from other cards, etc. Each agent can also be a member of one or more factions, and there are certain cards that only affect those agents. You win a hand by filling up your Objective Point (OP) meter before your opponent does. OPs are gained through hacking-based cards and through unblocked attacks from agents. And that's basically it. The fun comes from the fairly large card variation and applying different tactics to the game to outwit your AI opponent. It really does only take a few minutes to learn the basics, especially if you've played a CCG before, and then you can dive in. PROGRESSION A big part of any deck-building game is the progression: how you change your wussy starting deck into something that makes you proud to wield it. Some games play a sort of fast-and-loose style. In these you start with a standard deck, you gain cards as you progress, and you often pay some sort of currency to remove cards that you no longer want. Every card you own is in your deck at all times. This is much more like a traditional CCG. You start with a deck, but you can modify it whenever you wish; the only real restriction is that it has at least 40 cards. You can even create multiple decks for different situations, with the excellent faction system making faction decks an obvious choice. You gain credits as well as extra cards for your collection through completing missions and winning at the arena: a one-on-one area where you fight against opponents with decks chosen randomly from one of three difficulty levels. Cards can then be added or removed easily from your various decks using the straightforward deck editor, which also doubles as an interface to the black market. Here you can spend your credits on buying any of the game's available cards, or selling extra copies of your own for a fraction of their value. So it ends up being a sort of cross between a traditional CCG and a deck-builder, with cards earned from missions boosting your collection in deck-builder fashion, but with the credits, black market, and deck editor allowing the sort of freedom expected from a CCG. The story and characters are interesting, too, if somewhat stereotypical of the genre. Combined with the gradual increase in credits and randomly rewarded cards as you play, this keeps the game feeling fresh for many hours, even when you're fighting battle after battle and encountering many of the same cards. It's a shame the dialogue choices are just for flavour; some in-game effects from different choices would have been nice. That said, it's also nice that there are no penalties; you can say whatever you want and lose as many battles as you care to, and it won't affect anything in the game. SIGHTS AND SOUNDS System Crash's interface is very nice and clean, with plenty of simple animations showing the flow of damage, Objective Points, card modifiers, and the like. It makes it easy to grasp what's going on and easy to jump back into if you have to step away for a moment. With one exception: for some crazy reason the cards show attack points at the bottom left in your hand, but at the top left in play! That single change has made me miscalculate countless times. Background art is mostly very nice, though it's repeated often throughout the game. Card art, too, is great; it's from a few different artists, but the cards are presented consistently and fit in well with the rest of the game's atmosphere. The tooltip response for showing the card details is spot on, too. Even the interface itself fits the theme well, with a clean neon green font used throughout, and matching line art for the interface sections. It all looks great even in 4K resolution. Sound effects are mostly good, but some don't quite fit. The shooting sound for most of the modifiers and some support cards is overused; I'd have preferred a bit more variation there. The soundtrack, though, is excellent, with some subtle tracks mixed with heavy beats in battles; it works really well. PROS & CONS Pros: + Presentation + Story + Card variation + Simple rules Cons: - A few bugs and grammatical errors - Damage changes position on cards FINAL THOUGHTS System Crash is highly enjoyable. It didn't grab me as much as I thought it would a couple of years ago when I first played it, but in the last week or so I've lost 15 hours to it and I've barely noticed them fly by. There are enough cards and different tactics available that there are many ways to beat each mission and the deck editor and card progression make simply building new decks and trying them out fun, too. It does still have some grammatical errors and a few bugs, but none of them are too serious and they've had very little impact on my enjoyment. If you're a fan of CCGs and you think you'd like the cyberpunk setting, you should definitely give it a go! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDAC_aTZLEg For more of my reviews, please check out Genkipro's Games [https://steamcommunity.com/groups/genkipro] and follow me [https://store.steampowered.com/curator/36592842-GG-Genkipro's-Games/] as a curator.
I picked this one up directly from the developer when it was first released, and am delighted to see it now on Steam. System Crash combines a balanced, deep card battler with stylish writing and evocative art & music. The production values are high, and while there are some awkward UI elements here and there (the deck builder interface never quite clicked for me, for example) the game overall is highly polished and a lot of fun. The game begins with some easier missions to get you familiar the basic mechanics, and then as you begin earning new cards and credits for select purchases you get the hang of customizing decks to implement different play styles and to counter difficult specialist opponents. An engaging cyberpunk theme ties your missions together and interacts with the gameplay in gratifying ways, such as when the victory condition changes to "survive X turns" when you're tasked to hold a enemy until an ally can escape, or when an entrenched security force gets an overall armor bonus for the match duration. With respect to the deck-building, there are a select few "no brainer" cards that you should covet immediately but System Crash does an excellent job of presenting you with trade-offs between the available cards and strategies, which kept me engaged the whole game and forced a few "back to the ol' drawing board" moments upon encountering new opponents. If you're a fan of CCG-style combat, definitely pick this one up. The synergy between the storyline, the game mechanics, and the evocative art & music elevate this game above most others in the genre.
