Eye Of Judgement

This game just sells itself. Maybe slowly, but it's just so surprisingly good and new, and it will be without competition for a looooong time I'm sure. It surely will take a while to become a big hit, but as the PS Eye gets (more) popular along with the PS3, it will stay around for a while yet. Plus it has all the potential of different theme pack expansions. Good stuff. I'm loving it!

 

I won't blame the companies for not advertising this game enough though. I think this game is hard to explain in a short trailer or advertisement. I can understand they may think ads would be a very inefficient use of their money.

From a distance, this game does seem expensive as a card game and obscure as a videogame. I've seen some trailers and explanations of the game beforehand but remained doubtful until I actually had an hour or so to read the manual and try the game myself. Recommendation by peers is probably the most viable way for this game to grow.

I've never played CCG before. For me, this game is a highly replayable and enjoyable turn based strategy game, which seems a rare breed (at least for console games). I'd definitely recommend this to anyone who likes turn based strategy.

BTW, the music in game while not great to listen to, is effective in a way. I mean the "in check" music does make me feel like having knife on my neck and want to stop it ASAP.

 

Best thing about the music to me was that there was a setting to reduce it to volume 0. The sound effects are all I need for this type of game.

 

to me these games seem gimicky

ive seen post on forums like teamxbox where people play games against each other using the cameras that came with some of the live kits ranging from monopoly to poker

 

Yeah, but this is really, really something else. There's nothing gimmicky about it. It's just a far better way of playing card games. I've played this again yesterday for nearly 4 hours straight, online. There's typically only about 2 minutes between starting hosting a new game, through finding someone, starting the game, getting your first five cards, and the first player starting his first turn. It's just awesome!

Also, the way you maintain or change your decks is really, really nicely done. So easy! Definitely another part of the game that's made a lot more pleasant in this game. I've barely touched single player, and I've been loving learning about the different strategies. I've stuck to the basic 40 cards and have gotten a lot of depth from them, and have been finetuning the best selection of 30 cards out of those 40.

As said above, this is one of the best strategy games out there. It's perfectly balanced, and even with your basic set of cards you can put up a good fight.

After about 10-12 hours playing I'm slowly starting to feel I'm ready for a few expansions though.

 

True, but they need to tell people that the game exists... even if only to pique their interests. It's the idea behind the game that needs to be seeded. Those who are attracted to the concept will follow up.

The core gameplay mechanics is addictive. So the game is certainly not gimmicky. They need to think up more uses for PS Eye though.

 

There's really no need to, since you require the Eye to play it. Not to mention it's basically free, since it's a $70 game coming packed with a $40 camera and $19 worth of cards. You really only get screwed if you purchase the Eye separately, not thinking you'd care about the game, but there really ARE no other games using it, and most people would know if they're interested in EoJ or not ahead of time...

I can't see them selling a "game-only" retail package, but perhaps at some point they'll make a cheap/free PSN demo/full-version after it's more likely the people acquired the Eye from a different source or for a different purpose and want to check EoJ out. ("Free" because you'd have to at least pick up a $15 pre-constructed deck to play at all, and could otherwise only go over the rules or perhaps watch matches.)

 

Yesterday I had another big play-session of 4 hours. That ranks this game already among my most played games this year. I'm just surprised at how much I take to this game. If you have any doubts you might like this at all, I think you should give it a go. I played another 6-7 games online yesterday, only losing one (an epic one, really cool). The keyboard and eyetoy support is really cool too - you can move the transparent textbox all over the place and hide it by pressing the analog stick. Whenever people have the eyetoy mike enabled, that always just works flawlessly.

Anyone here playing it should at least add me to their friends list so we can check out each other's global rankings. So far I've only been playing in the first kingdom (the red one).

I've yet to read the manual but one of these days I will.

I also still only have the default cards (plus the one that came with a magazine).

It should be noted that this is not the only game for PS Eye here at least - there are now about 6-8 titles out there that support the Eye. But this game is obviously something else. It's incredibly polished, superbly balanced and thought out, pretty much faultless. I can't stress it enough, and I'm 100% that this game will never receive its due (until a Pokemon edition is released probably at least ) but my goodness, I'm impressed!

I've also ordered my first sets of extra cards, from www.13thfloor.co.uk. They shipped out very quickly so it seems like a good place. You can also already order individual cards from there (as well as packs of 50 commons for cheap, you can see they put their experience with other card games to good use ).

I think they are going to last me a long time though, as I think I'll only modify my deck very slowly.

 

Lousy phone photo but ... :

 

Arwin and xbd, I'm trying to build another deck now (for wife). It would be great if you can give some tips.

 

What kind of tips are you looking for? This thing is huge. Depending on the kind of board you play on and so on ...

