Shadowhand (2017)

Intro

In Shadowhand piles of cards are on the table with the top card and sometimes 1-2 other cards visible. There's a deck at the bottom. You have to move combine cards on the table with a value of 1 higher or lower with cards in the deck. When you can't make any combinations you move to the next card in the deck, until you run out of either the piles or the deck - or win/lose combat.

Various skills can modify the cards on the table. There's also combat, which involves charging weapons by making combinations as described above. There are various weapons, consumables and pieces of clothing that affect the game.

The Good

• Combining RPG elements with card game elements is one of my favourite things.
• Three difficulty levels.
• If you lose you can redo an encounter or sometimes just skip it.

The Bad

• Despite all the other factors you are still at the whim of RNGesus. Sometimes you struggle with a supposedly easy match, sometimes you complete a game in 5 turns while you have 15 turns to get 3 stars (the highest score).
• The structure of the game is needlessly constrained. Each game/encounter should've had its own entry on the list.
• No indication of what certain things do exactly. Does stealth only make you more likely to start a game? Who knows.
• At some point there's an obnoxious fight with a guy who keeps stunning you. I won with only 1-2 HP remaining (out of 52).
• Annoying music.
• Worst of all, it's kinda boring. I played this for 4 hours expecting it to get better but it only gets worse. Solitaire and mahjong just aren't very good games.

Conclusion

The increasingly tedious and overly random core gameplay overshadows the slightly more interesting parts. Christ, i stopped playing Solitaire when Windows added FreeCell in '95. Why would you make that your main mechanic?

From the makers of Regency Solitaire, came a spiritual successor that carry the torch of the RPG solitaire game. For the unfamiliar, you follow a story of conspiracy and suspense in the boots of an 18th century noble lady. The RPG features such as stats, equipments and usable items are implemented along here to influence your chances of beating the solitaire games that they gesture the story events.

I've come more than half-way on the decent story but somehow got bored as the game difficulty rose and got punishing. Due to its setup that make you go through a set of games that depict one story event, failure to achieve one objective will force you to start over the set again, forcing to reevaluate your item selection but also have to rely on luck through the RNG mechanics.

I could still recommend it for solitaire fans who wants some extra finesses of RPG to buff the games and a story to keep you hooked but be prepared for some frustrations if you choose to play on hard mode.