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Sacred Reviews: Manga Carta 2 (Demo)

Intro

I'll admit that I do have some interest in card games due to my Yu-Gi-Oh! days. Albeit the last card game I participated in and found people to actually play against was the My Little Pony: Collectible Card Game.



A card game that was actually alright in my opinion, but finding people to play against was still pretty difficult. The only reason I found any other players is because a group popped up at a card/game hobby shop that was located about 45 minutes away from my house. And even that group only usually had five or so players show up on a given night. I suppose this is why I sometimes prefer playing stuff like the "Pokemon Trading Card Game" on Game Boy Color or "Yu-Gi-Oh! Ultimate Masters: World Championship Tournament 2006" on Game Boy Advance since I don't have to worry about finding another person to play against.

At any rate, I suppose the biggest problem with reviewing "Manga Carta 2" is that the game currently only exists as a tech demo. A demo that hasn't seen any notable updates in about six months. So I don't know if Michu is just quietly working on it in the background or if this project was ultimately shelved at this point. Regardless I don't know if the tech demo is all were ever going to get or not and this makes scoring this project near impossible in my opinion since I know Michu wanted to include card types that don't currently exist within the confines of the demo. So I don't know what the final balance and feel of the game will be like, but I do have some opinions on the demo I wish to share.

Story

Seeing as how this is a demo we really don't get a lot of story, but we do learn that were playing as Remi, a cleric, currently taking a train to Avalon Town. And she decides to murder some time by playing some Manga Carta 2. Unfortunately she doesn't have any cards, but a pirate on the train is willing to give us a free starter pack. Why he is willing to do this is beyond me. Maybe he likes watching people play, but hates losing so much that he refuses to play himself.

At any rate were then free to challenge a pair of duelists. One whose named after a fictional character from Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre-Dame the beautiful Esmeralda or a skeleton named after famous Caribbean pirate Calico Jack. At least I assume they were named after those characters.

And at any rate after you've beaten those two you can challenge a goddess that appears in the final card to a duel to determine whose the best duelist on the train. And after you've beaten her you can choose to end the demo or continue playing against her and the others to further rank up your cards.

Gameplay

You and your opponent take turns summoning characters from various famous manga like One Piece, Fairy Tail, and Dragon Ball Z within a 2 by 3 grid. These characters then attack your opponent directly or one of his/her summons if they are on the same row with the ultimate goal of dropping your opponent's health to zero.

A goal that is made easier by certain cards just being way more powerful then others. A good example of this is Frieza whose special ability recovers three hit points for the controlling player for every direct attack performed on the controlling players turn. This ability can grant the controlling player up to 18 points of recovery on a given turn. Add in the fact you can potentially have up to three copies of Frieza on the field at once and the amount of hit points you can potentially get back on a single turn is absolutely insane.

Another very powerful card in this game is Lucy since she summons a Gohan with 5 attack and 4 hit points upon summon. At least if you summon her in the column closest to your opponent. At any rate this ability is obviously very powerful since it lets you nerf the cost of going second in any given match by allowing you to keep up with the amount of summons on your opponent's side of the field. And if your going first this gives you an almost overwhelming advantage since you'll have a summon lead on your opponent.

But my biggest gripe with the game isn't that certain cards are much better then others. That's pretty common for card games and in some cases those cards are known as staples that can be put into almost any deck. A good example of this in the My Little Pony: Collectible Card Game is Lady Justice.



A powerful purple card that can be splashed into any deck since you don't need any other purple friends in play in order to meet her summon requirements. You just need enough action tokens to summon her.

The biggest issue with the game is that once you or the opponent start running away with the summon lead it becomes near impossible to turn the game around. This is because the player in the lead will have so much advantage that it just can't be overturned.



As you can see in the above gif I'm only a few turns into this match, but I can already tell that I'm going to win since the AI is so far behind in terms of summons that reestablishing field control for them is basically a pipe dream.

On a more positive note the various field effects in the game already hint at the importance of changing your deck up for various fights. After all, in the duel with Esmeralda all of the summons are granted the spikes 2 ability which makes Gohan utterly worthless since his low health means he'll be easily popped upon summon since the spikes ability causes a summon that attacks another summon to take two points of damage. And when you only have one hit point you really can't afford to take any damage.

On the other hand, Calico Jack's field empowers characters from One Piece. So running a One Piece deck in order to take advantage of that empowerment would be ideal.

And the final opponent's field I suppose does offer the chance for changing up the pace of a duel since random meteors rain upon the field and can potentially take out summons with few hit points, but this ability can also give a winning player even more advantage since it might just pop the summon on the losing player's side of the field and put them in an even worse position.

Graphics

For a card game I'd say the presentation is better then I anticipated. Card games usually have a pretty simple and clean look to them so the inclusion of simple attack and idling animations was a nice bonus.

Sound

On the sound side of things the game is just alright. There isn't anything to really praise here since the demo is set within the confines of a train with only a few casual duels going on. In fact, the developer probably could have had elevator music running in the background and I would have been satisfied. After all, the lack of any real threat or danger means the music just fades into the background and is just unremarkable background noise as far as I'm concerned.

Conclusion

"Manga Carta 2" appears to have a very solid foundation and the developer's listed future plans seem like a good direction to take the game in, but if that will actually happens remains to be seen. As it stands the tech demo is a good way to get a feel for Mighty Party and is fairly enjoyable on it's own. So if you have an interest in card games this is still worth a quick look in my opinion.

Posts

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Thank you for your review. I agree with all you have said. I'm still working on that project and I think the next demo will be released later this year.
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