But here are some general tips, for the standard board:

this game has the following basic premises:

Elements
The cards not very surprisingly take to a certain element (biolith excluded). The cards that belong to an element are obviously a lot better off when placed on a field of their own element - they will typically gain a lot of health on their home turf and are therefore harder to kill. Sometimes they also gain other abilities.

Sometimes though they also have some extra abilities when they are placed on any other field. The ice guards for instance, allow you to draw an extra card when you summon them on anything but water.

Sometimes, however, they also lose power if they are put on a field they really don't like. This isn't often stated outright, so it's important to keep an eye on. A typical forest creature will lose 2 health when placed on an earth field, and I think vice versa. But even that can be a good thing sometimes - there's an elf creature that goes berzerk when her power goes down to +1, where she gains a dodge attempt (a physical attack or counter attack can miss) and her attack goes up from +1 to +3. So as she has +3 health by default, if you place her on an earth field, she goes to +1 immediately and becomes an agressive attacker. She only costs two, so very valuable.

There are also cards (magic and creature) that target all creatures of the same element. One that restores your health for instance, can be very powerful that way - already at a cost of 2 you gain 3 health for one creature, but if you have three creatures of the same element on the field, that gains you 9 health in total, basically.

Symbiotics
Some cards have a strong symbiotic quality. The towers in the screenshot above offer +2 protection to all your adjacent creatures, which is very useful. Verzan footsoldiers gain +1 attack if there are two of them, +2 if there are three of them, etc. Some Ninja's gain invisibility from other Ninja's. Lots of stuff like that. However, when you put them in your deck, you really can't count on being able to use this quality unless you put in several of each in your deck.

Orientation
Many cards can only attack the field in front of them, and are extra vulnerable when attacked from behind. Especially in the beginning of the game, unless you can place them on their own element, these cards are typically very easily killed by another card. Some cards can attack multiple fields around them though, and that makes these cards much more useful to place on the field first - when attacked, they will more likely to be able to counterattack, which doesn't cost you mana (unlike your opponent, or when you yourself attack using that creature). Quickness helps there too, as you get to counterattack before the other attacks. An extreme example of where this is important - if you both have 1 health, then the one who attacks first wins. If you have a creature that can counterattack from multiple directions, that's where orientation counts. Conversely, you can also cover a creature's weak spot by strategically placing another creature next to / behind it.

Even more interesting in this game is changing a character's orientation. There's a 0 cost beguiling spell that's an essential part of my deck and I already know will never leave, and if I ever get more of them, then I'll add them to my deck immediately (though I don't know the max for them, and you have to think about keeping enough creatures in your hand too). Whenever a strong creature that really worries me appears, I can often render him completely useless and in some cases even more vulnerable by turning him around 180 degrees. The elven archers are very effective with that - they can only attack at range, but when they hit, they turn around their enemy around 180 degrees. Very useful.

It seems that you can actually turn a card (though I've only recently just read about this and never tried it yet), which costs you the activation cost each time you turn the card 90 degrees. But if a card is really powerful, the activation cost is also typically high, so it's still extremely painful to have the card oriented wrongly.

Mana management (and some basic deckbuilding)
You definitely need your basic low cost cards. They are really useful in taking a hold of fields (after all, winning = hold five fields), and keeping pressure on your opponent in that area can be vital. But these low cost cards have a lot of variety. Very useful for instance are low-cost ranged cards, like the fire magi wich can attack any field. Especially if you can lock that one up on a fire field in a corner guarded north and east, that's very useful.

Low cost cards also can be used with a little less discretion - whenever a card dies, you gain back 1 mana. So if the card cost 1 mana to cast, then you lose very little. Generally simple value calculations for actions for me involve thinking about how much health points I gain, or take away from my enemy, at the cost of how much mana. Also, low cost cards you can activate with some spare mana, whereas high cards are typically really expensive to activate (for an attack).

Some more expensive cards can't come into play unless the majority of fields are occupied with creatures. When you think about using an expensive card, keep that in mind. Also, if you run out of time in your turn, in ranked matches as a penalty you have to discard the most expensive card in your hand, so be careful there.

Also, when playing against an opponent, make sure you know the card you are fighting (use the status card). I've seen plenty of people not think this through.

Area of Attack
When attacking there are also a lot of different things to think about. Attack area I've mentioned above a few times already, but here's a few more points.

Some cards can attack multiple fields at once. If you use them, make sure you can use that ability, because otherwise they are expensive to use. Thinking about area of attack is about as important obviously as orientation.

