Welcome to the interesting world of Takara Cards where every decision you make can affect your ship and your character. Takara Cards is a deck-builder RPG with unique grid-based combat in a sci-fi fantasy universe. Join me as we dig into this one and see where our ship can take us.
In this review, I will be going over the following topics.
Story
You are a brand new cadet working for the Federation. You are in search of the legendary Space Dragons that have been stealing from them. However, everyone believes that space dragons are only a myth. It is your job to explore space and see if you can find the truth.
Races
There are four different races in Takara Cards, each with its own unique playing style. These four races include the fearless dwarves, the intuitive humans, the mystical works, and the glamorous elves. Each has a special power that makes it play quite differently.
- The fearless dwarves ride in a hammer-shaped ship. Their combat revolves around Impetus, which can enhance or diminish cards depending on the amount of Impetus they have. Destroying enemies can increase Impetus, but having leftover energy can decrease it. This requires you to be very tactical in the use of your cards so that you do not have extra energy at the end of your turn.
- Humans fly in a ship that is the shape of a knife. Their combat focuses on Ventura. Similar to Impetus, Ventura has an effect on some of the cards in your deck. It influences all random chances by a set percentage. Ventura is rerolled every turn. It can also be rolled again by various cards. This makes the humans feel a little less tactical and a little more based on luck. However, luck is often in your favor.
- The Orks ship is in the shape of a staff. They focus on mana and placing turrets. The turret shoots at enemies and recharges the ship’s battery when you collide with it. Mana is generated from the ork’s body and can be used as backup energy to power the ship.
- Lastly are the elves. They fly in a ballista-shaped ship. Elves worship glamour and as a result are able to channel it. This allows them to use cards from all other races in the game
Cockpit
The layout inside each ship is the same. On the top left you will find your current equipment. This includes weapons and various accessories. You have a maximum of 6 slots. The more equipment you have, the less space you will have for collecting scrap. We will talk about scrap here in a bit.
Next on the left side is the ship status panel. Here, you will find your ship’s current hull, shields, batteries, and scrap readouts. The hull is essentially the health of your ship. If your hull gets to zero, then you will want to eject and get a new ship. Shields in Takara Cards are persistent between rounds in battle and even between battles. Batteries are your resource for using cards, like in most other games in the genre. Scrap has a couple of different uses. It is mostly going to be collected from destroyed enemy ships and sold for credit.
Also, in the status panel, you will find your deck of maneuvers. Here is where you will go to review your deck and remove any cards that you do not want. There is a minimum of 6 cards with no maximum. While not in combat, you can also generate a random hand to see what cards you might draw while in combat. This is a nice feature that I don’t really see in other deck-building games.
Across the bottom of the cockpit are the Star Transfer Gate and the Communications Panel menus. The Star Transfer Gate is where you will go to view the map and travel to the next location. The Communications Panel is how you will interact with the different guilds in your current area.
On the top right side of the cockpit, you will see your experience points, level, and credits. Your experience points have two different uses. You can use your experience to purchase new maneuvers for your deck. Experience points will also level up your character. As you level up your character, your maneuver cards will also improve. Since experience points are used to get new maneuvers, your credits are for buying new equipment or repairing your ship.
Below that, you will find your reputations. These are things that define your character. You can gain bad and good reputations from your choices at various events during your journey. Reputation affects your character’s Karma. Karma influences your journey by determining what kinds of encounters or events you will face. There are seven different types of karma in Takara Cards. These are Bless, Curse, Guts, Kind, Rational, Intuition, and Rich. Karma also affects your attributes, which can affect events and combat. In other words, your decisions do matter.
Cards
Since this is a deck-building game, we should probably talk about the cards a little bit more. The cards you draw in combat will come from two sources. They will come from your equipment and from your maneuvers deck. The distribution between the equipment cards and the maneuver cards will vary depending on the amount of equipment you have, but you will always get cards from both. This means you will use the same equipment cards more often than your maneuver cards because it is a smaller pool of 6 or fewer cards.
Each card has a cost to play, but not all cards cost energy. Things like the “Scrap Missile” use scrap instead of energy to play it. Some cards cost zero energy to play as well. The main uses for your cards are to attack, move, or gain shields. Most cards will do a combination of more than one. For example, “Raise ’em High” moves your ship and has a chance of gaining 1-3 shields. Some cards will be specific to your race and will be affected by your race ability, such as Impetus for dwarves and Ventura for Humans. Finding the right combination of cards between your equipment and maneuvers will lead to a successful run.
