Friday, 28 September 2012

Sword Girls

Gamespot Score:n/a

My score:7.3

(+)Pros: - Is a browser game, - Incredibly addictive when you first start up the game, - Card designs are great, - Game mechanics are simple and fun, - Tons of useful side activities via the lab, - Actually has a decently interesting lore behind the characters, - Is a browser game.

(-)Cons: - No effort in the story or lore other than card descriptions or small dungeon conversations, - Combat is rather luck based, - Very difficult to acquire different types of cards without tokens.

Gameplay time: -

"Sword girls" is super moe. I am serious. Ever wanted to play an anime card game where cute girls are on every card? Want to enter a world where girls fight for you against your opponent? Enter the world of "Sword girls"! Yes, I know it is a browser game, but if its something this awesome, its hard to resist. Being an online collectable trading card game, there is little effort you need to enjoy "Sword girls", especially if you're a fan of anime-ish girls. If you like card games, mainly stuff like "Magic:The Gathering", "Duel Masters" or "Yu-gi-oh", you can easily relate to sword girls, and get into it rather easily.

Well color me crazy but there is actually a pretty interesting lore/story going in "Sword girls"'s background. It takes the course of 4 faction types, the Vita, Academy, Crux and Darklore. Each of these factions have a leader, and they all have their own story/background. All leading to the fate of a young girl named Vernika, and how the dispute between the factions happened. It is an interesting tale, but it takes quite some effort to further research or delve into this enthralling tale other than what's already provided in the game.

A glimpse at the deck construction screen.

Lets go through the basics first. The most important part about about a card game, is the way it is played. In this case I'll call it the battle system. The battle system of "Sword girls" is fairly simple and before you know it, you'll catch on quickly. The tutorial starts off slow, but quickly brings you up to speed on how to play the game in the first dungeon. Before you know it, you're already a natural beating up on all your AI opponents. Each side starts with one character unit, with their own LIFE value. If the LIFE value of a character reaches 0, that player loses the game. Simple enough right?  This is similar to games like "Magic:The Gathering" or "Yu-gi-oh".

Other than the character, there are 5 other slots on each player's side of the field to either put down follower or spell cards. You can only have 5 cards on your side of the field at once. Spell cards vanish after use, leaving the slot it was placed at empty. Followers will stay until they are defeated. Followers have a base stat value of 3 numbers. One number represents its attack value, one its defense value and the last one is its stamina. In order for a follower to successfully attack the opposing character, their field must be empty first, thus all enemy followers must be defeated before you can hit them. Another thing is that each card has their own cost, and a field can only have up to 10 cost worth of cards. When a follower gets destroyed, the character that owns that follower takes damage equal to the cost of that monster.

How battles look like.

Of course there are a whole ton of different effects and themes the game has to offer, but I won't go too in depth. Overall the system is fun and you can easily dump dozens of hours in when you first get started. Doing quests will net you all sorts of rewards including tokens, which you use to purchase booster packs for more cards. Combine all these together and you'll have a dangerously addictive start to the game. You'll be playing match after match non-stop to clear dungeons and reap rewards from quests. To top it off, since I freaking love anime, the card designs really appeal to me. Not only are they all beautiful girls, they all have different designs and seem very varied. A job well done here! Freaking love the girls!

There are also a ton of fun side activities via the lab. In the lab, you can do a huge variety of things. Such include card crafting, which requires ingredients. You can also do various other things such as gathering materials, exchanging cards, giving "gifts" to your characters to "evolve" them into another different variation with different effects. There are also stuff like breaking down unwanted cards into materials are sending specific cards to the gym to gain more EXP for that card. These can eat up a lot of play time, since this is where you will be spending most of your time in to actually GET more new cards for your deck.


There are some gripes I have with "Sword girls". Yes I know its a free game and all but I find getting new cards to be a huge pain after awhile. Sure you get your initial tokens through quests and after that you have to work your ass off to craft cards that you actually want. This takes a long time as materials are usually hard to come by in dungeons. The story is also not really taken further other than dungeon conversations and card descriptions. This is a pity as you have to go to the official site and READ up the story to fascinate yourself in its interesting lore. Finally, one small thing in combat is that your targets are all random when your followers attack. This can be annoying at times, and you WILL lose a game that you were stomping just because of this. Happened to me many times.

Yes, "Sword girls" has its issues, but as with many other online games, it is absolutely free. It is a browser game, YES, A BROWSER GAME. You need no download whatsoever, and starting it up takes less than a few seconds, it is super convenient and you will learn to appreciate it. As a free collectable card game, it does its job well, just expect a slow rate of getting new cards. Or, you can always go for tokens if you really want to support the game. Its addictive as hell at the start, and even after you get pass that phase, it still stands as a solid free to play card game.

Happy gaming!