This game is beautiful and engaging. The storytelling (which I was not expecting at all) was fairly good and the gameplay was challenging. Many different decks and strategies are possible, and the balance seems to be in the right place - I played the first few missions with runners and criminals and them switched to hackers and managed to breeze throught the storyline with few problems. The LCG model is really interesting and I would love to see more games like it in steam. Overall, it's a great experience and if you like card games and cyberpunk you should definetely give it a try :)
Although System Crash got me stoked in the first few minutes with its Shadowrun-like setting, it turned out to be very repetitive without any additional content besides changing the composition of your deck. Some annoying bug that makes you lose a match (you can't play cards anymore) did the rest to justify this negative review.
This game really drags on. Although I never found the story very interesting (pretty standard cyberpunk stuff), early on I enjoyed gaining new cards and developing decks. But I soon realized to my disappointment that the cards you can purchase at the start of the game are basically ALL the cards in the game. That's exacerbated by how tediously long the story is. Mechanically, it would really help the game if new cards came available later, or as rewards for completing particular missions. Some other video game card games work like that, and it makes things more interesting rather than a slog. The card balance is decent but not perfect-- by about mid-game I'd built a couple of decks that could run through pretty much anything, and with no new cards, there wasn't much need to change anything. At that point I just kept going out of a perverse curiousity about how long the game was. One other point about the story-- I'm a big RPG fan, and by the second or third mission I was just randomly clicking through the dialog (I pretty much never do this), because none of it mattered at all. You can pick any response with no stakes in the game.
System Crash is a fun cyberpunk CCG where all the opponents are controlled by the computer. Most of the fights are a bit too easy, but the plus side is there are no frustrating areas to get stuck on. The game is fairly low budget, but that didn't impact my enjoyment of it. You can (and should) build your own decks for almost the fights and there are lots of viable archetypes (some stronger than others). A few cards are brokenly good: there's a 1-drop that draws 2 cards and there's a board reset for an effective cost of 2. If you're not a fan of deck building, you can copy online deck lists, though you'd be missing out on part of the fun. The story is decent but not exceptional some parts a little predictable but there are also a few surprises. The gameplay + the story was enough to keep me interested and wanting more. I'd recommend this game (+ both the DLCs) for people who like CCGs. Completing the game (including DLCs and playing a lot of the tournament mode) took me around 30 hours.
Story: Now this game is a story driven based cyberpunk card game inspired by Blade Runner which I know and states another game called Neuromancer. Which I will look at. Now corporations own everything in this world and the line between humans and machine is blurred. Your pushed to the only option left is to fight to survive. Instantly cyberpunk and card game together has me going ooo yeah I gotta play this one. Now this is a indie game so it is nice to good games like this from indie developers. It is showing great talent. The Graphics: Firstly your graphic options are controlled while starting up the game. From fastest to Fantastic. Resolution was played at 1080 and it looked great even with that. Nothing ingame to tweek with. But no need really. The art work on the backgrounds and even on the cards are good. Game play: You have several modules which open up after completing each. The game runs smooth for this style of game. Multiple choice responses in the conversations regarding contracts. While in fights you use the mouse control to select the cards you want to use. Even the tutorial you get in the game is easy to understand to. I can not really fault this at all. Controls: Controls are showing in the start up window under Input tab. They are configurable from there only. They are straightForward to use. The Music: Go's with the cyberpunk feel of the game which am liking. The Reply Value: For me yes I would defo return to this game to try doing it differently with different cards. Along with the dlc that is also there called Underworld adding a new story campaign to play along with a new card set to with slight changes. Bug/Glitches: None from what I could see. Overall: Story is great cyberpunk is one of my interests so this game had me hooked at that. Graphics yummy the artwork is great. I do like it when it visually hooks me to. Gameplay I can't fault it works to a T for the style of game. Controls easy and simple to deal with and configure. Music just gos with the game. Replay value is there changing card decks to challenge yourself, hell yeah. No bugs or issues with the game. For this game I give it 10 paws out of 10. Defo worth the buy if you like cyberpunk card games.
