Card Guardians Reviews

On the surface, Card Guardians looks like a game that I would enjoy. Pirate Outlaws, Meteorfall, Dawncaster, and Slay the Spire are all games I love. From it’s description on the store page, I downloaded Card Guardians thinking it was similar — well, it’s not. To clarify, the card battling is comparable to the titles I mentioned above. You draw a hand, you have a resource that dictates how many cards you can play, and the goal is to limit how much damage you take all while defeating enemy encounters. Between combat you open packs of cards, adding some potential upgrades to your starter deck. This is the smokescreen and where the similarities end. The entire structure of the game loop is uprooted by the “behind the scenes,” gatcha-manic micromanagement that is the equipment system. Can’t win a fight? It’s probably not your deck, your equipment just isn’t up to par. Want better stats or a more synergistic load-out? Roll for it. I could see how the progression of an RPG could be incorporated into a card battler, but Card Guardians just isn’t it. If you do not mind the myriad of in-app purchase notifications and how they effect the card play, then there is still a pretty game with lots to see and do. If you are looking for an experience that respects your skill over your luck, look elsewhere.

This game is a blast of a time, I started playing a long time ago and quickly fell in love with the game. So naturally buying the “unlocked” version was a simple step that normally I didn’t take for games like these. I don’t regret it, but with the lack of changes I have found myself waiting… and waiting….. and waiting. This game is on the cusp of a fabulous game, but the lack of deck building (before you enter a match and during) and the never fulfilling promise of a new hero keeps the game all the exact same. Playing on to new levels gives me almost no satisfaction as it is the EXACT same as the level I’ve just beaten just a little harder. You go in with the Same deck, praying that you get that one good card and that you can get an upgrade on said card, and if you don’t you just pray you are lucky enough to get good enough cards. Don’t get me wrong this is still a skills based game. But there is little you can do when the majority of the games variety comes from and is exclusive to the singular moment you have inside the levels when you pick between 3 cards. Love this game a ton! I have just been waiting so long for something more to come from it:/ I’m starting to feel like nothing may ever will

I was having a great time until Summoner’s War ads started coming up. They freeze the game once the ad finishes playing, forcing you to close CardGuardians , and runs aren’t saved if you close CardGuardians . I’ve now played the same bounty 4 times, the first 3 times to test different ways of getting out of the ad for my boosted rewards after fight 1, and the 4th time I skipped the ad and took the base reward, but got an ad after visiting the fairy on the next stage anyway, and of course it was another SW ad and my game froze again. Would gladly give 4 stars if this were fixed, 5 stars isn’t a rating I’ll ever give to games that play ads to get you to pay to remove them, but this one is close.

The visuals and animations look good but that’s all that’s going for this game. Card Guardians is exceedingly repetitive with very little rewards per run. The card selections aren’t amazing and adding cards that have a cost is usually worse than picking nothing unless if you can get your energy back from the said card. The gameplay is very barebones or is very lacking. There’s also a bug that causes the game to not respond and the only solution is to close and open CardGuardians back up, if you’re in a battle you start from the beginning of the fight, losing all your progress of that battle. I’ve played many card games on my phone, especially hidden gems and this is not one of them.

I would not recommend this game as your time can be better spent elsewhere. There’s many other card games with better card mechanics and less grind or better rewards per hour spent. Just search for the keyword card and you’re likely going to find something more fun.

It’s a pretty good game - even purchased the removal of in-game ads for like $8 - but even after that, they game will continue to advertise items for you to buy, and after you get thru the third world you’re gonna see a big spike in difficulty. Tried at least 5x to get past the 4th world, leveling up all throughout, but its so difficult with the stats you have that it takes forever to get though some fights. There’s just no way you’ll make it much past this level with only the standard items in the game, and at that point, I deleted CardGuardians and moved on with my life. Spare yourself the trouble and find something better (like Void Tyrant).

I really enjoy this game but there are a couple things it can improve on. 1. Longer adventures: Would like to see the deck I'm building in this deck-building game last more than a few battles. 2. Starting classes: It would be cool to switch between a few different starting decks. The first seems to be a knight deck. What about a barbarian deck that starts with less defend cards and replaces them with slightly more powerful attack cards? 3. Better shuffling randomizer: The first battle in the second adventure starts off with the starter deck against a cowardly knight or whatever. The enemy cycles its moves between heavy defense and an attack. I went through 10 rounds of getting the same exact cards each turn. Even down to the cards I draw in the same order. I was stuck with defend cards when the enemy would apply armor and attack cards when the enemy is setting up for an attack, leaving me to have very little I can do on the first battle.

