Nothing burns up precious time more than a good card game. And while I’ve only ever let ‘Yu-Gi-Oh’ consistently be my personal time vampire, that hasn’t stopped me from blowing through days-in-a-row when something new grabs my limited attention span. Heck, it’s a good thing I only got around to playing developer INTI CREATES’ latest turn-based card battler ‘Card-en-Ciel’ because I quite literally couldn’t put it down once I’ve started playing it.
Setups and retaliation collide in a sci-fi fantasy world where game worlds are coming to life in worlds they don’t belong.
Welcome to the Grid
Card-en-Ciel gets us acquainted with the game’s protagonist Neon right off the bat, saving a young lady who goes by the name Ancie from anomalies called MODs—which as far as I remember, are viral game data that find themselves infecting other games where they don’t belong. Neon is a self-proclaimed detective who, after slapping the MOD away from Ancie and having a quick talk, agrees to help her clear out all the MODs that have infected her company’s video game. See, in this world there are “full-dive” virtual reality games, where the player’s whole conscious is taken directly into the game world. This method of connectivity has become incredibly popular but is also being used for illicit deals and general criminal activity. Neon’s “job” is to uncover these crimes and report it to the police—and as far as I can tell, he does this dangerous work for free.
So, MODs are running rampant across the game world we’re in. How do we subjugate ’em? By taking the viral game data to the task—we challenge them to a turn-based card game that is played out on an 18-tile grid that looks quite similar to that of Battle Network’s. However, my dear reader, the games are nothing alike and that’s because of what you’re capable of pulling off in Card-en-Ciel. The game features multiple deck types and effects that are amplified on the field via “Muses”, digitised singers from past INTI games and original ones made especially for this game. Buckle up, because this is about to get a bit intricate.
From the very top of things, Card-en-Ciel is a dungeon-based roguelite of sorts, where you start from the topmost floor and head straight downwards to the final boss. Each floor consists of its own miniboss that you need to get to, but running head-straight to them is not a good idea—run around and avoid combat too much and you’ll be penalised via negative field effects. What you’ll want to do first is clear out enemies around the boss field, collect as many cards as you can, and then focus your attention on the Muse that may be providing field bonuses to the boss. Upon defeating any enemy on a given field, you are given the chance to recover Player HP, enhance a card in your deck, or position a card on hand or Muse to receive bonuses for battles on nearby fields.
Once you’ve gone into battle, you’re thrown onto the grid. Typically, you’ll pull five random cards out of your deck, and you’ll have three “Cost” points to work with. Your two main goals when battling enemies is “breaking” their card with Break cards and dealing damage via damage cards or other special effects that you can set up. But it’s easier said than done—a lot of the time, enemies will be scattered across their side of the grid and your attacks have limited range. Moving around your grid requires that you use a card that denotes moving in a direction, which is nearly every card. You won’t use up any Cost moving around and it’s essential that you do so depending on your play type because the enemy is capable of retaliation.
See, for every action you complete, be it moving around or using zero Cost cards to begin setting up your plan of action, baddies will have a countdown of their own. Once that countdown reaches zero, they’ll either attacked marked portions on your grid, buff themselves, or place unwanted (or wanted!) cards into your hand. It’s essential that you either break the enemy’s guard as soon as possible or at least whittle down their attack power by using those same break cards I mentioned earlier. If you can zero out the enemy’s incoming attacks, at the very least you can continue to build your setup a bit longer unhindered.
Card-en-Ciel has quite a bit of set up types. There are “Debug” cards, which use discarded virus and error cards to empower your damage and break type cards of the same type, self-damage and Break Point cards that stack up points against enemy combatants allowing damage cards to instead act as break cards as well, so on and so forth. Amplified by the Muse’s songs, you’ll very quickly be able to unleash powerful attacks while a cacophony of screen effects explode and interrupt your thought process. And of course, the more cards you have on hand, sometimes the harder it is to start off on the right foot in batle. Yep, the power of the die strikes again, and it can get pretty annoying.
But Card-en-Ciel is too addicting for me to care about that. Dungeons might seem short, but battles can end up taking minutes at a time as you work with the cards you have on file. Battles can get really dangerous, and you’ll need to use every tactic you can get in your hand to subjugate enemy combatants lest you get sent back to the hideout. But the variety of setups and the battles themselves, even if they do get recycled plenty, feel great to play. When I wasn’t playing Card-en-Ciel, I was thinking of playing Card-en-Ciel. That and the Tetris Effect kicked in quite a few times.
And yes, like many roguelites, once the player’s total health points have been knocked down to zero, you’ll get a score based on how well you did and get some compensation out of it. These points can be used to enhance a number of variables such as card rarity, applying special statuses to cards right off the bat, additional health points, special cards you can forge in battle, and the like. But I don’t know if they’re as rewarding as it seems as I never really felt their effects in battle. So, while losing in a dungeon isn’t the end of the world, what matters more is just how long a dungeon can get especially when you’re not getting the hands that you want. In the hideout we also have daily and weekly battles that you can enter into for additional levels and enhancement points when not doing story stages. There’s multiplayer too but I didn’t have the time to give that one whirl, sadly.
Oh, and you can sleep on Ancie’s lap if you’d like. And while I do appreciate the offer, unfortunately the thrill of a successful sweep is far too addicting.
Home Sweet Game World
For story stages, each one represents a game that INTI CREATES has developed or simply an original one that takes heavy influence on a popular property or setting trope. As you roam about these dungeons, Neon and Ancie will have a chat about the game and its characters. They’re brief little chatters that give you an idea about both protagonists and their love for games. And as for the real INTI games, they serve more as a brief advertisement for games like Azure Striker, Gal Gun, and a few others. I like the fan service and I’m sure others will as well, considering that we get those games’ vocal tracks and original ones made for Card-en-Ciel. The game is beautiful if not a little too annoying with its constant screen effects especially in the Grand Battle stages where every Muse you’ve collected so far can be invoked in one battle.
Besides the mini stories within said story stages, there is an overarching plot that on its own is pretty short. The only reason it might take you some twenty hours to see it through is because of how long the dungeons can take. The story itself isn’t told very well either, relationships developer really quickly, the last story dungeon is a long-than-usual narrative dump, and the bad guy’s Ace shows up with little fanfare. On the bright side, the cast has some great voice acting and particularly enjoyed the antagonist’s performance. Jump into Card-en-Ciel for moment-to-moment thrills and fan service, not for any riveting plot threads.
Card-en-Ciel is a fantastic card battling title. I didn’t think I’d find myself so enamoured in playing a card game like this, but the plays at hand along with how the overworld plays into the battle system along with daily and weekly battles makes this game a extremely replayable title. ∎
Card-en-Ciel
Played on
Windows 11 PC
PROS
- Fantastic core gameplay.
- Great visuals and music.
- Fun voice cast.
CONS
- Return from dungeon rewards don't exactly feel rewarding.
