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Hello and welcome, today I will be looking at the genre mish-mash known as Deck Casters,
a PC game that blends elements of multiplayer online battle arena and collectible card games
with real-time strategy.
Deck Casters is created by a Singapore based developer named Rock Nano Global, who also
released the strikingly similar ArmaGallant: Decks of Destiny on the PlayStation 4
back in April of 2017.
Neither of these three names I've ever heard of previously.
During my research it would seem that ArmaGallant was rebranded as the generically titled
Deck Casters.
My suspicions for the reason behind this decision is that either the publisher of ArmaGallant,
Maximum Games, may own the rights to the name or that Rock Nano Global changed the name
simply to create a clean slate in the hopes of gaining more favourable reviews through
Steam and elsewhere.
Despite this it is a fair bit disingenuous for Rock Nano Global to state on the store page
that Deck Casters is "based on" ArmaGallant: Decks of Destiny when it is essentially
the exact same game.
While the original did not receive much exposure, and the general consensus was that ArmaGallant
was a poor game overall, I can't see this name switch saving Deck Casters from the same fate,
especially when it appears there are features missing from this iteration that
were available on console, such as gaining experience and earning gold which allowed
players to increase the power level of their decks.
There also appears to have been loot boxes at some point.
Perhaps these features will be added later into the Steam version as I've been playing
a pre-release copy that has received daily updates but then I don't know why they wouldn't
be implemented in the first place as Deck Casters is a straight console to PC port of
ArmaGallant.
Deck Casters is made with Unity and contains files from the original PS4 release, along
with images of ArmaGallant.
This console port is made more obvious due to its barebones options menu - where full-screen
does not work as intended and allows my mouse to escape the game's borders onto my second
monitor - and the hotkeys offer nothing more than what appears to be a button-to-button
remapping of the PlayStation's DualShock controller with no option to rebind the keys.
I found the controls to be seriously clunky and difficult to navigate the map, there are
too many primary keys reserved for single units and groups.
I would prefer to use my mouse wheel to scroll through the on-screen deck and use WASD to
move the camera around the map but this is only possible, as far as I know, with the
directional arrow keys located halfway across the keyboard.
Deck Casters is underwhelming and lacklustre, in mechanics and content.
It seemed exciting on its surface but after an hour or two of playtime I've come to realise
that the amount of freedom I've been given makes for a boring experience;
There are 100 cards but many of these are simple reskins with varying stats and powers.
The game allows players to combine any cards into their deck with no incentive to match
certain monster or spell cards as there is little to no elemental synchronicity, no strengths
when combining certain cards, and no weaknesses to prevent players from creating
mechanically broken decks.
I managed to win against an Insane difficulty AI with no spell cards and the most basic
units that cost 1-2 mana each.
Seeing as each of the two maps require players to capture and hold points on the map in order
to damage opponents, it's much easier to spam dozens of low level monsters to capture these
points and reserve one high level monster as the card deck's champion.
The AI of these monster units is frustratingly unpredictable as they will often stand completely
still while they're picked off from a distance by airborne enemies, even when directed to
engage in battle with them, or they may chase enemies across the map when they should be
protecting a point of interest.
Flying enemies have an advantage as they can cross the map unhindered by obstacles and
poor pathfinding.
As for the developer, Rock Nano Global, they are a bit of an enigma in regards to their
online presence and history.
All I have uncovered is that the original company, Rock Nano, and CEO, Chong Lai Ang
(I'm very sorry if I butchered that name)
spent most of their earlier years focused
on research and development, since 2006, and then suddenly switched to developing ArmaGallant
over the course of two years with a team of 20-30 people, boasting that some of these
people were former Ubisoft and Zealot Digital veterans.
Despite this, the few reviews that Rock Nano's internal employees left on Glassdoor paint
both company and CEO as not being passionate about gaming, having poor management skills,
a lack of care for their employees, and allegedly only interested in the gaming industry in
order to take advantage of government grants and venture capital.
That does not bode well for the future of Deck Casters.
There is very little effort put into the gameplay of Deck Casters and even less effort put towards
the game's tutorial, which consists of a small amount of text highlighting areas of the screen,
and the overall lore of the game world - even more text that doesn't offer much to expand
on the concept of the story and its themes.
Why there was so much time between the release of ArmaGallant on the PS4 and Deck Casters
on Steam, and why the game's name was inexplicably changed is a mystery to me.
I was unable to participate in any online multiplayer due to the low playerbase during
the pre-release but I can't really see myself wanting to go back upon release to try it out.
I will now play both trailers for ArmaGallant and Deck Casters, side-by-side, to play out this video.
Thanks for watching.