Etherlords
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iOS
| Etherlords

I went hands-on with Etherlords back when it was still in soft-launch, and I was really impressed. The game felt like it could be the next step forward for the card battler, a genre which is in desperate need of a shake up.

Now Etherlords has been launched globally, and I've got an opportunity to see how the game is changing as it finds a wider audience.

Are the improvements to the Rage of Bahamut formula simply cosmetic, or is Etherlords truly the card battler to beat? Find out as I play the game over the course of a week, and report back every few days.

First impressions

The reason I refer to Etherlords as a card battler is because it takes so many aspects of that genre. But it recycles them so that it's not immediately evident that that's where they're from.

Each area begins with you placing down tiles on a map of a shattered land. You're filling in the blanks of the geography, replacing what was destroyed in The Cataclysm. Once you're out of tiles you have to fight for more.

Each battle pits your three creatures (cards made corporeal) against the enemy. You trade blows and after a few attacks are thrown about you can choose a special move to use.

This might be a particularly powerful attack, a status buff, or a boost to your health. But whatever you choose you're trying to gat an edge in the encounter.

Much like most card battlers it's a mostly automated grind, with the occasional choice to sway the scrap in your favour,

When you're not fighting or restoring the lands to their former glory, you're making your creatures stronger by sacrificing other creatures to them.

These Feeder Creatures are earned by completing areas of land, and they're then fused to your main characters to give them more health and strength.

So far, so card battler. But it's also very pretty. Oh boy, is it pretty.

Day 3: It really is pretty

Each monster card you receive is fully 3D, highly detailed, and is animated wonderfully well - when you see a strike land you can almost feel the impact of the hit. The landscapes you're rebuilding, Carcassone-style, also erupt into life once they're completed, giving the game a sense of vitality and freshness.

I'm really starting to get into the quests a bit more too, and that's because I'm starting to fail some of them.

Where once each quest was a slog through to a guaranteed victory, now I'm starting to run out of chances to place down a tile, meaning I need to think very carefully about where I want to place my next one, or if I want to discard it to use the following one instead.

This has got me more involved with what's going on. I'm thinking more about my strategies, and ensuring that my team is fully upgraded so that they can quickly beat the foes that stand between me and more tiles.

It's elevated the gameplay above the typical card-battling format, and it's started to feel more like a game than a grind.

Day 7: Substance

As I round out my week with Etherlords, I'm still uncovering more and more welcome complexity in the game.

My character's abilities are really coming into their own, and I've learned to boost their power by tactically placing them on their corresponding battlefield Glyph.

Each card has one of these Glyphs - Chaot, Kinet, and Vital - and using a special ability while positioned correctly massively increases the power of your attacks, buffs, and heals.

I'm also assigning cards special abilities, such as Regen, which ensures every strike I land gives a little health back to my character.

The presentation is still impressive, and as I continue through the single player and time-sensitive events the worlds I'm rebuilding are adding a little extra touch of personalisation that I really like.

So check out Etherlords, if you get a chance, even if you've sworn off the genre forever. It's a card-battler, sure, but it's doing more with the genre than pretty much any other game of its type right now, and that's very exciting indeed.

How are you getting on with the game? You can tell us and the rest of the PG community about your experiences by leaving a comment in the box below. Click here to learn about our free-to-play review policy.

Etherlords

An experimental and highly compulsive card-battler, with some pretty presentation to boot
Score
Peter Willington
Peter Willington
Die hard Suda 51 fan and professed Cherry Coke addict, freelancer Peter Willington was initially set for a career in showbiz, training for half a decade to walk the boards. Realising that there's no money in acting, he decided instead to make his fortune in writing about video games. Peter never learns from his mistakes.