Shadowverse First Impressions

A few months ago I was walking through a train station when I saw a big poster for a new mobile game called Shadowverse.  It looked like an exact clone of digital card collecting favorite Hearthstone so until the other day I ignored it.  However due to a friend starting to play I decided to jump on and give it a go and boy Im glad I did because this game is awesome .  

If you have played Hearthstone then you have basically played this.  At its core it's the same game but there have been a few tweaks to the systems which stop it from being an exact clone.  I'm going to start talking about the game assuming you have a basic knowledge of how Hearthstone works so if you don't I'm sorry if you feel a little lost.  

So you do the usual thing of playing monsters with a health and attack value and you use these in conjunction with spells in order to try and bring your opponents life from 20 to 0, just like Hearth.  However this time around the characters don't have active abilities and instead have passive effects that do various things to their decks.  For example there's one character who's cards get stronger depending on how many spells you cast while another who has various abilities depending on how many cards occupy her graveyard.  

Each character has a unique play style and you're bound to find one that matches how you like to play.  

The other big new thing here is the evolution system which allows you after 5 turns to start buffing your monsters for +2/+2 and an added effect if the card has one.  

This allows the monster to attack the turn its played (monsters only, mind you) and can quickly change the tide of a losing battle if you're clever with your evolution points which are limited to 2 for the starting player and 3 for the guy who goes second. 

There are other slight changes but these are the two huge things and everything else is sort of taken from Hearth from there.  Of course there is online play which comes in the form of standard ranked/unranked and 2 pick mode.  2 pick is almost identical to the Area in Hearth but you pick the cards 2 by 2 instead of one at a time.  Also you aren't kicked out of the mode for losing and your reward is based on how many out of 5 you win.  

One thing I really like about this game over Hearth though is just how easy it is to access the content and get cards.  The single play story modes are avaliable from the get go and the game gives you 20 boosters just for clearing the tutorial.  You can get cards by collecting an in game currency which is awarded to you for logging in each day.  I'm still playing the story modes so I'm unsure if online matches provide this currency but even if it doesn't getting cards still doesn't feel like a massive chore like it did in Hearth.

Shadowverse is a quality digital card game that people should give some time to.  This is especially true if you're the kind of person who played Hearth and wasn't happy with some of the direction it took.  I'm playing the Japanese version on my phone but I know there's an English version avaliable on Steam so give it a try!  

Shouldn't Digital Cost Less?

Before I make this post I'd just like to clarify that I am not a businessman and I know very little about business.  However this is something that has been bothering me for a long long while and I can't help but feel that there's a little bit of bullshit involved.

So, when I used to only buy hard copies of games a brand new game would set me back about £40.  For this £40 I would get the game, a box to keep it in and an instruction manual to tell me how to play.  Now, a brand new big title game on Steam will STILL cost £40 but all I get is a digital version of the game and nothing else.  Now I'm sorry but since I'm getting less stuff for my money shouldn't digital distribution cost less?!

When you're making a hard copy of a game you have to make the disc, make the box, print a manual, ship it to a retailer and a bunch of other shit that would be a cost to the people publishing game.  But with digital you aren't doing any of that so shouldn't the costs to the producer be less?  If that is the case shouldn't the cost of the game be less?  Why am I still being charged £40 just for the games data, it seems like a bit of a con.

I've even come across examples where the digital version of a game was MORE EXPENSIVE than the fucking hard copy.  Xenoblade X came out recently in Japan and if I go down to my local game store to pick up a copy it would set me back around 6000 yen.  However if I go on the Nintendo E-Shop it costs fucking 8000 yen!  What the fuck is that?!  where is that extra 2000 yen coming from?  I'm getting significantly less for significantly more money

Maybe there's something I'm missing and digital copies of games are actually more of a cost to a company than producing a hard copy.  I'm hoping that if this is the case then someone can explain it to me because right now I feel like I'm being fucking ripped off!

Won't stop me from buying digital though, it's just so damn convenient.....

Another KindaAwesome article

Do you remember that website I wrote an article for a while back?  Well I've gone and done another so I think it's about time that you all went over there and checked them out again!

This time my post was on Digital Vs Physical game collections, so go give it a read here

http://kindawesome.com/?p=1693

Also don't forget to check out the rest of their website at

http://kindawesome.com/