Lately I have started playing a lot of deck building games, like the popular Kill the tower. This type of game requires a lot more strategy than I originally expected, but at the same time, the game is addictive! Elemental Exiles is an RPG deck-building roguelike title that looks very similar to Kill the towerthe main difference being that it is set outdoors and gives the player much more freedom in choosing their destination. In other card battle games, your path is pretty set, with stops at predetermined locations on the way to the boss. Here, you can go wherever you want; an arrow shows you your destination, but how you get there and what stops you make are up to you.
Elemental Exiles lets you start as one of four characters, each with their own personal task, unique blessing, starting position on the map, and starting cards. Besides these first four, there are eight more characters that can be unlocked. Brook is an apprentice water mage whose unique blessing is “Carefully Trained.” She has a handy Focus card that, when played before an attack card, doubles the damage of the next attack. Her deck also includes water block cards. Alex is a solo bounty hunter with the unique blessing: Born Mercenary, which earns her double the amount of gold you would normally get in battle. In her deck, she has a Brutal Resolve card that gives you six block points, and three Hidden Thrust cards that let you deal three damage for each card and cost no energy to use. Next, we have Meira, a young elf warrior; her unique blessing is “Natural Warrior,” which makes the nature cards she plays more powerful; and finally we have Thalrin, a dwarven researcher. His unique blessing is that he is an Elemental Academic, which gives him a deck of cards from each of the elements. And what about the other eight? You’ll just have to play and find out!
After choosing your character, we are taken through a basic tutorial that teaches the player how to fight. Each card you play costs energy and you only have five points per turn. If you want to damage your enemies, you play your attack cards. To block their incoming attacks, you use your defense cards. These defense cards reduce incoming damage but are lost when you start your next turn, so each turn you must replace any shields you want to use to maintain your barrier. The blocks and attacks you use are elemental. Fire does more damage to nature blocks; nature does more damage to water blocks, and water is strong against fire blocks. So this is a sort of rock-paper-scissors style of play or Pokemon without the cute monsters.
You can play Elemental Exiles either with a mouse or a controller. To use the mouse, click on the card you want to use, then drag it to the character you want to use it on (attack card on an enemy, block cards on your hero to create a shield that reduces damage, for example). I chose to use an Xbox controller when playing.
Your character’s blessings affect their gameplay. The person you choose may receive additional blessings or curses that are temporary during your journey. For example, the cost of using attack cards will decrease by one point, or if you’re cursed you can only choose one of two reward cards instead of three. But our heroes aren’t the only ones blessed. Enemies you encounter may also have their own blessings to contend with. This can make the battle you find yourself in significantly more difficult!
There are four different types of locations on the map that you can visit, each with a different symbol. A sword graphic, where you fight weaker enemies to earn gold and choose a new card; a book, which denotes a narrative encounter – this is a random event that can have a good or bad outcome; a gold coin is the trading outpost. This is where you can spend your gold on new cards, blessings, and items. This is also where you can rest to heal up to 40% of your HP, or pay to get rid of cards from your deck that you don’t want. And finally, the purple monsters are boss battles; these are rated from one to three stars depending on the opponent’s strength. These bosses usually have two minions with them, making them more difficult to defeat. If you are victorious in battle, you not only get gold, but also an item and a new card for your deck.
If you are defeated in any of the battles you participate in, you start over again, but you can try a different character for this playthrough. Any cards you collected along the way are gone, and you start again with your standard deck. The only thing that seems to carry over is your milestone progress; it is still intact and ready for you to continue. When you reach a milestone, your character is rewarded with gold that you can spend in a random narrative encounter or at the trading outpost.
On the other hand, if you are victorious in a battle, you will receive gold and can choose a card from three options. If you don’t want any of the cards offered, you can take 10 gold instead. I always chose a new card because I wanted to build and strengthen my deck. You always needed block and attack cards, so there was usually an option that worked for you. When you start out, you may not realize how important block cards are. You will quickly learn that you need a good balance of attack and defense to succeed. If you focus solely on attack, the opponent will likely be able to eliminate you if you don’t use elemental blocks to mitigate their attacks, especially when fighting a boss and their minions.
Using an item doesn’t use up energy points and can be used in the same turn that you play cards in combat. If you need to leave the game and decide to stop, you can pick up where you left off as long as you don’t die. This was especially handy if you needed to pause the game and continue later. I tried all four characters and found that I had the most success with Alex, the bounty hunter, especially since she had the Brutal Resolve card. It was always great when you could damage the enemy for free; it allowed me to spend more energy building up my defenses against the incoming enemy attacks.
Elemental Exiles has a really cool looking map that you will explore as you play. You can see mountains and trees that look like someone drew and painted them by hand. The images in the battles are vibrant and, like the map, appear hand-drawn. The characters and enemies are all animated, so they are never static. Even when there is no action, they appear alive as they wait for you to make your choice of which card to play. The cards you choose from are vibrant and their color differentiates what type of element it is: blue is water, green is nature, and red is fire. This is accompanied by a soundtrack that is suspenseful and makes you feel like something dangerous could happen at any moment; it really builds tension!
Despite similarities with Kill the towerespecially during the fighting, Elemental Exiles offers a unique experience. The fact that your route offers much more freedom to visit different locations in any order is unique to this type of game. However, I did have an issue where I challenged a boss way too early and was quickly destroyed because I didn’t have any good cards yet, so if you’re not careful, challenging different enemies in the wrong order can have disastrous consequences.
Play Elemental Exiles was a fun experience, although I didn’t find it as addictive as some other deck-building games. The fact that it’s more of a roguelike and you feel like any progress you make is completely wiped out when you die makes it more frustrating to get back in. I just want to keep the new cards I found in my deck so I can do better next time! If you’re a fan of titles like this, Elemental Exiles will be worth trying out, especially when all 12 characters are playable. It will be fun to discover all of their unique skills and playstyles.
