Shattered Heaven Review: Fantastic WorldBuilding; Amazing DeckBuilding

© Franz Christian Follen 05/29/2023

In this in-depth review, we'll take a look at the new Shattered Heaven deck building RPG. Shattered Heaven is a platform RPG where players control three characters who battle enemies in dungeons in search of redemption. Will the player's journey into the depths to kill humanity's traitors for a chance at redemption be exciting, or will darkness cover all of these efforts?

Shattered Heaven Review: What is Shattered Heaven?

Shattered Heaven is a deck building RPG. Developed by Leonardo Productions and published in collaboration with WhisperGames, it will be released on PC via Steam on May 31, 2023 . Dubbed Roguelite, the game will throw players into procedurally generated dungeons in multiple runs, each increasing the player's inventory and team strength with new features and abilities. In the role-playing game, players take control of a team of three warriors, each with their own attributes and skills, fight wave after wave of enemies and engage in various dungeon battles that may require player decisions to influence events. . As a deck builder, each fighter carries a deck of cards that represents the actions they can take each turn that represent their skills and are based on their respective archetypes. Players control three characters: the Vestal of Andor, the symbol of the Bicycle Map; Magni Shield, which uses discomfort to protect teammates and buff weak cards; And the rejected Ishaana, who is being chased by a mysterious creature that appears at certain times, fights back with debuffs and takes damage. As players progress through the dungeon, they can acquire resources that can lead them to the Cathedral of the Equinox; Acquire new cards to customize their decks and face encounters that will define their path.

to play

The gameplay of Shattered Heaven is incredible thanks to the depth of customization options, the abundance of scenarios and enemy types, and the replayability. The core gameplay of exploring dungeons, battling enemies, and getting new cards to build a better deck will never get old if you're into this type of game, and Shattered Heaven's different scenarios give players a lot of flexibility to create new builds and experiment . strategies. Having three archetypes may seem limiting at first, but being able to assign any given card to a deck of three characters makes for unique builds, as does the game's massive skill tree, which gives each character three different paths. Ways to develop ability.

The game's exploration is more about content than style, and exploring the game's dungeons isn't as fun as other games in the genre. Players navigate a procedurally generated board with connected rooms, with the player's team jumping from room to room, encountering events and enemies along the way, until reaching the final room, which usually leads to a boss battle. Exploration is mundane and methodical, with nothing special that sets Shattered Heaven apart from any other dungeon crawler out there. Worse, the game's dungeons don't really tell you about the dangers lurking behind them. The presentation and exploration of the dungeons seem detached from the rest of the game.

I have a few complaints about the game's terrible design. First, most of the tech trees available to all characters are stuck behind the story line, meaning players won't be able to plan their builds until it's too late in the game to switch to a different build if they want to. are not aware. The current build just doesn't work well or suit their desired playstyle. Second, the game's supposed "deep crafting system" is simple and straightforward, and not as game-defining as advertised. And finally, how the player can choose the combat difficulty of the game every time they enter a dungeon. It's not that I hate being able to change the difficulty at any time, I like that for a game like this where the challenge is essential to the fun, it would be nice to have difficulty options available to change instead of asking about changes and again. as it is done today.

history

In an isolated sky, God is dead and humanity is abandoned. People don't live long now, and the world has plunged into darkness. To set things right, humanity must send a vestal and a warrior to battle the traitorous Ares and his eight henchmen and make the ultimate sacrifice to save humanity.

The screenwriters at Leonardo Productions have a great imagination. The world building is clean, and despite a few glitches here and there, it never felt like the writers were giving players too much information to handle the plot. The story moves along at a good pace, and the world building is surprisingly short, despite the game's relatively deep lore. While more information can be found in the game's lore encyclopedia, all the important plot twists for understanding the world and what's going on in it are well laid out in the game's visual novel-style narrative sequences and cutscenes. If you want more than your team's experience, there's an encyclopedia to help you further your knowledge of the game.

It's also nice that the game has several branching stories that lead to one of the game's three main endings. Each route will bring its own storyline, a completely different final chapter and unique boss battles, giving players plenty of incentive to replay the game to experience other routes, trying new builds, giving the game a lot of replayability. .

Graphics

The game featured great art direction with beautiful illustrations and character models. Despite the game's dark theme, the colors pop, making every scene vibrant and vibrant. The maps are also very good, although sometimes it seems that some of the images do not correspond to the description on the map. The character models look good, but sometimes seem a bit clunky when animated.

The artistic direction of the game corresponds to the theme of the fall and redemption of man. Scenes are rendered with perfect contrast and colors are used brilliantly to make these scenes pop. The game also has several scenes that show important events of the game, and the artwork enhances these scenes.

However, the artists on the team were good at art design, but not at user experience. Leonardo Productions has a special taste in fonts, and it's amazing that they chose to use them for a game that requires a lot of reading. Much of the text is small and hard to read, and the text doesn't blend well with the game's colorful background. There is always a lot of information available to the player, which can lead to information overload, and I feel that most of this information could have been presented better. The developers' decision to place the player on the left instead of the right seems like a deliberate choice to present the world upside down, but it's actually a clunky design that makes my neck stiff. Mostly from the wrong side of the screen.

Music and sound design

Shattered Heaven's music adds seriousness to the themes and moments of the game, making every boss battle very dangerous and meaningful. A big scene is played out to emotional music. The game also has limited but decent voice acting.

However, the game fails in the sound design department. Exploration and combat feel a bit hollow due to the lack of proper sound effects and background noise. Although there is music playing in the background, the game's immersion is marred by the lack of many ambient sound effects that accompany in-game encounters. Battles also lose a lot of finesse due to the poor sound effects used for the attacks in the game.

Verdict: Should you buy Paradise on installments?

Shattered Heaven offers rich content and replayability, along with fragmented gameplay, an engaging narrative, and a deep story. He's got some really nice stuff for the budget price he's asking. I can imagine that board game aficionados will get the most milk out of this game by the end of the week. And that's why I think the game is worth buying at full price, especially if you can overcome its flaws. If that's not enough, players can also try demo versions of games on Steam to see if they like the game before committing to a purchase. This is the best deal any game can get.

Score: 7/10

Editor's Note: ClutchPoints received a review copy of this game for PC. This copy in no way affected the final score and verdict of this Shattered Heaven review.

A Piece of Heaven Review: Creating a Fantasy World; Amazing DeckBuilding appeared first on ClutchPoints.

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