Mythgard (2019)

Intro

I love CCGs - both physical and digital. I've played dozens of them for thousands of hours combined since 1996. As such, i have some basic standards when it comes to their design.

Review

I've installed and uninstalled Mythgard every year since 2019, each time hoping it would "click". Unfortunately, that just doesn't happen and i doubt it ever will. The main problem is the visual design. I can live with the lacklustre sounds, art and interface but the game just communicates things poorly.

When you want to play a game in any other CCG you click "PVP", "PVE" or "Campaign" which takes you to a screen where you select what deck/hero you're going to play with. In Mythgard the selection is done separately for all modes in a truly awful sidescrolling menu that doesn't just let you quickly pick a deck but requires selecting the right option out of five options. It's a bizarre design choice.

Next up is the gameplay. Almost none of the keyword abilities are represented by an icon, so you spend a lot of time hovering over cards to figure out what they do. How to burn cards and if you've already done so in a turn is vague as well. Having two different mana requirements is another problem. You need mana and colour orbs, exactly like in Magic. But mana is represented by a number and orbs used are greyed out, which is really confusing if you've played any other digital CCG.

There are other smaller problems too, like "Alpha Strike" (First/Quick Strike in other games) also working when defending. Instead of the usual trade-off of being strong on attack, weak on defense units with this ability become immovable obstacles to beginners/casual players. Also, the single-player campaign hasn't been updated in years.

Conclusion

Mythgard isn't a bad game but i wouldn't recommend it because you can play something vastly superior like Legends of Runeterra instead.