Faeria (PC) Review

The online CCG market might be one of the most competitive and difficult to enter. Want something complex and competitive? Magic: The Gathering Online has you covered. Want something casual, relaxed and easy? Hearthstone is there for you. Many games have tried and failed over the years to make a mark in the genre, but Faeria might very well have a chance to succeed where others have failed.

Faeria aims towards creating a mix between a board game and a CCG, which creates a really interesting result. It takes simple mechanics from both camps and adds the components that work together to create something that feels fresh, exciting, but most importantly, complex and deep.

This depth does a lot for the gameplay to make it stand out in a really positive way. No one enjoys losing to a really poor player who just spent hundreds of dollars on the game, and while the collection does indeed matter to a certain degree, player skill matters a lot more thanks to how much board interaction and building is involved.

This does come with a couple of problems, though; the big one is that the entry point is pretty high in contrast to much of the competition, which might make entering PvP really intimidating for newcomers. This, mixed with the fact that a game of Faeria can easily take half an hour to play, can make life feel hopeless to a new player grasping the core elements.

Thankfully, they have solved this problem in a wonderful way that does not force new player to wrestle experienced people at the expense of both parties, namely by including a vast and varied single-player mode that, in a pedagogical way, teaches gamers how to play, while still being challenging and fun. This is done by a three-lane solo-player quest system that, at first, is free, but later costs some gold to unlock the rest of. Most of this serves as a tutorial in a mix of battles against an AI, but also some clever puzzles that teach the player core mechanics, as well as advanced techniques. The result is that no one is ever going to have to enter PvP without any knowledge about what they are doing and plenty of content for people who truly enjoy single-player action in their online CCGs.

Challenges and woes most other CCGs seem to shy away from, Faeria tackles really well. It feels extremely refreshing to see an online CCG that pushes most of the potential found within the online sphere of the genre to do things that physical a game would have difficulty achieving. Everything from AI opponents, to the board that develops as the game goes by, are things that are difficult and impractical to replicate in physical games, yet they add fun and interesting elements here. Faeria is a prime example of how to use the online medium to evolve a physical genre into something different, which might very well keep it afloat in the long run.