Card Hunter

Few things are more exciting than participating in a Dungeons & Dragons campaign, at least if you are into such things. It’s a combination of skill, imagination and storytelling that keeps players dreaming for hours on end, as they pretend to be heroes from another world fighting the forces of darkness. However, you can probably spice up the experience with a few other elements as well.

Card Hunter is quite the interesting experiment when it comes to gameplay mechanics, because it blends so many different strategy concepts and role-playing ideas that you won’t be able to figure it all out from the first try. On the other hand, the whole thing is tons of fun, especially if you enjoy strategy and classic fantasy concepts, such as elves, mages and dragons.

To begin with, each mission feels a lot like a D&D campaign, especially since it features a narrator as well. The whole thing takes place on a map, unlike in most CCGs, and you can move by jumping from one tile to the other. However, everything is based on cards, including attacks, special abilities, and even movement, which means that you are restricted in this regard by the power of your deck.

Each victory rewards you with a chance win some loot, including all sorts of items that grant you with card upgrades and additional damage. Other items are not really good for anything, but they can be sold at the shop for a profit. Naturally, the shop can also be used to purchase items with the earned gold, but it’s quite expensive to do so most of the time unless you play a lot.

In case you find it boring to fight the AI on a regular basis, you can also try the co-op or the multiplayer modes, which allow you to participate in various adventures with your friends or with other people from all over the world. However, given the fact that the game includes microtransactions, the PVP section of the game can be a tad too frustrating for those who don’t have the cash for the most expensive gear and cards.

In the end, Card Hunter is actually quite the engaging strategy game, and the mashup of gameplay mechanics turned out very well in the end. It’s still plagued by the sketchy free-2-play model, but it doesn’t seem to be as bad as in other cases, at least if you are patient enough with it.