Tainted Grail : Conquest

[shinymcshine]

Not sure quite how many people start their Xbox Series S 'next gen' life with a reasonably obscure roguelike deckbuilder, inspired by a boardgame, but it's exactly the sort of thing that ticks a lot of boxes for me.

 

It's got the grimness of Darkest Dungeon and the deckbuilding hook of Slay the Spire, with a rich storyline underpinning the characters you meet along the way.

 

Here's an in-depth review if you want to know more:

https://rpgamer.com/review/tainted-grail-conquest-review/

[shinymcshine]

Having really good fun with this, esp. now as I feel I'm making reasonable progress having now unlocked the Summoner character.

[shinymcshine]

Unlocked a few more characters now, each one requiring a different set of cards and tactics - and I've got the next quest stage to conquer too.

 

Feels like it's a pretty meaty game, in terms of content too.

[shinymcshine]

It's equally funny and annoying when you hit an impasse in a boss fight due to your deck build.

 

I'm in a place where the boss had 2000 hps but is buffed with armour, so I do 10-20 hits of damage per turn, with an occasional bonus of about 100 hits every ten turns (based on the occurrence of certain cards in a certain order coming out). But every turn it gets healed by 15-20 hits, so after about 1 hr I'd got it down to half health.

 

Meanwhile I can always buff my armour and barrier so it can't damage me.

 

Weirdly though, and with no clear on-screen explanation, the occasional debuff card I get (to reduce its armour, and therefore increase my damage) just doesn't seem to actually work on this boss - which is frustrating.

 

I just turned it off after an hour, just wasn't fun anymore - time for a character rebuild (but since it's a rogue like game its part & parcel of the game, but annoying that I might have to quit the run and lose some of the good stuff I'd picked up).

 

On the plus side, I've unlocked more of the character types, so I'll probably retry using one of those (as each comes with different cards/build).

[shinymcshine]

Not sure if that's a wrap, but after about 40 hrs I maxed out a character to lv 20 and survived the final boss (the one where you need 3 boss hearts to do the fight, then have to just survive 15 turns doing as much damage as you can).

 

I got place 1089th on the leaderboard together with an achievement, so noting it's a continuous loop type game, then might be a good point to move on, as I've seen most things (but not quite unlocked everything).

 

It's been really enjoyable, pretty addictive too.