Shuffle Tactics

[It's] less a cohesive "greatest hits album" of roguelite elements and more of a confused compilation of good ideas played out of tune.

Shuffle Tactics shows a lot of promise with its cool style, solid combat, and flexible playstyles, but unfinished elements like broken buttons and poor controller support make it feel more like an early test build than a polished release.

A slow rollout of characters and decks creates a rather plain early game, but Shuffle Tactics shines once everything opens up.

Shuffle Tactics fails its art style and interesting game mechanics with an unpolished UI and a multitude of bugs. There is an interesting game to be found here, but asking players to trudge through the horrible camera, visual and mechanical bugs, and poor UI decisions to get to it is inexcusable. Hopefully, after a few patches and a camera overhaul, Shuffle Tactics will be worth the time and effort, but as it stands now, there are too many other strong roguelike/deckbuilders on the market that your time would be better spent playing.

Shuffle Tactics is a good tactical roguelike that offers plenty of reasons to think ahead to combat The Glimmer. It needs refinement in places, but updates have done a lot to improve the game since its initial release.

Despite some unique ideas and a solid art style, Shuffle Tactics has a very high difficulty curve and a roguelike loop that isn't rewarding enough, especially early on.

Shuffle Tactics is a solid strategy game, despite its shortcomings. The wide variety of cards and amulets provides engaging gameplay options that can entertain for several hours. However, the title lacks a truly distinctive feature that would allow it to stand out within the genre. Its core mechanics evolve very little throughout the campaign, and the experience tends to become repetitive due to slow progression and unbalanced difficulty.

Shuffle Tactics has some great bones and ideas. If anything, it feels like a great candidate for Early Access balancing and bug fixing. However, it is a full release and one that retails for $14.99. Because of this, it is taking a bit more scrutiny from me in its present state. I would love to be able to experience the rest of the bosses and levels, but with the level of difficulty being as it is, it’s hard for me to not want to “wait and see” for now before taking on the path to King Ogma again.

Shuffle Tactics looks incredible, but the nuance of its game design falls a bit short with an uneven difficulty curve, bugs, and less-than-meaningful progression. While still worth giving a try if you find the game interesting, it feels as though it could have really benefited from a playtesting period and may be more worth your time after some post-launch support from the devs.

Shuffle Tactics takes some well-worn mechanics, shines them up, and executes them in fun and interesting ways.