Playing A Game Prismata PC

Prismata is half visual-novel, and half turn-based strategy game -- except the strategy game is really a card game, and the card game feels a lot like a puzzle ... well, let's slow down a bit.

Prismata starts out pretty strong, with a cool sci-fi future setting and a sardonic smartass protagonist. The main character's apathy is a convenient vehicle for the game's tutorial missions; other characters rib him for not keeping his skills up, and then teach you, the player, how to control swarms of battling robots.

You see, he's a "swarmwielder," which is like an army commander except the army is made of robots. And when some worker robots start to turn hostile, it's your job to click a bunch of buttons and deploy security 'bots to quell a viral uprising.

(Each unit appears on-screen in the form of a card, and the battlefield is organized into front, middle, and rear lines of these cards. That's where the "card game" comes in.)

The combat itself is turn-based, and involves distinct phases of gathering various energy currencies; consuming those currencies to deploy new units; ordering those units to attack; absorbing enemy attacks; and repeating, so on, until you've obliterated the enemy's forces or vice-versa. The campaign's early missions introduce the rules of these phases pretty well, while simultaneously bringing in new unit types that help each mission feel fresh.

And I was really enjoying it until the end of the first episode, when a mission introduced the "seed" resource and limited the total available amount of each robot.

Up to that point, I'd employed the turtling strategy - as is my wont - of investing heavily in defense and infrastructure before ultimately rolling out an offensive force of shock and awe. But the "seed" limits meant that I couldn't keep deploying shield units forever; I would run out of them before getting to my offense, and inevitably succumb to enemy attacks.

This was when the game became more like a puzzle, in that I would have to figure out a precisely-correct balance of simultaneous defense and offense, to avoid dying while also beating back the enemy. A single wrong move would lead to an unwinnable scenario in later turns. (Granted, the game has a very retry-friendly "undo turn" system.)

I probably would have been fine with that puzzle game, except that I'd just finished learning how to play something totally different. So when this mission went back on all that I'd learned, I just bounced right off. Completely changing the play style that I'd just become comfortable with was not an attractive proposition.

There is some pretty cool stuff in Prismata, but the tutorial pulled a fast one on me, and I just didn't feel like re-examining all of my tactics in order to get to Episode 2.

Better than: Card City Nights
Not as good as: Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales
The visual-novel part: isn't bad! The writing and ambience are good on their own, but not good enough that I want to re-learn the game.

Progress: Didn't quite finish Episode 1 of the campaign.

Rating: Meh