The games has a easy understandable mechanics. There’s only 2 problem I have is that the game freeze when I use ult and tab out for a sec when I want to for example change music or check the time. Also, the wizard girl is easier that the warrior by the landslide due to the amount of dps you can accumulate and the warrior character is more dependent on frenzy which more luck based than wizard and the boss battles are harder with the warrior. An example of this world 7 the warrior wave 10 the boss spawns chests with high hp pool and dps “1600” and puts a target los thing. While the wizard, the boss only spawns books that have like half the chest hp pool and only do 900 dps.
All I’m saying is that if it’s going to be like that you need to switch or lower the difficulty of wizard it’s not comparable to the knight in difficulty the mana aspect doesn’t even make it hard…🤦🏾‍♂️
Good game but a game is never perfect

I love this game. Its fun, different ways to play, and its new so theres more to come and I look forward to it. Id recommend to anyone who like rouge like card building games.

BUT there is a bug that exists that hurts. You will spend 15-20 minutes playing getting to the final boss and then your cards freeze. You can be mid way through the battle, maybe at the end, maybe at the start, but your cards freeze and you have to reset the game. No big deal, however, when you resets it resets the fight AND leaves you with the health you had prior to restarting. So if you got to the end and its a close game you just get to redo the boss battle with low health, consumable 1 use cards gone and now you lose and you dont get to progress.

Again, AMAZING game, however that bug hurts pretty bad, if that can get fixed it wouldve been a 5 star.

Excellent game and extremely enjoyable! Near perfect balance between how progressively challenging the foes are and quickly you can level up. Only complaint is that when 1x buffs are applied via a card or emblem, it expires within that same turn, often times meaning you don’t get the benefit of the buff during gameplay. For example, I have a Magical bronze emblem that will apply a random buff for 1 turn if I receive a debug while I’m fighting a worker bee who’s next action is to poison me. Once I end my turn, the worker bee poisons me, the Magical emblem activates, applying 1x Thorns as my buff. When the worker bee ends its turn, my Thorns buff is consumed and then I’m allowed to start my next turn, though I never got a chance to use the buff. This behavior is not the same for enemies. When a 1x buff is applied to them, it goes into effect on their next turn.

This is a great game for beginners or seasoned deck builders. The ability to try out different difficulties without losing progress is awesome to challenge yourself and get out of your comfort zone. I will say there are too many forms of currency and its not balanced. I have over a mill in coins and nothing to purchase/upgrade for either character, but do not have enough rhombus coins to play multiple games. I was a die hard snap player and other card games, but they all lost my interest with bad mechanics and the requirement to pay to have a decent hand. The ad free version is totally worth it! Best $8 I have ever spent on a game. Create a way to convert money or buy worn items and it will be the best card game on CardGuardians store!

I don’t normally leave reviews for games but this game hooked me the moment I tried it. Extremely fun and both of the characters have a couple of really fun strategies that you can deck build around to beat the last boss. All that being said though after some solid grinding and like 2 weeks of playing I beat the story and all the bounties even though my equipment isn’t even close to being maxed out on either character. Just wish there was more content or better replayability on the already existing adventures (kinda like slay the spire where even though there’s only 3 different bosses every run feels immensely different). Anyways at the very least it was really fun while it lasted and I’ll be back to play whenever any updates come out. Even something like a nightmare mode on the already existing adventures would be enough to bring me back as I really enjoyed the game.

After now 5+ weeks of grinding I edit my previous review from 2 to 4 stars. I still have plenty of fun with this game & would still say it's the most addicting mobile game I played so far. Just be informed that the difficulty spike rises extremely fast & high up, battles don't give much gold or rewards, so you have to grind a lot. Like really a LOT. And it's much RNG which cards you will get to improve your deck that might help you defeating your enemies or more prevent that (most of the time skipping new cards is the best option to go with).
I would like if one would be able to sell the equipment. If you grind as much as one needs, you mostly do that for gold which you then need to upgrade your equipment. However you most likely will also receive eq that is completely useless and that fills up your storage for no further use at all. So being able to sell those would be a great improvement for your game, to get a bit of extra gold & thus battles would feel more rewarding. Eg. after world 3 you unlock a new mode with which you can make previous world's harder for better chances for equipment drop. However as the previous worlds only drop eq you don't need anymore, this mode is pretty useless as you can just grind in the last world you completed, get the same eq you want to raise it stars & move on to the next world. Overall still a v good game with its flaws. Really looking forward to future updates!

I really enjoy the game, been playing for a few days. The first few levels are breeze and get you hooked. Once you get to world 3 and up the game starts to lag/glitch on you. Not unplayable, but kind of annoying. The post round screen will take 30+seconds to load. When selecting a card it might lag and that you have 7 of that card (kind of a plus but then you have too many cards in your deck) or the enemies will take more than one turn in a row.

All around still a great game and I enjoy playing it.

Wish it was easier to get more gear for the new characters you get, but that’s just me complaining.

