You know, it's not very often that I'm sold on a game based on the initial premise alone. Alright, well that's probably a lie, but saying something like "I frequently buy games based on their unique premise!" doesn't flow very well when I'm trying to segue into a game that genuinely stood out. Or stood up while everyone was sitting. The point is Runespell: Overture is different.

And yet at the same time, after having played it, it reminds me so much of Puzzle Quest. You wouldn't get that immediately from the screenshots, though. The two games are similar to each other and they're not at the same time; at the very least Runespell suffers from the same problems that plagued Puzzle Quest. But let's come back to that later because it is an alright game and I don't want to give a negative impression so quickly.

See, the main thing I liked about Puzzle Quest is the absurd idea that two warriors -- or a warrior and an abomination -- are fighting to the death through a game of bejeweled. Runespell is working under the same concept but goes a step further by adding an animation of the two opponents dealing blows with each attack, immediately grounding the gameplay much more than Puzzle Quest ever did. But the actual gameplay is pretty hard to describe, so I'm throwing down a screenshot and we'll work from there:

So, what is going on here: there are two decks, the top blue (the player's deck) and the bottom red (opponent's deck). The opponent and his stats are displayed to the right while the player's -- the Changeling -- are on the left; above this and to the left is a blue orb that announces how many actions you have left per that turn, while the orangeish orb at the bottom does the same for the opponent. You both have hit-points -- HP, the green bar -- and Rage points which basically functions as mana or MP, and that's the red bar. Rage is interesting in that you start at 0 but build it up by either dealing damage (though not from spells or abilities) or receiving damage. You gain rage equal to the damage you put out and half as much as you receive. So the game sets you off as needing to be aggressive pretty quickly.

Now the game is advertised as "a role-playing game combining poker mechanics with power ups and collectable cards," and that's accurate to an extent. But it's not poker so much as it is making these combinations of cards: it's more reminiscent of Yahtzee, which the game compares itself to in one of the training fights. You'll notice in the screenshot that I have a full house of Aces and 3s, and that's really what the game is about. You click a card and stack it upon another card, up to a total of five, and create an attack with that. Moving one card takes an action, as does attacking. So you can't attack your first turn.

The neat thing is that you can play any card from the two decks, provided that the card from the red deck isn't stacked yet. Your opponent can do this too, but it's pretty easy to stop; I mean, just stack cards and limit their available moves. The problem with this is that if you take an opponent's card, the one underneath it isn't revealed until their turn starts, but whatever, right? It feels cool to just play your opponent's cards as your own and I really appreciate that bit of game play because it brings the game to life for me.

Earlier I had mentioned that many of the issues that troubled Puzzle Quest reappear here and I think it's time we get to that. The biggest issue at hand is that the battles, whether or not they're against epic enemies or grunts, are long. They're very long and they're very similar: fighting that undead dwarf feels the same as fighting an enchanted evil stone monument of death and destruction. The only real difference between enemies -- aside from some minor health modifications -- are the spells they use, but even then there isn't a large variety of spells in Runespell. They're standard and without much immediate difference from one another: buffs, de-buffs, three or four elemental damage spells, healing spells.

And, like Puzzle Quest, you're pretty reliant upon the spells as the standard attacks do not increase in strength. I felt it necessary to insert the damage chart here at this time, so here you go:

Considering how much time it takes to generate the attacks the damage seems disproportionate. I mean, you have to invest the same amount of time for a pair, so there's really not much of a point in ever just playing a pair.

Oh, hang on a sec, there is actually. That treasure chest in the middle of the battlefield, at the top? There seemed to be one in every encounter and every one that I had seen could only be opened by playing a pair. Strangely enough chests don't appear at the start of the battle but, rather, after a few rounds have passed. They only seemed to contain additional uses of generic spells. Ah, forgot to mention that spells have limited uses. Aggravating, but whatever. Although said spells are expensive, I didn't find it helpful to go out of my way to collect them, especially when doing so led me to losing very time consuming matches.

The story is kind of odd. Again, taken from the description of the game: "The world is set in an alternate medieval Europe linking historical characters with Norse mythology and sagas. The player takes on the role of the Changeling, the son of a monster god, in search of his nemesis." Alright, fair enough. Your character has amnesia. Clichéd but whatever, you're not playing this game for the story. The parts that make it weird are the writing and the music. The writing is just... out of place. The game supposedly takes place around 1000 A.C. but characters will throw around modern phrases like 'Super!', or will refer to enemies as bad guys and themselves as good guys. It's out of place, especially in a story that takes itself so seriously, with a musical accompaniment that has this epic feel to it. I really did enjoy the music but it played towards the game's inconsistency so much that I have a hard time giving it credit. Or debit, really.

As for the graphics... well, the game is gorgeous. Yeah sure, it's not 3D, but for this kind of game, 2D works really well. The animations were very fast, though, so I couldn't capture them well enough to do them justice. You'll just have to settle for this very well done title screen. Just look at that castle, immersed in the shadows... and that landscape! If this title screen was a woman I would promptly not speak to her out of fear of rejection.



Just a few gripes left that didn't really fit anywhere but I felt needed saying. In this game you don't level up, but instead receive passive cards that raise your max health and rage. It's a strange system that makes the random encounters seem pointless; it also makes the game infuriatingly hard and unforgiving as you're almost constantly at the same strength as your opponents. Healing spells barely heal and cost a large amount of rage, plus an action, so you might as well not even bother equipping them. Spell effects and status effects aren't explained as well as they could be at times. Beyond all of that the characterization of the protagonist is just weird. You're displayed as this peaceful guy who doesn't want to fight, as evidenced by the messages you're forced to respond to other characters with, but then you murder these people that attack you anyway. It seems silly. But here's the big one, folks...

Where is Multiplayer? Seriously. I understand that there probably wouldn't be much point to it here, since there isn't any variation between characters at best, and at worst one would have too much of an advantage to make multiplayer worthwhile. Still, though, multiplayer would have been a fantastic addition.

Closing time. So, Runespell. I really don't know. It has a lot of good bits and a lot of mediocre ones... and some weird ones as well. There were things I didn't like but they weren't agonizing or game breaking. Yeah, it definitely could have been better. There were a few fights that took me - no joke - an hour or two of retries and I was very frustrated, but I certainly didn't stop nor did I want to. I definitely appreciated the game and I'm glad I played it, but I think I'd still rather play Puzzle Quest, as unfair an assessment as that is. I would definitely recommend Runespell: Overture for ten dollars. I'd recommend it for twenty, probably. But, even though I would recommend it, it definitely is only an average game.