Came for CCG and booster packs, left because the combat is beyond dumbed down. To be fair, it says it's a casual game, but i still can't get over how shallow it is. Booster packs also contain very few different cards (but maybe you unlock more after you progress, no clue). Sorry, this one had to be a refund.

Very fun card game with creative system!

The battle system is easy to learn, and the difficulty can be adjusted as needed.
Definitely a must try for card game enthusiast!

Looking at the screenshots for this one I'd really expected to be buying an indy Yu-Gi-Oh GX clone, but this turned out to be something entirely different. It falls more into the genre of "developer that doesn't know about CCGs makes a CCG" which is surprisingly common these days, and Final Stardust ended up being a fantastic entry into it.

The thing about these variation of CCGs is that they tend to lack many staples of card play, and introduce unique gimmicks or focus. This game's major gimmicks are:
- Every monster is both a summon and a spell card
- Battlefield placement matters
- It's VERY fast playing (Average match under 5 minutes. My record ~30 seconds)

The card play is pretty darn good, if simplistic. The vast majority of card effects involve massively raising your cards attack power or health. It's not unusual to raise a card from 500 attack to 8000, or get a good "Evolution" that lets you get a surprise boost. It's really a fight between opponents to find the one lucky combo that will explore your scores while avoiding them destroying your creatures.

The tutorial is pretty bad and many mechanics are left unexplained without a real "Rulebook" to explore. Mechanics like Shields, Multiple Evolution, and shockwave needed to be learned through experimenting. The tutorial teaches the basics, but the rest was experience.

The one flaw with the setup is that due to the summoning sickness, you often find yourself in an unwinnable or unlosable situation. Each card I place gets immediately destroyed before it has a chance to attack or modify the field in any way. That said, the battlefield effects are random enough that I rarely feel hopeless or safe in the high level matches. The low level ones on the other hand... kindof suck.

Where the game falters some is the overall meta-quest. You travel along a path of 21 unique duelists facing each one in a card duel... a really low level, low features, zero challenge, card duel. You need to face each duelist approximately 10 times to raise their "Affinity Level" and get them to play with their best deck where things actually become enjoyable. The ultimate goal (I believe) is to max out the affinity with 5 specific duelists.

This means that the first 5 matches against each duelist are throwaways. These first few duels use very few cards, no combos, no battlefield mechanics, etc. They're great for learning the game... but after 20 duels I've got that covered and I want full-fledged duels.

I've enjoyed nearly all of my time here but I do find myself wishing that it used one of the more traditional card game approaches to the story progression.

Overall, I've enjoyed the game... but recommend it specifically to casual CCG players that want the anime-card experience. It's absolutely not deep, but it is quite fun.