Our hands-on preview of Neverland Card Battles last month showed us a glimpse of the card-based SRPG that “an introductory player would really find interesting.” That assessment was given by Nate Fitt, who was on hand from YUKE’S Company of America, the game’s localizer and U.S. publisher. Originally entitled Cardinal Arc during its initial Japanese publication on the PS2, the game is now named for the anime/manga franchise in which it takes place, the titular “Neverland.” Since first appearing in 2003, Neverland Card Battles has gone by a few different names, and while I’m loath to add to the list, it’s happened more than once during my time with the game that I’ve been tempted to call it “Never-End Card Battles.” While deeply inventive and clever from a strategic standpoint, and certainly beautiful to look at, Neverland Card Battles suffers from tedious pacing and an overly ambitious interface, drawing the experience out from a thinking game to a waiting game.
It’s not that Neverland Card Battles is a bad game. Quite the opposite, in fact; the title’s extremely clever genre blending — stat-based card combat mixed with SRPG-style unit management and grid-map positioning — presents a wonderfully unique challenge for the strategy enthusiast. The broad variety of over 200 cards available for the obsessive collector, along with an easy-to-use deck builder, does a wonderful job of bringing in amateur TCG players. The AI starts off on the slow side, but players can expect a genuine challenge towards the latter half of the game’s single-player story. The visuals are very nice, the music is appropriate and enjoyable, and the game even includes the necessary mid-game temporary save features and easily accessible info to make sure it stays portable-friendly. Unfortunately, what the game lacks are any options to streamline the experience once the player is past the bells and whistles, and is ready to emphasize substance over style.
What’s more, the style wears off rather quickly if you’re not enamored with the game’s story and characters, which I certainly wasn’t. I don’t doubt that the Neverland franchise has plenty of fans who will enjoy seeing familiar faces and exploring new angles of the property’s story, but for those who are meeting the Neverland crew for the first time, it’s not a very engaging introduction. Galahad, the game’s protagonist, is a devil-may-care gambler who treats everyone he meets with a cocky, dismissive attitude, speaking with the verbal equivalent of a constant eye-roll. It’s amusing at first, but after only a few conversations, you begin to feel that way yourself, rolling your own eyes as you encounter a host of cliched characters, making your way through a story which presents a generic pretext for the battles themselves. All of Neverland may hang in the balance while these characters do battle, but the lackluster voice acting doesn’t exactly convey a sense of gravity, and when the dialogue isn’t downright absurd, it practically covers a cliche checklist. “What?! But you’re just a kid!” By the time you’ve defeated the irrepressibly chirpy treasure-hunting girl, the breathy priestess who is pure of heart but under a spell, and the polite-and-proper fey gentleman who can’t possibly lose to you, you just want them to get on with it.
YUKE’S suggested to us that the average battle would range from 20 to 60 minutes, and we found that to be accurate: Our skirmishes clocked in at an average of 45 minutes. Once you’re past the initial pretense, the card battles themselves can really pull you in, presenting a number of fresh gameplay angles and strategic options. The structure of the game is simple enough to grasp: At the start of the match, each of the two combatants are placed on opposite sides of the playing field, made up of roughly 100-150 interconnected squares, winding around a handful of obstacles and presenting one or more paths to reach the other side. Each player’s avatar can move about the field and attack the other, engaging in a stat-based fight with a non-random outcome. One’s attack power, minus the opponent’s defense power, will cost one’s foe that number of hit points, and once a player’s avatar is reduced to 0 HP, the match ends. Of course, in order to aid them in this goal, each player has a custom-created deck of 30 cards, representing additional units, fixed-location bases, and a collection of offensive and defensive spells.
The game’s random chance, as is typical of a TCG, is derived from the random order in which one’s cards are drawn, but everything else is a predictable, mathematical affair, providing players with the opportunity to devise some clever tactics. The main basis of one’s abilities is derived from control over the playing field: Every square that a player’s units pass through will change to his color, adding to a tally from which any played card is drawn. Naturally, cards which summon stronger units or cast more powerful spells will have a higher associated cost, requiring the player to canvass larger portions of the board before he can afford to play them. Sending one’s units into enemy territory to flip their squares to one’s own color can have a devastating effect on an opponent’s abilities — especially since placed units must also pay a maintenance cost, each turn, from that same territory total.
In addition, certain portions of the playing field will often have elemental attributes, granting a bonus to any unit of the same type while standing there. Better still, elemental units can be summoned into play on any square of their type, as opposed to the normal rule of summoning a unit next to an existing unit. This ability can prove hugely useful for getting an army behind enemy lines to seize territory, cut off escape routes, and more.
Already, this presents a number of tactical choices: A conservative player might start out by placing several low-cost units in play quickly, in order to spread out and pick up lots of territory early in the game, while a high-risk player might wait a bit longer and place a strong unit first, in an attempt to crush the opposition before they can mount a proper defense. Add in the fact that several of the game’s available creatures have special abilities, ranged attacks, or even invulnerability to certain creature types, and the paths to victory become varied and creative. Unfortunately, making your way down those paths can be an unnecessarily slow process.