I’ve been on Steam for over 5 years with this account, own over a hundred games, and never once written a review. System Crash is the game that now gets that honor. TL;DR - System Crash is an excellent example of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. Good gameplay, art, music, and story combine to make an excellent game. I’ve done two main play-throughs in story mode as well as many standalone matches. In my first time through I focused more on the story and less on the mechanics. As has been noted, the story isn’t a timeless classic, but a good example of genre-fiction. The plot is pretty formulaic, but well-executed with snappy dialogue. And it did leave me wondering what might come next for the main character if the world got to be explored more deeply (hopefully in a sequel!). In my second play-through I started to realize that the mechanics were deeper than I originally realized. Whereas before, I had played through basically with one style, just adding the most powerful cards as I earned them, the second time I experimented with a number of different card combinations. I also think the AI was substantially improved in-between the times that I played, which made the standalone matches more fun, which also made the game more of something that I could pick up for a few matches and then put down until the next few. Something that I think is really valuable when you’re trying to balance gaming with other life priorities. As you can see, I am currently approaching 50 hours with System Crash. Having recently completed my second go through, I probably won’t be playing much for a bit. But I know that the mechanics are deep enough that I will definitely have at least another round.
FOR MORE REVIEWS ABOUT CARD GAMES, CHECK OUT OUR CURATOR PAGE: CARD GAME KING [https://store.steampowered.com/curator/36948155-Card-Game-KING/] WHAT IS THIS GAME ABOUT? A single player card game set in a cyberpunk universe where your main character acts as a runner caught up in, unsurprisingly, a corporate scheme. It hosts a fair number of cards which can build up to several notable type of decks. However, apart from some novel ideas, the card play is not amazing in any way and much of possible decks will be familiar to any card game fan. Still, it's a game that is fun to play for a while, boasting a decent story, even if takes too long to finish and the price is a bit too high for what it is. THE POSITIVE + Awesome music. It's that good that it deserves to be mentioned as the first point. + The goal is to reach a certain score first. I liked this small change as it feels fresh compared to "take down your opponent to 0 HP" and it opens up a few more mechanics. + The story was enjoyable. The writing was very good, and the storytelling feels fluent, despite the main plotline being more or less a standard one. + Great tutorial. A lot of good games ruin a good first impression due to a bad introduction to the main mechanics. This one, though, does it very well and something I wished more designers would take time to do properly. + Cool artwork. Some amazing art in the game done by various artists, with in game attributions. THE NEUTRAL * The deckbuilding and card play is mediocre. While the cards fit the cyberpunk theme well, the decks and card combos feel all too familiar (rush, stall, board control etc) * All cards are purchasable by ingame currency. You can acquire any card from the market. This can be a positive or a negative depending on the player. Personally, I would've slightly more preferred to naturally build up my deck from card drops, but with all cards being accessible at least you get to try most, if not all, decks the game has to offer before finishing it. * Disparity between theme and cards played by the enemy. You will see some Security enemies play a rush deck (anarchist cards) or you can use Yakuza minions against Yakuza. Of course this is all abstraction and game mechanics, but it does break immersion a bit. THE NEGATIVE - Overstays its welcome. My biggest negative is that the game dragged on way past the point I felt I have seen all that it had to offer. Yet you were continuously thrown into fight against familiar enemies after you consistently won against them many times before. - Draw seems too powerful. You only draw one card per turn, so the later rounds of the fight seem to heavily favor the opponent who has more card draw in the deck as paying the cost of cards is no longer a problem. I have won plenty of fights just because the opponent had only one card to play per turn. CONCLUSION: A robust but mediocre deckbuilder with good writing that would be a great pass time if it didn't take too long to finish. Still for those hungry for card games, it's a decent choice, especially if caught on sale.
I'm pretty crappy at deckbuilding card games. I don't get it. I don't get Magic the Gathering, I don't get Pokemon, I don't get Deckbuilder: Rise of the Expensive Pile of Cards. What I do get are the things this game draws on for inspiration. Shadowrun. Blade Runner. William Gibson. Shadowrun again. I can relate to these things. Which is odd really, since they all take place in the future, and I've never been there. I guess what it comes down to is that I'm from the past, and in the past the future seemed a lot cooler than the present it came to be. I never got a cyberdeck. I never got to try a BTL chip, which is probably a good thing actually. Heck, I never got to score the nuyen to go slumming in Tir Tairngire. What I did get though, is System Crash. A deckbuilding card game based on all of the things I mentioned above. So I gave it a try, and it seems to be pretty cool. I've lost some battles, and am still learning how to make a deck that covers all the bases, but at least the subject matter is familiar, and that helps me be interested enough to keep going. If you're into the whole CCG thing, or into the cyberpunk theme, I think this is worth a go. Maybe I'll see you in the shadows chummer.
