Library of Ruina (2021)

Finally got the time to give this game an honest go . I've tried playing this game both during early access and when it first came out of it and I just found it really difficult to get into compared to Lobotomy Corporation. Lobotomy, in my opinion, while difficult to wrap your head around, was instantly appealing to me with its idea of "SCP management" and didn't take too long to start feeling the satisfaction of managing and surviving days against fairly difficult "SCPs".

Library of Ruina is a card battler that is incredibly dull and slow for the first two hours or so as you're extremely limited in both the characters you have and the cards you are able to play with. However, once you get past this initial hurdle, the game pretty much pops off. You have multiple teams that can actually start making proper builds instead of just winging it with your limited amount of cards. At the same time, the battles start becoming more complex as a result and it finally starts feeling like a proper card battler. That said, this game is quite brutal. For just a short while you're able to enjoy feeling really strong with your new cards before the game moves on to the next tier of the story, where it promptly starts to beat you up without mercy. The difficulty spikes in Library of Ruina are kinda nuts and I'm greatly enjoying it. The presentation is great and the music is even more so. Alot of these fights feel like a pretty ridiculous anime fight as a result, as even card effects also start getting flashier to reflect how powerful they are when used properly. If you played Lobotomy Corporation you probably already played this, but if you haven't I would highly recommend giving both games a go. Though keep in mind they're both pretty brutal games and Ruina benefits greatly from playing Lobotomy first. They're currently both at 66% off as well.