First things first, let’s address the elephant in the room when it comes to Shadowverse – the aesthetic. Cygames are Japanese developers and Shadowverse has an anime/manga, bordering on hentai, visual design. Some of the design decisions for the game as a whole make it abundantly obvious that this was intentional, and while I do believe that these decisions are overall to the detriment of the game (such as having full-art cards – more on that later) the art direction is neither here nor there for me personally, though suffice it to say that I’m not sure I’d feel completely comfortable playing this game in public, which seems a pretty large barrier for a game designed with mobile in mind at every juncture. The ‘ecchi’ style of the art here will no doubt be a massive turn-off for many, and presumable a turn-on for others, but that’s a decision you can very quickly make for yourself, so the rest of this review will be focused on everything but the art.

Shadowverse has been the go-to comparison for Redditors complaining about Blizzard’s greed in Hearthstone for the past few months, but thanks to a recent giveaway celebrating Shadowverse’s 8 million downloads alongside Hearthstone’s recent price hikes, the Hearthstone subreddit has been littered with praise for Cygames’ generosity.

And that holds up well. After playing through the tutorial and claiming my login bonuses I had 34 free packs sitting in my account, and they seemed to payout pretty generously with Gold, Legendary, and “Animated” (Shadowverse’s answer to golden) cards. After “liquefying” all of the Animated and Legendary cards I had about 6,000 vials sitting in my account. That’s enough for a budget deck that will be decent enough to get you into the highest tiers on the ladder, so there’s definitely more than enough given away as you begin the game to have a very positive start to Shadowverse, which makes it a lot less intimidating than most other games in this genre. The top tier decks appear to run around 15-30,000 vials, with control decks having the usual premium prices that could push them up to as far as 50,000 vials. These might seem far from the 6,000 that I started with, but there’s so much that I haven’t done in the game yet. I still have 3 tickets for a free Arena, almost all of the Story Mode left to do, and a wealth of “Score Bonuses” (sort of like win bonuses) still to achieve.

In terms of gameplay Shadowverse plays very similarly to Hearthstone. Mana increments by one each turn, you can play creatures onto the board or cast spells, and the aim of the game is to reduce your opponent’s life total to 0. “Evolve” is the most distinguishing feature though. After a set number of turns, each player can evolve their creatures into a more powerful version. These evolved creatures can attack on the same turn as they are played (but not at the opponent’s face) and occasionally have different abilities from their unevolved forms, but in the vast majority of cases the evolution is a raw stat upgrade. Evolutions aren’t unlimited though, the player who went first can only evolve twice, while the player who went second gets to evolve three times and gets to evolve a turn earlier than the other player (which, in combination with drawing twice on their first turn, is supposed to make up for the disadvantage inherent in going second).

Alongside creatures and spells, “Amulets” can also be played, which take up space on the board like a creature does, but provide passive benefits and can’t attack or be attacked. This is the sort of design space that can prove extremely interesting, like Magic: the Gathering’s artifacts and enchantments. However, unlike other games, there are no instant or hidden effects in Shadowverse. So there’s no possibility to interact with your opponent during their turn, and you’ll only be playing around your opponent’s board and hand, which can make for much drier games.

But this game really is harder to play than needs be. All cards are full-art, and don’t have any text other than Attack and Defence written on the card itself, meaning you’ll have to click on each card individually every time you need to find out or remember what something does. And because Shadowverse was primarily designed to be played on mobile devices, you can’t just hover over the cards either. This makes the actual in-game action feel laborious at times, and this is especially evident in “Take Two” which is Shadowverse’s Arena/Draft mode. Instead of choosing one card from a selection, “Take Two” has you choose from one of two pairs of cards, do this 14 times and you’ll have “crafted” your deck. If you don’t have an implicit knowledge of all the cards just by looking at their art, then you’ll need to click each card before every pick, internalise their effects (which could well change upon evolution) and then evaluate which pair of cards would be best for you, all the while not being able to ever directly compare their effects.

This method of drafting also makes the decks seem less ‘handcrafted’ and more ‘built out of Lego precons’. It’s much harder to nail down synergies when you’re having to take two cards at once, and though I’m sure the developers have tailored this system to build somewhat cohesive decks to some extent, it doesn’t always work out.

In addition to the issues presented by full-art card designs, the visuals of this game are extremely noisy. Cards zip and zoom about the screen causing flashy particle effects, often making it difficult to parse the game. Nowhere is this more prevalent than in the Story Mode, where the AI plays at blistering speed, which completely prevents you from even being able to read your own cards during their turn. This isn’t so bad in the multiplayer mode as both you and your opponent will be stopping to think While there’s plenty of options to turn some of these things off, it’s just a shame that the effects of this game couldn’t have been a bit cleaner.

Speaking of the Story Mode, I was extremely impressed by the quality of the voice acting, especially for a mobile game. The story itself isn’t anything groundbreaking, but it serves mostly as an introduction to both the game’s and each of the different classes’ mechanics. In-game currency and vials are tied to the story’s missions, incentivising their completion, but unfortunately so are some class cards that are otherwise uncraftable. This forces you to play up to the sixth mission for each class just to have access to those cards, which is a pretty minor gripe but it’s better than the grinds most CCGs require, and it’s at least something to do when you’re on the go and your data might be a bit spotty.

Having been built explicitly for mobile devices, the play experience on my Samsung Galaxy Note 3 was as tight as on PC. As one would expect it eats up battery life pretty fast, likely even faster if you’re using mobile data rather than Wi-Fi, but the game looks, sounds, and plays great. As earlier mentioned, this has ramifications for the PC version, but on mobile the interface feels about as good as it could be.

Overall, Shadowverse is a pretty deep card game that plays similarly to Hearthstone but explores some different design spaces. RNG is kept to a minimum, with random effects having tight constraints such as “Randomly discard one of the lowest-cost cards in your hand” which will be a delight to many of the more competitive players. While the aesthetic definitely isn’t to everyone’s taste, everything about the game is pretty well made with the exception of some design choices (full-art cards!). Perhaps most importantly, if there’s one word I could use to describe Shadowverse it would be ‘generous’, as this game is the most Free to Play-friendly CCG I have ever come across. It might not have the same level of depth or complexity as Magic: the Gathering, and it mightn’t have the characters of Hearthstone, but there’s a pretty fun game here for anyone looking for a truly F2P CCG.