Yi Xian: The Cultivation Card Game is an online Deck Building Game with a background in cultivation. The game wonderfully combines the styles of Battle Royale, Auto Chess, and Deck Building games to provide a unique gameplay experience.
In Yi Xian: The Cultivation Card Game, players will build a “Combo Deck” for their characters and fight with an opponent. Both sides will automatically play their deck in the sequence set by the player until one side has lost all their HP. The fight result is majorly dependent on how well the players have built their decks and how well they know their opponents.
A screenshot of a battle where the player manages to turn defeat into victory.
In Yi Xian: The Cultivation Card Game, there are tons of possible builds for players. For example, players may stack up “Sword Intent”, a temporary buff that will increase the ATK of the next card attack, and use an attack card containing multiple hits to maximize the value of “Sword Intent”. Or the player can choose the devastating “Spirit Sword”, which usually has higher damage but no special effects, for a more direct, pure strength build. The game provides three “Sect” card sets, five “Side Job” card sets, and 10 different characters.
The game provides minor microtransaction features to speed up the progress to unlock new card sets or characters. But all the cards and characters can be unlocked using the in-game currency earned from matches. And there is no stat progression on either the card or the character (the players can merge two cards in a match for a temporary level up, but it will be reset to the default state after the match). So it is a skill-based game rather than Pay to Win.
Each character has a live-2D portrait in great standard.
The regular eight-player match may contain multiple battles, and the defeated side will lose “Destiny” after the battle. Before “Destiny” is completely depleted, players may adjust their deck to improve their strategy or counter the opponents’ strategy between each battle. Besides changing decks, players absorb cards to “breakthrough” their characters into a higher “Phase” to unlock more powerful cards. Determining whether to keep cards for more flexible strategy choices or to speed up the “breakthrough” progression for better cards can be a tough decision to make.
For a deck-building game, it is crucial to understand how each card works. A player can easily learn a card’s effects in Yi Xian: The Cultivation Card Game by moving the cursor over it and reading the explanation of the special tags related to the card.
A screenshot of a card description
However, the game still needs a lot of polishing on the English localization. Some parts of the game, including some card effects, are still not translated. And there are cards with extremely long descriptions and text that do not fit properly in the UI. Thankfully there is still time before release, and the game provider will hopefully take the time to improve the localization standard.
A screenshot of a card description that is hard to read.
Yi Xian: The Cultivation Card Game will be available on Steam on Dec 6th, 2022. For players who want to test their deck-building skills or are trying to find Cultivation games, it will be a decent choice.