Guilds
At most locations you visit, there will be guilds broadcasting their services. When you open your Communications Panel, you will be able to view which services are available at that location. Some of the guilds that offer services include the Mana Guild, the Merchant’s Guild, and the Pathfinders Guild. The guilds each offer a variety of services such as maneuver training, equipment shop, selling scrap, and repairing your ship.
Takara Cards also has a few unique services that you can use, such as card search. This allows you to spend credits to make desired cards more readily available in future shops or at events. There is also the Giants Saving Bank. Not only do they buy your scrap for credit, but they also allow you to rack up a debt with them. This means you can fix your hull and still fly to the following location, even if you don’t have enough money to do both. You can just credit your account and pay the Giants Saving Bank back later.
Map
Takara Cards map is a bit different than most other deck-builder games. Instead of the standard one directional spider web type map, Takara Cards allow you to go in any direction you want. You are free to move to any nearby star whether you have been there already or not. This means knowing which guilds are where can be very helpful if you are looking for something specific.
You don’t have to hope the next location has a way to fix your ship. Instead, you can just jump back to a previous star you know can fix your ship. You do have to keep in mind, though, that each jump does cost money. So even though you can jump to every location multiple times, it doesn’t mean it is always the best idea.
There are always several different locations to visit before you move on to the next map. You will get a glimpse of the amount of enemies at the location and what guilds are there before you make the jump. Once you are done exploring the locations you wanted to go to, then you can jump to the Draconian Signal to begin the boss fight. If you defeat the dragon, then you move on to the next map to explore.
Combat
Speaking of defeating the dragon, let’s talk about how Takara Cards combat works. There are several different elements going on here. The combat is done on a 3×3 grid. There is also an additional row above the grid to preview approaching enemies and below to show enemies as they leave the grid.
On the enemy’s turn they activate from left to right, top to bottom. Enemies will either move or shoot on their turn. If an enemy moves into a space with another enemy unit, then they will fuse together to become stronger. The enemy’s strength is both their health and their attack power. This means you will want to take them out before they start fusing and become more powerful. Enemy attacks that hit another enemy will also fuse and make that unit stronger.
You will use your cards to move around the grid and attack the enemy units. Using your cards is the same as most games in the genre. Each card will require energy or some other resource to be able to play the card. Using all your cards, in turn, will allow you to draw another set of cards. Destroying enemies will generate either energy or scrap for you to pick up. If you are able to clear the majority of the enemies off the grid in one turn, then more enemies will appear in the empty spaces.
Your goal is to survive the jump. The jump will end if you eliminate all the enemies or your ship explodes. An important thing to keep in mind is that your ship is also a weapon. Your ship doesn’t explode right when your health hits zero, so use your shields and hull as a tool to ramp those enemy units. The faster you clear the jump, the higher rank you will get for that combat and the more experience you will gain. You can also increase your rank by using all the cards in your hand and by defeating a large portion of the enemies on the grid in a single turn.
There is a boss battle in each zone to be able to move on to the next zone. Each boss battle is a two-part battle against a dragon. In the first part, you will have to break one of the vents to get into the ship. The second part is completed by either killing the dragon itself or destroying its ship. The dragon can be quite the challenge to kill as it cannot be directly targeted by your cards. Whichever way you choose to finish the battle is up to you. Then, you will jump to the next zone.
Conclusion
Let’s wrap this up by figuring out if Takara Cards is worth picking up. First of all, there are quite a few different elements going on here. You have a puzzly turn-based combat system. You have over 140 interesting cards with a unique karma based reputation system. The health in Takara Cards is also quite unique with the ejection system, which allows you to keep going even if you are caught in a rough spot.
There are a few things that could use a bit of an upgrade. The game doesn’t feel all that difficult, even on the hard difficulty setting. While testing out the different races, I had to start a separate run for each race because I just never died. I think this is partly due to the ejection system mentioned before. You almost have to die on purpose to end a run.
Along with that is the fact that the boss battles in each zone are not difficult. It is the exact same battle each time. So, once you figure out how to beat the dragon, you just need to rinse and repeat. Hopefully a patch in a future update can add some more variety. Maybe these aren’t an issue for you. They certainly are not game-breaking by any means.
Overall, I think Takara Cards is a fun little deck-builder that brings some unique ideas to the genre. If you are looking for something more casual with an 80s aesthetic and silly voiceovers, then Takara Cards is going to be the game for you. If you are looking for something more on the challenging side with intense combat, then you might want to pass on this one or at least wait for an update that addresses what I mentioned. The game is out now, so go check out their Steam page if you want to play.
A review key was provided by the developer at Post Mortem Pixels.
