[Review] Neoverse - Nintendo Switch

Developed and Published By: Tino Games
Categories: Card Game, Roguelike
Release Date: 02.21.21

You’re familiar with those Korean MMOs that seem to overrun app stores nowadays, right? Neoverse looks just like that. This gave me a bit of a poor first impression, as I assumed it would just be a mobage with the microtransactions gutted. Shame on me, since what I got instead was an addicting card based roguelike.

Getting this out of the way, Neoverse is a beautiful game. Fantastic character models. The characters all have that hyper- idealized beauty that I’m sure many people will be fans of. I find it a tad generic, but I did find a character I was fond of.

The card based gameplay makes Neoverse simple to get into, especially for pick up and play. It also makes it hard to put down. The game is simple, but there is a hint of depth. There’s attack card, shield cards, and then a plethora of cards that revolve around those two. The first is self explanatory, shield cards give you what’s more or less a buffer, and the last are boosters that can do things like even out stats, give a quick jolt, an uber strong move, or even removing a mana cost. On average you have 5 Mana to do these moves, with cards taking anywhere from 0 to 4. If you have five attack cards with 1 mana use, you can just go ham on an enemy if that works out, though those will all be weaker cards.

You get a selection of three characters, mostly differentiated with their own decks, which decide how they handle their battles. I mained Claire, at first because I thought she was the cutest, but I actually liked her play style. Her main mechanics are Faith, Punishment, and Vampirism. Faith can get stored up, at 5 faith, you’re granted a powerful card that can give you either a lot of shield or attack, for free or 1 Mana. It can really change the tide. Punishment is my favorite. Shield cards grant you some, if you’re hit when you have Punishment, it bounces right back to the enemy. If you have high enough shield and Punishment, you will both take zero damage and just do a devastating attack to an enemy for free. It’s so satisfying. Vampirism is fun to use too, if only for having free heals when you attack.

How is this a roguelike though? You’ll get a choice of fight, each with their own challenge. Win the fight and you move on. The challenges can be done in that fight, but something I wish I’d see more often is that the challenges can just be done whenever in a run. Rewards range from healing, evolving a card, items, and the like. Mostly just bonuses goodies for performing well. The true perks come from earning skill points to spend. Lowering prices in the shop, raising your HP for a run, raise stats or just buff certain card’s abilities. These all stack and each character has their own and a lot.

I like how the game plays, and it does look good, but I’d be lying if almost everything else wasn’t incredibly generic and forgettable. It’s almost as if they wanted to tell the game on the pretty girls, but the game is good on it’s own merits with the gameplay, so I can’t see why they would need to. That said, it would probably get an audience who otherwise would never play card games.

In a genre like roguelikes, which is often incredibly challenging and sometimes hard to get into, Neoverse’s accessibility is a godsend. Part of me wishes it was more creative, but I nonetheless was always wanting to play “just one more”