Trading Card games have been extremely popular when played with real cards, but have not had much success when transferred into a video game. There have been a few notable games, most recently with the Metal Gear Acid series and Sony’s The Eye of Judgement, but they have not been able to really entice many people into the genre. Idea Factory hopes to change that by giving gamers Neverland Card Battles.

Gameplay

Neverland Card Battles’ story revolves around the threat brought upon by the evil Hellgaia. In the past, he wanted to control the world but was stopped by five deities who separated his powers into many different cards. After hundreds of years, Hellgaia is trying to escape and in order for him to be freed, he needs those cards. His cards were dispersed across the land and those who hold them are called Dominators. You play the game as Galahad, who discovers is a Dominator and has been asked to collect the entire collection in order to prevent Hellgaia from returning.

Every card has a different ability. Some will summon fighters, magicians or other types of characters. You might also have cards that cause status ailments, heal your characters or help by creating a defence for you to use. The cards have various point values associated with them including Health, Action, Move and Cost. While there are a great variety of cards at your disposal, the cards you start off with are extremely weak causing the game to be quite difficult.

NCB is a challenge from the get-go. The first mission where you are introduced to Galahad and Egma, a demon boy who claims to be a shrine guardian, is supposed to be a training scenario, but very little of it is actual training. You’re thrown into the game and it wants you to learn as you play, or in other words, die and try again. There are some instructions given, but they are usually vague, so you will have to actually play through and learn on your own.

The gameplay consists of each person, you and your opposition, holding onto 30 cards that are drawn out randomly and then used. You get to draw one card at the beginning of your turn and only five can be held at any one time. In order to use your cards, you need to control various squares on the battle map. Since each card contains a certain amount of cost points, you essentially need to first start off by gaining territory before you can attack your opposition. Thankfully all your summoned characters can help you cover more ground and increase your Cost Value, which is necessary when you want to use stronger cards.

When you or your summoned characters attack or is attacked, you enter a small battle screen. Regardless if you are the attacker or the defender, each character gets their chance to strike. Meaning that if your character is already at low health when they attack, if they manage to defeat their opponent they may still end up dying. This will frustrate most people since it turns many of your low health characters into Kamikaze fighters.   

They state that cards are drawn randomly, but it always seems that the computer gets not only the better cards drawn first but will have the best cards in battle. Since you’ll have this disadvantage, you will have to figure out other ways of winning or hoping for a good card to appear.

There are plenty of cards to collect, but as you would expect, getting the really good ones will be tough. Those looking for a quick and painless experience will not be pleased as the game does not offer a ‘best select’ option to pick your cards. You will have to take the time to go through your collection and try to figure out which ones would be best for you in the upcoming battle. Since you can’t anticipate what the next Dominator will use, you’ll probably play the battle once, learn their patterns and cards and then adjust accordingly.

Graphics and Sound

The game’s graphics are not much to look at. The character animations during conversations are decent but when you’re in battle, there is very little difference between the characters on the screen. The cards themselves are also pretty basic with only a few contain interesting artwork on them. The animations during battles are quite laughable and look more like a 16-bit game rather than something that should be on the PSP.

The game does have full voice acting but it isn’t much to listen to. The characters are very annoying and while the dialog does make sense, you’d rather just read the text instead of listening to them talk. Like most Japanese styled games, there is a lot of melodrama and stereotypes that will only appeal to a small group of people. As for the game’s music, it can get pretty annoying. Since battles take a long time, hearing the same song for a long period of time will begin to bother you. Your best solution is to play this muted.

Value

The game’s story is fairly long and each mission can last anywhere from twenty minutes to over an hour, so you will be playing for some time. There is the option to play against your friends, which may prolong your experience. When playing against friends via Ad-Hoc, you have the choice of playing as any one of the Dominators you’ve unlocked in the game and selecting a pre-existing deck you’ve already created. Since each Dominator have different abilities, this does create an interesting spin. While it’s not bad, I would have loved if you were rewarded with rare cards for beating your friends as that would have created some interesting challenges. The reverse option of getting to take a card from your friend if you beat them would also create tense matches and give players Bragging right over their friends.

Conclusion

Idea Factory’s series has been around for a long time; it has had some modest success in Japan but almost none in North America.  This game does little to promote the series and the likelihood of future games seems bleak. The game’s difficulty, weak graphics, annoying voice-work and sound does very little to attract either Trading Card or Strategy fans. If you’re looking for a card-based game for your PSP, I would suggest going back and playing the Metal Gear Acid games. Your other option is to go to your local comic or card shop, buying a starter deck of Magic or World of Warcraft Cards and making some new friends; you’ll have a lot more fun than playing this.