Some cards also attack your own. I've seen a fair few people make the mistake of putting a nice three headed dragon down, which attacks +5 if there's just one card east, north, or weast of it, but that goes down to +3 if there are two, and to +1 if there are three creatures next to it. But most importantly, if there's one creature in front of it, and an allied creature next to it, then it will take three off the health of the creature in front, but also 3 off the health of the creature beside it. And that's a painful surprise, I can tell you! (seen it happen plenty)

Magic cards
These cards are often extremely useful. I don't have that many yet in my deck, because I just don't have that many cards yet. You also shouldn't have too many of them in your deck. But there are some very useful ones - obviously the orientation one I've talked about, but also others I've seen used against me some of which for instance give each player as much mana as the opponent occupies fields. So especially if you're really behind that gives you a great mana boost and allows you to strike back hard.

There's lots more tips, but this is a good start I think.

 

Played this game again a couple of days ago to try out a deck I newly composed. (My friend has quite a lot of cards that I can use.) The dodge event was killing me. I played the AI on normal and witnessed a 6 or 7 consecutive dodging streak by the AI! Totally crazy! It definitely wasn't perfect dodge or one normal dodge stacked on another for a 75% dodge. Just the normal 50% dodge on the AI's creatures but I kept missing unless I used magic attack. I also remember playing against my friend, these chance events also happen to go against me more often than not.

My conclusion: the AI cheats and I'm cursed.

 

I'm not a huge fan of dodge, considering it emphasizes sheer luck, but then you just have to emphasize magic attacks a bit more in your deck and it will reduce how much that hurts. Invisibility is a bit more annoying, as there are so few sources of non-directed damage--and much if what IS there is hard/costly to get out and use--but much of invisibility is on low-power creatures and field types (which are never untargettable), so carrying even just a few Fissure of Goghlie is enough to break someone out of a tactic that seems pretty "cheap." Considering how many other creatures get exceptionally strong or are exceptionally weak to changing their field, that's one of the cards I don't think I will ever do without. (Heck, you can frequently use it to kill dodging creatures faster, too, because they are usually low on life.)

I think they could have used a better mechanic than Dodge itself does, though--or at least given another form of workaround--but there are plenty enough "flip a coin" effects in CCG's for it to not matter, I suppose.

 

I'm not a huge fan of luck either, but it is an aspect of this game anyway, what with drawing random cards. But as said, using magic takes the luck out of it a lot. I don't rely on luck almost at all, and although some of my opponents have, I generally have been able to overcome them ... in the last 8 games I lost once. Won two more games yesterday, although these were fairly easy ... (not that experienced players)

 

Well... Arwin thanks for your post. It's helpful to a beginner like me.

Speaking of luck and cursed, I am bed-ridden now for a few days. At first I was throwing up when playing Uncharted... and thought it was motion sickness >_<

 

Yesterday I read the manual for the first time and it seems to hold a lot of the tips I gave, ironically. But then I've always liked discovering these things myself, one of the best parts of the game after all. Anyway, yesterday also for the first time I saw someone turn their card 90 degrees, using the default manner. That was the first time in 24 games or so, and I don't think I spooted it in the manual either, just somewhere online. So it is in fact possible to turn your card without a spell, and it doesn't seem to end your turn either (but it does cost you the activation cost in mana)

Oh and get well soon! Hopefully you can play a little during those one or two hours of the day that you actually have some energy to spare.

 

I read the manual. Whatever inside is not sinking in.

Will have to try a few games to experience it (Yes, I know about the turning card at will move though).

 

Absolutely. There is nothing better than just playing this game. With half a wit, you'll learn the basics through trial and error really quickly. It's a huge advantage in that respect that you have the computer as an arbiter who knows all the rules and tells you when you're trying to do something that isn't allowed or possible. This a HUGE advantage over traditional card games.

Some of the mistakes you can make are actually really funny too.

 

Ok, I've played a few matches against AI on normal and hard to try out yet another new deck. This time, I was seeing exactly the opposite. There was a run of 5-7 successful physical hits on the AI's dodging creatures and overall, the success rate was very high. So, I'm going back on my previous remark about cheating AI. It may just be a sign of positively correlated randomization. If true, it may be possible to test your "luck" first before deciding on further action in a match.

I have a question now. Some creatures like Dragoon Dragon Cavalry physically attack one target twice. Anyone knows whether it's possible for this kind of attack to hit once and miss once against a dodging creature?

 

I haven't had those two in a combination yet.

I just now got three new packs of cards, three 'elemental' packs (earth, wood and water). I didn't gain any gods, unfortunately, and I was surprised that there was a fair bit of overlap, but then I realise that each of these packs are basically complete decks and can be played as such. I guess that if I want some more special cards I'll have to try some boosters, or of course use www.the13thfloor.co.uk's single card purchase option ...

Anyway, more impressions when I actually get a chance to play this, I've been testing some other stuff (played some Warhawk, and discovered that Aqua Vita runs over remote play )