LogFAQs > #966885371

Surprise, I'm getting a couple of these done

#24: Iris and the Giant

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/6/4/4/AAA-H0AADgCM.jpg

I have to write about two roguelike card-game-things in a row? Why did I do this to myself? Not too much backstory about how I found this one - Dels gave me a soft recommend on it one day and I remembered it like two years later when I went to check out games in order to fill out my 2020-2021 backlog. This one ended up being a really nice discovery.

Iris and the Giant is a roguelike deckbuilder. There's a framing story of - I guess like, a sad, shy girl and her father trying to get her to open up to him? It kind of falls into that same trap as Ring of Pain where they were trying hard to make their game "mean" something, but this one comes off as very earnest and sincere; it's just a story about a sweet girl and a nice dad growing closer. That's nice! The actual game takes place in this metaphorical-I-guess fantasy land of skeletons and minotaurs that the girl has invented in a card game that I guess she created in real life or something. I don't remember the details. The visuals are very appealing and the monsters are cute. There's a giant mimic.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/6/4/5/AAA-H0AADgCN.jpg

The gameplay premise is surprisingly novel for a roguelike-deckbuilder; I expected something akin to Slay the Spire but this is not Spire at all. You have a grid of enemies, and each of your cards have different properties - swords can be chained together, axes hit a 3-wide area, daggers ignore shields, etc. You attack, then the enemies attack back, if they can, rinse and repeat until you can reach the stairs. The hook is, every card in your deck is a one-time use. You use it, it's gone forever, and if you run out of cards, it's game over just as if you ran out of health. You get booster packs as you progress which lets you add more cards to your deck, so you're always replenishing what you have, but it adds an interesting challenge, deciding what you should have in your arsenal, and deciding when best to use it.

This game is like the Elixir Problem on steroids. But it works really well, because EVERYTHING in this game is an Elixir Problem, so deciding when the best time is to use your best cards is crucial, because the best time is not never - you'll die if you take that approach. So the anxiety of using your cards is something you get over fast. You're always getting more cards, anyway, so nothing is ever *truly* lost forever, you'll probably come across more later. But it ensures that every single tactical choice in this game is interesting, because of it. Is now the best time to use your card that'll take out a huge group of enemies? Or will you need it even more later?

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/6/4/6/AAA-H0AADgCO.jpg

This game is quite challenging, but not overly demanding. Some enemies can feel almost a little unfair, nearly completely cockblocking you if you don't have the right cards, but once you know that you're just going to need to hang onto a couple of axes to defeat Cerberus, it's fine. Hard mode is completely masochistic - you'll run into situations where it's fundamentally impossible to win - but on normal mode the game never quite feels like that. It's always doable, but always putting pressure on you as well. I think it walks a really fine line balancing wise. Ring of Pain is a game that's playing it a lot more fast and loose, with items that have fanciful combo potential that let you break the game - Iris and the Giant is tight like a board game, with everything planned out so that the math will just barely work out in your favor if you play perfectly.

The main downside to this game is that it's not as addicting as some of the other roguelikes - runs don't differentiate themselves from each other that much, as the list of upgrades you can get is minimal and you'll see most types of cards in a few plays. A few upgrades do change the way you play a bit, and there are some super-rare cards that you can really work your ass off to get (you have to use steal cards to get them from big enemies - stealing cards is a major mechanic in this game, and it's pretty fun). But, for the most part, every run feels a little samey, and once you've mastered the game it doesn't feel like there's too much to do. I made a 100% file on normal in about 20 hours and felt like I couldn't go much further than that - I played hard mode for a bit but it's so overwhelmingly hard that I'm not even sure it's fun. Still, for a game that only lasted me about 20 hours - a far cry from Ring of Pain's 140+ - I found this game to be the more enriching of the two overall.

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