they didn't release the sequel in Europe ;_;
I was so into the first one as a kid, when i read there was going to be a sequel in the video game magazine i used to buy, i was so exited. Then it was never released. Broke my young heart. Compensated it by playing the first one over and over.
The game was turn based. However, during your turn, your opponent could defend himself and, conversely, you could defend yourself during theirs. To fight you used a deck of cards. You could only have a small number of cards in your hand at a time and, as you used them, other cards from your deck would take their place.
Each of your cards had a number (from 1 to 9), and the idea was to do combos (like a straight in poker: 1,2,3,4,5,etc... or 5,4,3,2,1,etc...). At the beginning of the game each card would only have one number, but as you advanced, you would start getting cards with 2 numbers, then 3 and finally 4 (one number per corner).
When you were first introduced to the idea of being able to choose cards to defend yourself (so a defensive phase), it seemed like a brilliant idea, but later in game, i'd say it started to affecting the pacing of battles in a negative way.
The game had to give you a bit of time before each of your opponent's hits, so that you could chose a card from your hand to defend yourself with. This wasn't much of a problem at the beginning of the game, where both your combos and those of your enemies were short (2-3 hit combos). However, you would eventually be able of doing 6-9 hit combos, and your enemies would too.
Imagine you were in a boss battle, later in the game, fighting against 3 enemies at once. After your turn, you'd have to sit thought each of your 3 enemies combos, one at a time: a slow 6 hit or more combo that ended in a (even slower) charged/finisher move. That was once per turn.
The defensive turn didn't just affect the pace of battle, but also the process of building a deck. The fact you had to reserve part of your deck for defensive cards (i.e. cards that could not be used during your attacking turn) made making a deck that much more difficult.
Ideally, you would want to set up your deck to increase the likelihood of getting a straight (1,2,3,4,etc...) in your attacking turn. You wouldn't get a straight on your hand right away, obviously. But, as you started a combo (with a low number card, expecting to go up from there, or a high number card, expecting to go down), the other cards you needed would supposedly come in (with a bit of luck and a good constructed deck).
To increase your likelihood of doing combos, you needed to have an equal number of 1s, 2s, 3s etc... Managing that balance as you were constantly getting new cards to put in your deck was hard enough, but then there was also the fact that, as you advanced through the game, the number of card you could have in your deck would increase from 20 to 30, 40, 50, etc... (throwing that balance off, forcing you to remake your deck).
To make matter worse, each of your characters had its independent cards and deck, meaning you had to maintain that balance of 1s, 2s, 3s, etc... for a minimum of 3 characters. Then add to this, there was (if i remember correctly) 6 types of cards. They were distributed in 3 groups of 2, which each pair counteracting each other (i.e. if you used a water card and a fire card in a combo, they would cancel each other). And on top of all that, you had to reserve part of your deck to defensive cards? come the fuck on.
The fact you had to reserve part of your deck for defensive cards, made making straights on your attack phase that much more difficult. The defensive cards you currently had on your hand during your attack phase, couldn't be used for attacking, effectively making your hand smaller and taking up space from offensive cards.
Still, you couldn't simply ignore the defense phase and only include offensive cards in your deck since, if you did that, you'd take way to much damage during your defensive phase (as the game expected you to use defensive cards as "shields", as you were getting hit).
So, you had to keep an extremely tight balance between how many attack and defense cards you had, in addition to having an equal number of 1s, 2s, 3s, etc... for both the attacking and defensive phase, in addition to making sure you didn't use cards with opposite types, in addition to doing all this with a minimum of 3 separate decks (you could fight with 3 fighter at once) but your party was bigger than that (like in all RPGs). So, yeah...
It's not like the defense turn was that fun anyway, since what generally ended up happening during it was that you were scraping to find anything you could use to defend yourself with, disregarding card combos and such (which where the fun part). Just as defensive cards took up space on your hand during your attack phase, your attack cards took space during your defensive phase.
What all this meant was that, if you wanted to have a good deck (i.e. a deck that increased the likelihood of you getting crazy combos), you were constantly spending way to much time managing your decks thought the game. And don't get me wrong, i enjoyed doing it, but that didn't stop me from seeing the flaws in the system and how it could have been much more straightforward.
There were different solutions:
- not having a defensive phase at all
- having two separate decks, one exclusively for defense, one for offense
- all your characters sharing one deck
Although, for the last one, the problems that come with attack and defensive cards sharing the same deck would still be there? Of course you don't want to oversimplify things, you want to find a right balance, but i don't think the first game got it quite right.
I know the second game changed the battle system, by having all your characters sharing a single deck? I can't remember what else they changed. I'd like if anyone who has played both game's could comment on how the dynamic of battles and building a deck was on one game compared to the other