Neverland Card Battles helps players assess their strategies by presenting the vital statistics of any on-screen unit with a single button press, keeping all needed information easily accessible. However, the game doesn’t seem to keep that information close at hand, pausing for a quick load every time the player needs to glance at it — which is frequently. This is made apparent simply by scrolling one’s cursor across the playing field; if one is moving over to select a unit to activate and the cursor happens to pass over another unit, the game will lock up for a second while it loads the unit’s statistics into the info panel. It’s a very brief pause, but it’s a pause nonetheless, and they begin to accumulate rapidly. Furthermore, the info presented in the aforementioned panel is very rarely enough to be of much help. Putting the cursor over a unit will display its attack power, defensive power, and remaining hit points, but nothing about its special abilities, nor even its movement score. I can understand not including a verbose ability description in a quick heads-up panel, but given the strong emphasis on territory control — not to mention the need to know how one can position things like ranged units or weak units for safety or escape — it seems like an omission not to include one more simple number on the read-out. Assuming you don’t take the time to memorize Neverland’s 200+ distinct cards, including their associated movement scores and special abilities, you’re going to have to look them up on the fly, which leads to another quick loading pause. Again, maybe it’s just one second, but when you’re doing it 5, 10, 15 times per turn, it starts to get on one’s nerves.
I’d be completely willing to forgive these minor pauses, though, were they not accompanied by the much longer pauses presented by the unskippable fight sequences. Every time two units clash on the battlefield, the players are given the option to add in an extra spell card if one is available, and then the fight is played out in an impromptu arena, showing the two units trading blows in a modestly-animated sequence. The visuals are nice, and the associated on-screen data helps new players to better understand the outcome and consequences of the fight, but to be perfectly honest, these fights are not exactly spectacular. Once you’ve seen the fight sequence ten times or so, you’ve seen it about as much as you’ll ever want to. This becomes particularly repetitive when going on the offensive: While a single fight is usually enough to knock a summoned unit out of play, taking down a player’s avatar usually involves fighting them a dozen times or more, and 99% of those fights are going to play out exactly the same way — again, there is no random chance involved, so unless a character adds in a last-minute spell card, you already know what’s going to happen. Just like the loading pauses, it’s not the length of the fights that bothers me, it’s the repetition. Assuming both characters quickly elect not to play a spell card, a fight will play out in about 10 seconds, but after you’ve seen that 10 seconds for the 100th time, it’s just irritating.
This same issue reared its head when we reviewed Yggdra Union, another PSP SRPG, but Yggdra Union contained a merciful “fast-forward” option to keep the repetitive portions tolerable. Neverland Card Battles contains no such feature, and the game definitely suffers for it. In a game that challenges a player with well over 30 hours of content, one has to assume that the player will reach a point where the basic game elements become routine, and that relatively similar animated sequences will lose their glitz and appeal after sufficient repetition. Sadly, Neverland Card Battles does not address this issue, forcing players to sit through the same stale content in order to keep playing the strategic elements, which do stay fresh and interesting, and that’s a shame. It’s doubly annoying given that it’s a portable title; while I’m certainly grateful for the ability to save and quit a battle halfway through, I’d much rather just finish the level before I have to put down the PSP due to low batteries or otherwise.
To drive this point home, I played through a battle against a particularly shortsighted AI opponent, and managed to pull off an unlikely “checkmate” strategy in only four turns. I had their avatar trapped on a single square, stuck between units whose special abilities made them completely invulnerable to the avatar’s attack. From there, it was a simple matter to claim every other square of their property, their reduced tally thus preventing them from summoning new units or casting spells, allowing me to grind their helpless avatar into the dust. The game, at this point, was effectively over, but there was still the long and tedious matter of playing out the combat rounds. Had there been a “quick combat” option or a fast-forward button, the rest of the game would likely have ended in roughly 3-5 minutes. Instead, I had to wait for loading every time I selected a unit, load up the combat sequence for every attack, and sit through 15 identical fights while I waited for the match to end. By the time it was finally over, what should have been a 15 minute match had still lasted 45 minutes.
We did not have the opportunity to review the multiplayer portion of Neverland Card Battles, which I regret. Based on our preview, I know that players are granted access to any cards and characters they have acquired in the single-player game, and that the game features Ad Hoc wireless play for two competitive card collectors. I want to make it clear that this portion of the review is pure conjecture, since we had no actual multiplayer experience to go on (possessing only one copy of the game, which sadly cannot be played online), but my assumption is that the game’s slow pacing will only be pronounced when two players are involved. The AI opponents at least present the luxury of taking their turns without reviewing their card information or taking very long to think; I can only imagine how long the game would take when the aforementioned loading pauses and necessary information reviews occur twice as often.
Still, if you’re a patient gamer, Neverland Card Battles is a game with some definite substance to it. The strategy is easy enough to grasp for beginners, but deep enough to hold the interest of strategy veterans. The visuals are nice, and the overall motif and story can be amusing if you don’t take it too seriously. Honestly, if the interface had been tweaked to be a little more user-friendly, I’d be prepared to say Neverland Card Battles was a solid SRPG, and well above the average digital TCG offering. Ultimately, though, the repetitive portions will most likely ward off most gamers before too long.
Neverland Card Battles is available now for the Sony PSP.
Full disclosure: YUKE’S Company of America is a client of TriplePoint Public Relations, a firm managed by Richard Kain. Kain is also the owner of GameCyte’s parent company, Pantheon Labs.
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