A Post-Game Review Pros: - Solid and tactical enough card game - reasonably decent length campaign - Game progression feels relatively smooth, there wasn't need for grinding anywhere when met with a difficutl encounter, easily had the resources to retune a counter deck. Cons: - Felt mid-endgame needed better encounter buffs, more silvers and gold card instead of just higher gold OR the cost of cards needs balancing. Cards selling for 1/2 cost and perhaps Elite cards costing 5K instead of 10K. I would like to experiment more with interesting deck ideas during the campaign without grinding a lot to acquire the cards or grind in postgame arcade mode (Arena) just to test the potential limits of decks in the game. - Could have more varied soundtrack - Lacks 1920 x 1080 sceen support - Felt the texts and some of the GUI were very weary on the eyes to read, compared to some free CCGs like Hex, Infinity etc. Finished the game with around 70K gold, 11 elite, 5 veteran cards missing to complete collection and only played the Arena 3 times. Overall not a bad CCG game with solid campaign to scratch the itch without need to grind for campaign progression.
I'm surprised. Positively surprised. A new approach to both cyberpunk and trading card games. Combining it with a story (or campaign, if you like) creates an amazingly fun game to play. You get new cards as a reward for successful runs (= card matches), so no need to buy stuff in order to win. A fresh concept done well.
System Crash is a strategic story-rich cyberpunk card game both developed and published by Rogue Moon Studios. Set in the not too distant future this is a story of intrigue, corporate espionage and cyberwarfare. Being a runner is a good, if not dangerous, career choice but after a mission in Berlin goes horribly bad you spend the next couple of months forcibly globetrotting while on the run from Corporate assassins intent on killing you. Eventually evading the pursuers you finally end up back in the "Sprawl", a.k.a. San Angeles, down on your luck and looking to make some much needed credits. But a runner without a console can't get any credits so after forging a deal with a local loan shark and finally getting your hands on some black market cyberware you hastily start down your road to redemption. A road that will take you through the darkest most dangerous places in both cyberspace and the real world...JACK IN!!! GAMEPLAY Other than "Shadowhand" and of course "Gwent", I've not had much luck at finding a really good card game that I actually enjoyed playing...until now that is. System Crash is just so much FUN! It's one of those casual games that you can pick up intending to play a hand or two for only a couple of minutes and before you know it an hour or more has quickly gone by. Also, I'm not that bright and I can tell you with ease that I've had a hard time following the tutorials in most of the card games that I previously tried. It's just really hard to truly enjoy a game if you can't get the basics down. However with this title the tutorial was intuitive and after only a couple of battles I was able to grasp the fundamentals of gameplay with ease. I'm a big fan of "Puzzle Quest" which is the absolute best match-3 title available. For anyone who is familiar with or has played "Puzzle Quest" I would best describe System Crash as being very similar to it but instead of fantasy and match-3 it's cyberpunk and card battles. Also, the card battling in this title has a very engrossing story wrapped around it but the basic gameplay consists of you getting into combat against various enemies which could include people, mechs or computer systems that need to be hacked in order to accomplish your many objectives. Victory is achieved if you can use the cards in your cyberdeck to defeat your opponents deck so strategy and tactics are vital. The cards themselves are basically characters both human and mech armed with ballistic weapons of varying degrees of lethality. Some have more firepower and health than others. Many cards even have special abilities as well as buffs that can increase the effectiveness of your other cards in play such as increased firepower or additional armor among other attributes. During each round you and your opponent are both granted a total number of points that you can use on your turn in battle. All the cards in your hand cost a certain amount of points to play depending on what type of card that it is so you must strategically decide which cards to place and when to place them if you want to come out of the battle victorious. This battle of tactics and strategic matching of wits is the absolute best part of this glorious game. Also, besides the addictive card battle gameplay I would say that the cards themselves are one of the stars of this excellent title. Depending on your particular style of play you can customize your decks using the various types of characters from the game such as the "Runners", the "Anarchists", "Corporate", the "Yakuza" and "MetroSec" a.k.a. the law as well as all the other different program cards, tactical cards, weapon/armor cards and many others. The cards have a hierarchy from the Basic or lower level cards to the Veterans which are mid level all the way up to the Elites which are the most powerful, expensive and hardest to acquire cards in the game. Speaking of which, you can get more cards by either buying them on the Black Market