C.A.R.D.S. RPG: The Misty Battlefield is one of Acquire's better Experiments

Acquire is a fascinating developer with quite the storied history, ranging from Tenchu to the Way of the Samurai series to the best RPG of 2023 Octopath Traveler 2 (I stand by this, fight me). The last 12-18 months has seen an experimental shift happening at the beloved studio, with a raft of smaller experimental games releasing at a pretty fast clip. At a panel at PAX Aus 2023 Fireside Chat with Endo Takuma, Endo noted the studio was dividing into a number of small teams to quickly trial and iterate on different design ideas, diversifying their output into a more indie feel.

While many of the currently released titles have so far been met with mixed reception, the latest title C.A.R.D.S. RPG: The Misty Battlefield  is easily the most interesting thus far. With a focus on mashing up Fire Emblem grid based SRPG maps with Slay The Spire card based combat mechanics and deck building, CARDS RPG attempts to carve it's own novel niche between genres.

CARDS RPG is fairly barebones in a lot of the extraneous areas - voice acting is mostly generic bordering on cringe, with very little in the way cutscenes, exposition, character building or even other layered menus - but that's ultimately a positive. What you're here for is some juicy tactical gameplay, which is where the game places it's focus.

Moving your little guys around the grid, your goal is to clear out the baddies, find helpful items and finesse your deck. Your card deck is very similar to Slay The Spire, in that you start with basic blocks/attacks and customize it throughout your playtime with an every expanding set of abilities. Clashing with enemies sets up your little guy against one baddie for 3 rounds of card draws, attempting to get in as much damage as possible while avoiding getting cut down in the process.

Despite having your typical swordsman/hero/knight/rogue etc classes with slightly different stats, all characters draw from the same deck, which flattens the experience quite a bit. Characters have different weapons which effect weaknesses and the ability to "break" an enemy for a turn, but it's not as diverse as you want it to feel. Other than ranged classes, that is - if you set up your archer to attack at a distance, you get only 1 turn, but you'll draw only attack cards (including any ranged cards that only draw in this scenario) which set them apart as fairly OP yet squishy tactical advantages.

Having only completed 5 of the 20 stages so far, it's hard to say how things are affected late game, but the fights are overall pretty straightforward. As this isn't an actual roguelike, experimenting with different deck builds isn't really a thing - it's more like players will end up with different deck builds by the end of the game, I can see some interesting theory crafting for ideal build strats through a full 20+ hour playthrough being a thing.

This experimentation from Acquire is undoubtedly a good thing, with a lot of mechanical tests at small scale giving the teams room to come up with new ideas and focus more on fast failing than crashing and burning the whole studio. While there are some ideas that don't end up working out - having each character have their own smaller personalized decks feels like it would have been hugely beneficial - CARDS RPG is quite compelling, with great artwork and enough crunch to make you want to push forward and tweak that deck just a little more. 

Code for C.A.R.D.S. RPG: The Misty Battlefield on Steam was provided for the purposes of this piece.