Voice of Cards: The Isle Dragon Roars throws you into the thick of it from the offset — you’re in a cave taking control of three kick-ass heroes on their quest to find stolen treasure for the queen. This isn’t your usual RPG though, the cavern before you is made up of cards laid out across a tabletop and you move your token across them to venture further in. The c🧸ards are face down, flipping over as you approach, uncovering whatever🅘 mystery awaits you in the darkness.
The whole setup of this card-based gameplay is utterly charming. The artwork by Kimihiko Fujisaka is absolutely gorgeous and the music is beautifully haunting, both of which are reminiscent of Yoko Taro’s previous Nier titles. But that’s not all, the cards shuffle and move ♓to perform the characters’ actions — jigging about when someone is flexing their muscles or falling on the floor when the character is injured. In dark dungeons, the tabletop is dimmed, so you can’t see as many cards at any given time and might stumble into a trap more easily. All of this makes it incredibly hard not to fall in love with the aesthetics of this stunning game.
Voice of Cards is even more endearing because of the personality and humor of its ever-present narrator. The game immediately recommends that you play with the sound on, and though there are subtitles if you prefer, the husky voice detailing your adventureꦜ conveys more character than simple text on the screen ever could.
Just as you’re getting to grips with the basics of the game in the opening tutorial section, learning that absolutely everything is𒁏 done with cards — the game board, decisions, story cutscenes, battles, and more — you have the rug pulled out from under your feet. You’re not going to be controlling these awesome and powerful characters you just met, you’re actually some nobody would-be hero accompanied by his strange monster buddy — Ash ♉and Mar.
This rag-tag duo set out on a quest to slay the dragon plaguing the lands so that they ca🦄n claim the promised reward from the queen. You’ll encounter and add more companions to your party during your adventures, and as you unr♌avel the mystery of the dragon, the task of defeating it is not as clear-cut as you first think.
When it co🐽mes to battle, you’re looking at your usual card-based tabletop game but Voice of Cards maintains the balance betཧween the realistic tabletop vibes and the magic of digital gameplay. There are coins and dice strewn about as if you’re playing the game in some tavern and betting your hard-earned gold, but the cards move and throw spells at one another to act out the battle.
It was a shame how easy the game became with the right gear. When you think of card strategy games, you generally think of a challenge, but that’s not the case here. While you’re later introduced to Happenstance cards in battle to add a wi🥂ldcard element to battles with random buffs or debuffs, the battles are still easily manageable if your party members have up-to-date equipment. I appreciate the laidback game🐟play of Voice of Cards, but it was too effortless to win.
If you want a real🏅 card-based challenge, there is a minigame you can play at the Game Parlours in any of the towns you visit. It requires a mixture of strategic 𒁃thinking and a helping hand from Lady Luck, so you’re definitely not going to find victory as easily here.
When I first started playing Voice of Cards, it reminded me of a ‘choose your own adventure’ book. As🐲 you travel around the game, you’ll have to make plenty of decisions in the main 🤪storyline, random events, or when speaking to optional characters, and those choices will have varying consequences.
However, one thing that became increasingly clear when making these cꦉhoices is that the protagonist is very much his own character, not just the conduit of your decisions. You can’t choose to be the stereotypical ‘hero’, as it’s just not within Ash’s nature. Often when you think you are choosing the best choice, Ash’s actual actions are not quite w𒁏hat you had planned.
Faced with the choice of whether to help an old woman up from the floor or not, I naturally chose to aid her thinking that I was shaping Ash to be the hero I wanted him to be — the do-gooder. I was wrong. After failing to haul the apparently heavy old lady up, Ash gives up and leaves her in the gutter without a backward glance — don’t worry about the old dear though, your companions jump in and help her instead. Later on, if you want to give a sick villager some medicine, Ash will ins☂tead try and sell it to them. You get the idea. He’s a bit of a tool.
While you might be the one picking the cards, Ash will always be true to himself. That’s not necessarily a bad thing though, as having a set character with a predetermined personality adds depth to the storyl🐲ine that would otherwise be missing if the game tried to shoe-horn in whatever kind of player-made hero you’ve decided to be. As you progress through the game, you’ll learn a lot more about Ash and why he came to be the way he is, so it becomes increasingly harder to hate him for his little selfish moments.
I would often cheat at those adventure books, keeping my finger on the page and peeking at what the consequence of the decision was before committing to turning the page. Almost in homage to this, Voice of Cards lets you tug on certain decision cards to try and sneak a peek before y꧅ou fully pull them out, though be warned — that first line of text you can glimpse can often be deceiving. Of course, there are other ways to ‘cheat’ in this game — save often and you can always backtrack if you’re not happy with any of the choices you made.
In fact, the game features multiple endings and 𝔉three of these can be 𓆏experienced by simply reloading before the point of no return and making a different choice. The fourth and final ending requires a little more work. If you miss it on your first playthrough, fear not. Voice of Cards offers a New Game Plus feature so you can mop up any unfinished business to secure the best ending, as well as adding more content and giving you an Evilbane Ring that allows you to avoid those pesky random battles.
Voice of Cards: The Isle Dragon Roars features a striking and quirky tabletop style with delightful gameplay that doesn’t overcomplicate things. While the storyline won’t necessarily grip you, it’s told in a fun and interactive way and this is an easygoing pick up and play title that you can enjoy at your own pace. You won’t be challenged when going card-to-card against your enemies, bu꧙t you can still find the thrill of a frustrating hand if you delve into the minigame.
Score: 3/5. A review code for PlayStation 4 was provided by the publisher.