with credits that you earn over the course of the narrative or winning them as you defeat various opponents and achieve objectives in the game. The way that you stack your cyberdeck is completely up to your preference and skills. You may also need to specifically tailor a deck with certain cards in order to defeat a particularly difficult opponent as I had to do a couple of times. When it comes down to the overall gameplay I guess the phrase "Easy to learn hard to master" definitely applies to this title. VISUALS This game is simply gorgeous! It has all the visual presentation that you would expect of a cyberpunk title...a dark dystopian future, a huge megalopolis teaming with neon lights, flickering Japanese signage, those awesome flying cars and cool looking but highly dubious characters lurking everywhere. The campaign's story is told through various cutscenes of characters meeting face to face in a variety of locations throughout the city and also in text messages while in cyberspace. Along the way you'll get into intense gun battles in back alleyways with the Yakuza, get hassled by the "man" and just find yourself in all manner of unique predicaments over the course of the terrific narrative. The illustrations for both the various locales of the city and the portrait artwork of the many characters in the game are stunningly beautiful while also sticking heavily to the aformentioned cyberpunk theme of the game which is lots of cool haircuts, awesome outfits and augmentations. The U.I. interface for the card battles is highly stylized, expertly laid out and intuitive. All the information that you need is readily visible and you can tab over any card on the battlefield at any time to see it's statistics and what it does which is quite helpful. Overall, I would say that this titles visual presentation is of the highest quality and you can see that the developers put a lot of hard work and effort into this game. SOUND The aural presentation in this title is top notch with crisp high fidelity sound effects for the card battles as well as the user interface. Also, the musical score is bursting with cyberpunk inspired tracks that fit the bleak tone of the game perfectly whether you're battling some ruthless mercenaries intent on putting you in a grave or just having chit-chat with a fellow runner in a dark alley as the rain plummets down around you. Overall I'd have to say that the sound quality in this title does a fantastic job of immersing you in the world of cyberpunk. CONCLUSION I'll say the same thing about this game that I did when I came across "Puzzle Quest"...this is indeed one of those "hidden gem" titles that I'm so fond of discovering on Steam. It's always great to acquire a game in your library that will consistently keep you entertained for long periods of time and not just some title that you play once for a few weeks never to pick up again. Aside from the addictive card combat, I also really enjoyed the narrative portion of this game. It takes you on a grand adventure through the city full of intrigue, fascinating characters, gun battles and even adds some much needed comic relief as the nature of the story is often very serious most of the time. Replayability is very high because of the dynamic combat and different decks that you can build. D.L.C. comes in the form of the "Deluxe Edition Content" which adds the wonderful soundtrack and high-resolution wallpapers alongside "Underworld" that includes a new campaign. I managed to complete my first playthrough with D.L.C. in just over 49 hours. On the technical side, I experienced a glitch a few times during card battle where the game became unresponsive but this was easily solved with a restart...nothing game breaking. In summary, the cyberpunk themed narrative and fantastic card combat made for a truly thrilling gaming experience so System Crash is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED to cyberpunk, card game, strategy and story-rich gamers everywhere!
It's admittedly a relatively simple game mechanics-wise - you'll have seen basically every possible strategy after a few hours (since all the main variants are used by the AI), and it won't take long to learn how to trick the AI either. Nevertheless it's still enjoyable to play (I tend to prefer my card games relatively casual-friendly) and the story is actually quite nicely done with pretty good writing. The game suffers from a bit of negative difficulty curve because some of your first opponents will already have Elite cards when you're stuck with the basic cards. Once you're able to build an actual deck with a working strategy, the game becomes much simpler - the final battle is possibly one of the easiest of the entire game. Not that it's the only game to suffer from that - The Witcher series is known for it and is still excellent after all. You'll have to do a second playthrough if you want every achievement (because there are two choices during the campaign) - the total took me 30h, including some grinding in my second playthrough for the "Have 200k in the bank" one. Basically : it's a cheap but enjoyable single-player card game. Nothing more, nothing less - still worth its small price for me especially since most card games are geared towards competition/PvP so there's not much concurrence on the single-player market. There's been some talk of expansions down the line and I will gladly purchase them.