Summary: System Crash is a Single-player deckbuilding game that is set in the Cyberpunk world where everything is shit and you gonna hack your way into making money or something.
The gameplay is the typical TCG where you play your units with has ATK/HP, then you play cards that buff/debuff them, then if you are winning, your units will bash your opponent’s face until they lose all their HP to win. It does have a different feel compared to the typical TCGs but not too much.
Verdict: System Crash is a great example of a game that is good all-around in terms of UI, card design, themes, but not good enough. It has a decent adaptation of the TCG formula and balance, but it doesn’t provide a unique experience and feels like a chore to play after 5 hours.
Core gameplay loop: Start a new mission -> Read stories -> Fight AIs -> Get rewards in Credits/Cards if you win -> Upgrade your deck -> Start a new mission. Perhaps due to the lack of immersion or uninspiring card pool, I felt really aware of the “loop” while playing. It just felt like an endless grind from one place to another.
Progression: You start the game with a mediocre deck. By the end of the game, it is expected that you would be able to build a constructed deck in typical TCGs. I find the progression to be too slow in comparison to roguelike deckbuilders as after 5 hours of playing, the deck is slightly better but not that great yet.
General Archetypes: Each archetype has something unique, but ultimately pretty vanilla and simple. You have Criminals that get tempo advantage but sacrifice cards for it. Then there are Hackers that gain Evasion but have weak stats. Mechs have above-average stats, but they have the downside of not being able to use the equipment. Archetypes and cards have clear upside and downsides, The game feels balanced and intuitively somewhat fun, but it doesn’t offer anything out of the ordinary.
First Go’er Advantage: System Crash address this issue with a simple neutral rule: All characters that enter play gain 1 Armor until the end of the opponent’s turn. This means that Agents played on defensive turns can have a better chance of survival.
Narrative: I also have trouble keeping up with the story. I think a few things contributed to this:
- There wasn't anything eye-catching at the start
- The choices are mostly meaningless, although they can impact the "mood" of the narrative, perhaps it is because I am making too many choices and that makes the choice feels less powerful in comparison to Visual Novels like Eliza, where I tend to make less and seemingly more impactful choices.
- The UI between the story and your own dialogue aka choices, are on the top and the bottom. I think this design makes the story hard to read because my head has to turn up and down constantly, whereas any books/VNs are read line by line.
- To progress through dialogues in this game, one has to make choices and they are always positioned in the bottom dialogue box. The result is that I was prone to accidentally click the choices too many times, which makes me miss out on dialogues when I do not want to. When that happens I just give up reading. In Visual Novels, one typically move onto the next dialogue by habitually clicking on the dialogue box in the bottom. When the player has to make a choice, the choice would be positioned in the middle of the screen, and this problem would naturally be less prominent.
- There also lacks a strong sense of overarching narrative. In a way, the stories make sense and they are well written, they just aren't engaging for me.
- The story is a constant flow of random people requesting me to help them and before we get to know them, a new character pops up. It lacks the feelings of "closeness" where I start sympathizing and care about the characters, but it does fit thematically the current circumstance of this cold Cyberpunk world.
Deckbuilder UI: There is a lack of the option to filter cards by tribes/search. Everyone knows that it would be a good feature, but smaller studios may lack time to implement this. I think it is especially annoying in System Crash because tribal synergy is very persistent in this game, but I would have to slowly scroll the card list to find what I need. The Cost/Rarity/Owned features are still useful though.