FAERIA Review for Nintendo Switch

Card games have always had a tumultuous history with video games. Since the format of card games are antithetical to the fast-paced nature of most popular games, trying to make placing down cards on a table just as exciting has been challenging for many developers. Faeria, by developer Abrakam Entertainment and publisher Versus Evil, doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel with their approach but brings some fun new mechanics to stand out from other card games.

Anyone familiar with the game Hearthstone will recognize many conventions of using cards to attack opponents and their cards. The biggest twist, you must build the board as you play. You put down spaces on the board in order to have tiles to put down your cards on. Creating the board each turn allows for a lot greater strategic options for each turn, choosing where to set you up for the next attack or retreat from encroaching enemy cards. For the Switch, the game allows you to use either the touch screen or controller, but I usually ended up using the touch controls since it was always more straight forward.

One of my big problems with card games is they can become repetitive quickly, and Faeria almost falls into that issue to a degree. The fact the board is the same every time you play makes it, so you get locked into a similar strategy each time you play. Another issue is there’s no penalty for the number of cards you have on the board at any given time, so you can just keep piling up forces to overwhelm your enemy. This is nitpicking but I wish there was some cost to having a lot of monsters on the board, or limit how much you can do each turn, I think it would help keep gameplay more chaotic and exciting.

While the game’s art and sound are passable, it lacks much of an identity. The most significant standout feature of its presentation is the heavy focus on nature. The loading screens are moss-covered stone: each level takes place on a lake, the world seems like the society built after an apocalypse. Characters battle in abandoned villages and mines. The biggest issue is the actual art looks like every other fantasy game we see now. If you told me this was the new Magic the Gathering game, I would believe you. I wish the art had more fun and soul put into it. The sound has the same issue. The sound effects for each move are quite satisfying, but nothing stands out. The music is standard fantasy fare, operatic choirs, and strings with backing horns. Maybe something folkier could give variety.

My biggest problem with Faeria has nothing to do with most of the game. Online only games are a plague upon the industry, and this game is no exception. While there are offline features, the game requires an internet connection at all times to play. The game currently downloads only, but this would prevent any physical copy sales for any players without the internet. I had many times where my own internet would go down and render the game unplayable. It always worries me when a game does this since it guarantees a time where no one can access the game if the servers shut down. I would not complain about this if there were an option in the game to play offline. The addition of that option would nullify this paragraph, but as it stands, this is my primary issue with my experience playing the game.

Faeria promises a new fresh take on the card game formula, and while it makes some strides towards that, it fails to live up to that. It’s an okay card game with okay music, and okay art. I cannot see it as something worth sinking hundreds of hours into mastering. The online features harm the game’s mass appeal. If you want something to kill a few minutes in your day, this game will fill that need with ease.

6/10

Check Out the Faeria Nintendo Switch Trailer:

For more information, please visit: https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/faeria-switch/

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