One of my favourite pastimes on the playground rising up was having heated debates with my pals about which of our favourite TV or video game characters would win in a fight. While it’s been a few many years since these days on the swingset, pitting two people from completely different properties in opposition to each other in a deathmatch is no much less related at this time – simply take a look at video games like Fortnite, Call of Duty, and Magic: The Gathering. One trading card game has been doing it far longer. It's known as UniVersus, and the workforce at UVS Games has lately launched the ultimate set of their Attack on Titan line – Apocalypse – that includes playing cards and characters from the ultimate arc of the manga and anime. At final, we will discover out if Eren Yeager, in his ultimate type, can take on Godzilla or the assorted members of Critical Role’s Vox Machina.
For these unfamiliar with UniVersus, beforehand referred to as “UFS – Universal Fighting System”, it's a card game akin to video games like Magic: The Gathering or Yu-Gi-Oh, however whose identification relies round creating wild cross-over fights. Players assemble decks, choosing a Character to guide their deck, which additionally dictates how a lot life they begin with and their most hand dimension. UniVersus’ mechanics are centered round checks that gamers make to play their varied varieties of playing cards, from assaults to different assets. Each card has a problem worth on it that should be met or exceeded for the cardboard to be efficiently performed, requiring the participant to flip the cardboard on high of their deck and evaluate its verify worth in opposition to the problem worth of the action to be performed.
Successes permit the action to be taken, comparable to attacking your opponent, whereas a failure ends your flip. A participant’s flip continues till both they go or fail one of these checks, with every subsequent verify rising the problem worth. It’s an fascinating system, and provides an additional component of stress with each verify from the highest of your deck. However, it may be a bit overwhelming at occasions, particularly if you get to blocking assaults, which have their own set of related checks to deal with. UniVersus as a entire, I really feel, is one of the more complicated card video games on the market on the market at this time.
This latest set is targeted across the ultimate arc of the Attack of Titan sequence. It continues to build on the earlier units that UVS launched – Battle for Humanity and Origins of Power. Much like these different units, Apocalypse retains the distinctive manga-esque card artwork, with most of the paintings framed in manga panels, with model new paintings performed by sequence creator Hajime Isayama. While his artwork model will not be everybody’s cup of tea, I personally favor the artwork of the anime more, however there may be no denying that it’s neat to have these distinctive prints included within the set.
From a gameplay standpoint, not a lot units Apocalypse aside from the opposite AoT units UVS has launched previously yr, however that isn’t actually a dangerous factor, as I’ve loved the earlier units fairly a bit. I’m particularly fond of the double-sided Titan playing cards that permit characters to shift from their human type into their Titan type during the game, permitting for deeper methods and tense moments in my video games, and it feels simply pretty much as good right here on this ultimate set because it did within the first. I’ve my fingers crossed that the workforce will discover methods to include this function in future non-AoT units.
Coming in at over 180 playing cards, Apocalypse gives gamers roughly the identical quantity of new playing cards because the earlier Origins of Power set did, so sadly, in the event you have been hoping for one more massive set just like the titanic (pun meant) Battle for Humanity and its 300+ checklist, you’re out of luck. It is a bit of a bummer that there aren’t more playing cards. One feeling, although that I couldn’t escape as I regarded by way of this set, was how it felt more like a set aimed more at collectors than at gamers. Maybe it’s simply my creativeness, ensuing from the advertising focus on the brand new Isayama paintings and particular chrome playing cards, however I really feel like with the set's release, and even earlier than, I heard more about these components of this release than specifics on new playing cards or skills of the set. To Apocalypse’s credit score, the playing cards are all very neat and the chrome playing cards are stunning, however for potential new gamers, I don’t know what they may actually study concerning the set from a fast google search about specifics outdoors of “look, new art” which leads into the largest subject that continues to hound UniVersus as a entire – studying assets.
Again, that is a difficult game and on the spectrum of easy to complicated card video games, I’d put UniVersus someplace round 3 out of 4 mark. Even after dabbling within the game for the previous yr or two, there are nonetheless a quantity of areas – useful resource symbols for instance – that seemingly make little sense to me. To the workforce’s credit score, they notice the game has an onboarding problem. I’ve performed Magic a long time, so the concept of colour identification, the concept a particular colour is tied to a model of gameplay, is one thing that is smart to me, and symbols are, in essence, the UniVersus model of this concept. But UniVersus has 12 symbols, with summary issues like “All”, “Good”, and “Chaos” as simply a few examples. I haven’t progressed far previous the concept of simply utilizing the identical symbols because the character who’s main my deck, however I want the training assets out there did far more to help clarify the techniques, or have been offered higher.
While some assets can be found, examples such because the phase breakdown and play-by-play of a turn are partitions of textual content with out a single accompanying picture to help. The symbols guide options outdated card artwork and image designs, and the at present out there primary “How to Play” video that teaches probably the most primary ideas of the game doesn’t contact on half of the cardboard varieties that the game makes use of and even point out these useful resource symbols. In reality, they’re omitted utterly even from the artwork on the playing cards used within the demonstration. Thankfully, varied content material creators have printed assets that potential new gamers can watch to study the game, however the brilliant facet of issues is that they know that that is an subject and are working to handle it, slowly however certainly. I get pleasure from my time once I play, however discovering good data on how to play or build decks on this game is so onerous to return by that it makes UniVersus a onerous promote to my card-game-playing pals.
