My Experience

I was a big fan of System Crash upon release (hence that score!), and wanted to revisit it 10 years later and see how it had aged.

First off, it is still a fantastic single-player deckbuilder. I still love the toggle in the collection section that allows you to see and buy all of the cards in the game, even if you haven't seen them played yet and/or haven't gotten a copy as a mission reward. This lets you begin planning and building as soon as possible to get the cards you need to create the deck you want. You can see what sorts of cards and synergies exist before you start spending your hard-earned creds. This can be important, since the most powerful cards (Elite rarity) cost 10K credits per copy, which can take a bit of time to earn!

You'll probably want to snag a few Lab Technicians (1 cost creature that draws you two cards) and Executives (2 cost creature that accelerates your "mana") while you're at it, since they are some of the best utility cards in the game. One interesting aspect of the deckbuilding is that there are only 4 slots for "creatures" and 3 spots for "enchantments/artifacts" in the play space (the game uses cyberpunk terms for these card types, but my brain defaults to Magic the Gathering terminology). It's fairly easy to fill these slots up, and then have a hand full of creatures and enchantments that you then can't play. This contrasts with Magic, which had no limits for this type of thing. Therefore, it may make sense to create a different balance of cards in your deck than you're used to.

While after the first playthrough I was struck by how many different types of decks seemed viable, I wasn't as wowed by this my second time through. Perhaps this is due to a recent playthrough of another single-player deckbuilder (Anode Heart: Layer Null) with many more options, but there really aren't a ton of cards in System Crash.

I was also reminded of some of the poor dialogue choices developer Rogue Moon Studios created for the player when interacting with the other characters in the cyberpunk world of San Angeles. There is quite a bit of edgy snark, and there often wasn't a conversation choice available that I found tolerable.

Some of this was offset, however, by a new appreciation for the enemy AI. Although I didn't recognize it during my first playthrough, the AI never really "mis-plays." There is never a time where you feel that the enemy could've made a better play with the cards it had available. It's easy to miss this detail in your time with the game, but once you see it, you can't unsee it. There was never a time where I was like, "great, they picked the wrong creature to damage." While I could see this being frustrating for some players, it also made the opponents feel more "real" to me and increased my emotional investment in these battles.

At most, there tends to be perhaps one great single-player deckbuilder released each year, so I'm always excited to get my hands on one. If you're a fan of this genre and haven't played System Crash before, give it a go!