Neverland Card Battles

"Underated Gem but Not For Everyone"

First let me get something out of the way, this game has nothing to do with Peter Pan. The neverland it refers to is an anime-ish world featuring humans, elves, and demons that has been used as the place of conflict in a number of games (usually preceeded by the word spectral).

As the title suggests this is a card game off shoot of the main branch of neverland games, so lets also get out of the way, if you don't like collectible card games, your probably not going to like this even if you do like the neverland brand.

Ok so all that covered lets look at what this game actually is:

Story: The story isn't this games strong suit but it is there. There are a number of interesting characters, more developed then most card games characters, but the cast isn't overly huge and no ones going to make you go "Whoa, now there's a really unique character". They aren't overly cliche, but they aren't exactly super deep either. In essence the whole drive of the story is to stop some evil god from awakening and destroying the world (now that IS overly cliche) but each character does have different motivations so its not as shallow as many games with that premise. The biggest plus I give to the story is that its fully voice acted and they at least tried at all compared to most card games that don't even make an attempt.

Score - 6/10

Sound: Musics pretty good, voice acting's pretty solid, my biggest complaints would be the sound effects during gameplay. They're really weird, some times very offsetting sounds, that seem a little too loud and a little out of place or unnecessary.

Score - 8/10

Graphics: Everything's 2d, which is fine for me as I usually prefer good expressive hand drawn 2d graphics to most games blocky and unexpressive 3d ones. Character art and card art is top notch, while graphics on the field or in "card battle" are of a much lesser quality. Still I find the simplicity a good thing as with a crowded field its easy to distinguish your cards from each other and at least every card is unique and has a unique fighting style in the card battles.

Score - 9/10

Gameplay: Ah the heart of any game. This is what will either suck you in, or push you away. At the start things are pretty slow, you've got few cards to alter your deck, the games rules are pretty complex, and the early opponents can be pretty tough for so early in the game, it would not surprise me if many people lost interest within the first 3 fights of the game. That said, if you push through the early learning struggles what you'll find is a pretty dang solid card game. In many ways things play out more like a miniatures game, or for those not familiar with miniatures then perhaps a chess game. The game is played on a large field (and there are many different sizes and shapes and elemental variations which alter the way the game is played) and you play your cards to the field and then move them around the field (except structures which are harder to kill but never move), slowly trying to control territory. The more territory you control the more cards you can play to the field. The ultimate goal is to kill your opponents King card (represented by the player). The player cards tend to be much stronger then normal cards so expect to have to hit them a lot of times, a single sneak attack won't grab you victory. Probably the 2 major ways of succeeding are to either beat your opponent down with more powerful cards, or suffocate them by stealing all their territory, with the maps size and shapes making either strategy more effective. The card in the game seem fairly well balanced so don't expect to just get stronger cards and suddenly start winning, this game require strategy, will you sacrifice strength for the mobility to control lots of territory, will you rush with lots of cheap cards, or hope to drag the game out into a large territory owning affair where high cost units are king, lots of factors must be considered. My only real complaint is the computer AI, it may seem incredibly hard when you first start out, but once you figure out what your doing you'll find its really pretty dumb. The game compensates for this by giving the computer huge statical advantages on their King card as the game goes along, but obviously to get a truly great tactical battle you need human opponents that can't be so easily tricked.

Score - 9/10 (2/10 if you lack patience or prefer mindless game play)

Replayability: Well single player has alot to do and even beyond that there's collecting all the cards but the heart of replayability is multiplayer. From what I understand the game has only local multiplayer, no online play, so how much replayability this game will be decided in large part by how many friends you can talk into getting this game with you. If you can though, with 200 mostly very unique cards to choose from this game could keep you guys busy for a long time.

Score - 8/10

Final Word: Do not buy this if your looking for another early era Yugioh, a game where you can just throw in the clearly best cards and mindlessly beat down opponents while chatting with friends or watching tv. This is definitely a thinking mans game, its going to require your focus to win most of the time, and quite frankly many players today want their games with as little thinking as possible so this game is definitely not for everyone. That said, if you do like to think, and plot, and strategize, Neverland Card Battles has a wealth of depth that could really be enjoyable for you. I know it was for me. If they ever release a sequel with improved CPU AI this game could easily be one of my favorites of all time.

Final Score - 8/10

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 04/20/09

Game Release: Neverland Card Battles (US, 10/27/08)