This game is a lot of fun. Unlock multiple characters with different attack types (soldier, witch, etc). At first simple but increasingly slick mechanics to learn (attacks, defense, powerups/debuffs vs action + mana points) and ways to obliterate the competition as you evolve. Slow and steady wins the race and even though each run in different newly unlocked areas is compartmentalized, your leveling up and earnings allow you to become stronger and stronger, using and abusing unique attacks and spells to unleash devastating damage and flick away once-tough enemies like they were bugs as you march to domination

I’ve been looking through mobile games for a while now trying to find the perfect balance of simple/non-time consuming, fun, and challenging when I stumbled on this. It hits all 3 categories, is not pay to win, and is just a really fun and fairly quick RPG turn based/deck builder. Always been a fan of MTG and hearthstone but don’t have the time or energy to play them well, and this has a base deck built around each hero that you build up each adventure (10 fights). The ads are reasonable and it’s not pay to win (you can invest to power up quicker but you can definitely succeed without it). i decided to just pay for the ad-free. It makes it a lot quicker and the price is more than fair. I also really appreciate that when you get higher quality items you can recycle the same item type that you’ve already upgraded and get everything you put into it back! No need to hold back on upgrades. All in all just a great game if you like this kind of thing!

This game won’t blow you away with its mechanics and gameplay, but its presentation is cute and funny and should make for at least a good bit of fun for fans of deckbuilders.

Ymmv on the monetization, the ads can be a little overbearing if you don’t pay to disable them, and even if you do you’re still pushed towards the value bundles pretty frequently. I would’ve preferred a premium model considering the many premium options out there (including Slay the Spire itself) but the game still has hours of good gameplay even if you choose to pay little or no money.

Balanced game with plenty of room for more content. Fun and stylized gameplay in the rouge light game genre. The elements of gotcha game chests and login/ achievement activities make the replay value very high. I know ads are a way of life for developers and this game has them, but I will also say that the 7 bucks to get rid of ads is worth it. I would recommend this game to anyone that likes slay the spire and the like. To the developers, maybe once you have more characters, stages etc., you could have daily/weekly quests that are more specific to each. Perhaps even monthly quests that reward with perfect equipment or something like that? Anyway, great game very happy with my purchase and I highly recommend.

I am really enjoying this game so far. Graphics/animations are cool and the concept of gameplay is different from other card type games.

Few concerns though.

1. The basic default deck is great but as you get to higher levels it kind of starts to leave the player behind. Maybe have different starting decks to choose from? Or at higher levels offer an upgraded card? Just something to make the grinding less painful

2. Tooooo many item options….I get grinding and strategy but it would be nice to get a set of 1 star items. Maybe even one day have a 2 star item. Grinding level 3 and I rarely got the same item to allow me to merge. Maybe add a wish list for sets you want to give high chances on certain items? Or lessen the amount of items available? 🤷🏻‍♂️

3. I think if you did either of the first 2 things that would be swell. Both might make it to easy and I like the challenge this game offers

4……chaos mode is impossible!!! I tried level 1 at max chaos mode and there’s no way it’s beatable. Even if I got all 3 shields on my first draw it’s a 1 hit kill to the player. Maybe add a player level system and high the player level per character the better decks you can unlock?

All that and said I am still giving 5 stars! =] kudos team I look forward to any updates to come!

For fans of Slay the Spire, this is a solid phone app game. Although this game is more simplistic in basic gameplay, it brings a lot of new innovation to the genre. The two heroes released so far have very different gameplay. There is an abundant equipment system that will allow you to customize your character to fit with your play style.

The things I wish developers would change are: all the enemies have a single attack when attacking. Which makes debuffs like Blind (50% chance to miss) very risky (possibly too much so) to use. While the heroes both have multi attacks, so blind is a great debuff for the enemies. Also, if the cleanse cards said prevent/remove the next debuff they would be much better to include in a deck. Currently I just have a dead card until I have a debuff and then hope I draw it before that debuff wears off.

Overall, super solid game. I can’t wait for the next hero to be revealed!

Once you get the hang of the game, and figure out the direction how you want to build your deck, it gets really fun.

Learning to target some monsters over other and learning when to be on defense and sacrifice a action to keep your fury up the game moves to a whole new level, makes you think and memorizing what cards are left in your deck is key.

My only con to the game are the ads. I get it’s a game and to improve games ads are needed, but sometimes I feel like the ads over take a little. You could watch a ad to double what you obtained and to revive but sometimes after watching a ad after a battle, there’s another ad and sometimes I’m just trying to get farther and I feel like I lose the want to sit through another ad.

But if you could bare the ads, and you play a few play throughs, it’s a very enjoyable game. Graphics ver cartoony like and isn’t very complex to pick up.