Released recently in early access, Temperia: Soul of Majestic is an online collectible card game like Magic or Heartstone. However, to avoid repetition, the people behind the title have seen fit to have a different gameplay from their direct competitors.
The goal in Temperia will be to control the most cards of your color on the field which is itself divided into 9 squares. Your deck will consist of 20 creature cards (cards that can be put on the field) and 20 equipment cards that can act on creatures, whether yours or your opponent's.
The particularity of the title is above all the notion of an open hand where each of the two players can see the opposing hand throughout the round, which allows a lot of anticipation and strategic choice. Be careful though, the deck in its entirety is not known and, each time you play an equipment card, you draw a new one. Even if this new deal will be known to your opponent, he will not be able to anticipate a possibly more devastating card that will arrive later.
If you are familiar with Final Fantasy XIV, you will surely have noticed, thanks to the first screen impressions, that the game looks a lot like the Triple Triad card game that can be played at Gold Saucer. Temperia is actually modeled on the same principle of play, namely that of conquering the field thanks to an opposition of force. By itself, when you put a creature card on the field, we compare the edge values of each of the cards and, if the card placed is stronger, then the lower value cards turn over to "be on your side". . It is possible to perform combos/chain flips.
However, the game isn't just about raising and laying down cards, as many cards also have abilities that affect your own or your opponent's cards. For example, creatures with the vampirism skill will be able to increase one of their edges by 1 but in return will decrease the edge of one of the creature cards in your hand by 1. Other skills, for example, will have effects on the field or on your opponent. It will be necessary to read all the skills well to know what could await you thereafter. I also have no doubt that the developers will create new mechanics that impact the game over time.
In the other interesting mechanics in the game, we will find that of the terrain itself where certain squares at the start of the game will be affiliated with a specific element. If you play a card with the same affinity, it will gain +1 on each of its edges. If its affinity is not the same, the edges will change in clockwise order between 1 and 4 times. It might look a bit like luck, but sometimes it's necessary when you don't have a better solution than this one.
One of the points, on the other hand, which put me off a bit during my games, but which will surely be adjusted as the game progresses, is the time per turn that the players have to perform their actions. A game turn can be up to 90 seconds and, being used to playing many TCGs whether online or live, this is particularly long. I really hope that an adjustment will be made on this point without which many players will quickly desert the game for this aspect of length in the games (especially since the TCGs have a vocation to be faster and faster in their way / way of playing).
For a TCG, on the other hand, I found the game quite pretty, whether on the in-game animations or all the artwork of the cards offered at the moment. The studio has made a good effort on this side to make a copy of its game fun to watch rather than something flat and tasteless. It should be noted however that, even if the game is quite fluid in all that it offers, it is quite slow in its execution, for example for the winnings of a game or the opening of boosters.
Now let's talk about the subject that divides: the economic model! The game is basic Free To Play with the possibility of making in-game purchases to buy card packs or cosmetics. Even though there is a rare/common ratio in the packs, given the number of packs I've been able to open, it's drastically low for rarities above epic. In a hundred open decks of cards (a little less than 50 euros), for example, I didn't have any legendary directly. We can criticize some games on this loot rate, but here it is I think even worse. It is always possible to go through the card creation box, but it can be quite tedious if you are not assiduous in the game. On the other hand, one of the bonus points which, I hope, will remain in the future, it's the daily quests that really speed up the unlocking of cards by giving players a lot of rewards.
In conclusion, Temperia: Soul of Majestic is a card game with alternative gameplay to what we usually know, which is really a good point for once. It changes classic card battles with direct confrontations for example. However, in my opinion, the studio is going to have to make a lot of effort on everything that revolves around the feeling of slowness in the game, which for me is a significant obstacle. It may also be necessary to review the rate of obtaining certain rarities or increase the rate of dust collection to balance the acquisition of new cards.
Despite this, I still advise you to test it and form your own opinion on this card game. It is available in Early Access on Steam for free.
