Hard Edge - War Zone

Hard Edge - War Zone is a tactical card battling game within the "Hard Edge" universe where the player balances actions by utilizing different cards with different cost values and where mistakes can be punished swiftly. While radically different from its predecessor and feeling like an Alpha build of an unfinished game, its foundation is sound. That said...

While I desperately wanted to justify purchasing this game as a fan of T.R.A.G. / Hard Edge and while most of the reviews I've seen up here gloss over the "crashing", I feel that the issue is understated. While they are "soft locks", they happen in any relevant mode and frequently, making finishing the game extremely tedious. This is particularly an issue for the game's main mode, Mission Mode, where the player raises the levels of characters and add additional cards to their deck but it has to run through in one sitting. If the game freezes at any point (and usually does so on stage intros and when using throwing items), all you can do is exit to title or quit, but you don't make ANY progress on your run as a result.

I got near the end of Mission Mode on a good run just for it to hang after a poison canister was thrown, making me lose almost an hour of gameplay, and close to another hour while fighting Cassandra on the last mission (she is an opponent who frequently uses throwing items too) and that's not counting the MANY other frequent freezes where I didn't lose too much progress. This game was released and immediately abandoned, some (minor) U.I. stuff still isn't even translated and considering Mission Mode has the bulk of the gameplay for raising levels and increasing / changing your deck, it's unforgivable for this game to be released in the state it's in. While we're talking about Mission Mode still, it seems to only cycle through the hero characters (and you can't choose who), and I have yet to be able to raise the levels of the villains (I'll update my review if I'm ever able to). It's also a shame as the core gameplay loop is fun once you wrap your head around the turn order and cost system.

Hard Edge / T.R.A.G. deserves much better, and as much as I want to leave a positive review to "increase the likelihood of a new Hard Edge game", this game is not currently in an acceptable state. Don't let my play time fool you, as I was past the refund window and wanted to really dig into the game mechanics. They should reuse the assets from this and make an actual Hard Edge sequel / prequel as the I like the character designs and visuals, but this is one is a "no" for me. Buyers beware.

UPDATE: Having played the game for a while, there is one thing worth pointing out -- the cards you level up from experience points in Mission Mode don't really make you stronger in the offline mode, they make you stronger in the Online Mode. Your cards will show the new graphics of higher rarity cards but switch to the default when you execute actions, which is just confusing and misleading as you can't view the original card stats in Mission Mode (Attack, Costs and other Effects). It seems kinda backwards to let you take those online when they'd give you more of a competitive edge, but that's just how it is. Basically, you have almost no reason to play this game offline as the Mission Mode is buggy and terrible. I played a little online to get a feel for it... empty lobbies, bots, some latency and lag issues (primarily while trying to move), reduced visual fidelity and the simultaneous actions of other players is more than a little confusing, but it "did" run.

A bit barebones. A single music track plays through all your missions. Mission mode random your characters and feels like a little rouge-like. Sometime the game will just crash. No local VS mode. For 15 bucks it could stand to be a little better but I like the idea of this games and hope that the devs comes and do some more tuning.

I bought this game due to the concept being very interesting, and the art style being very appealing.

However, the story is lackluster, each chapter is super short and you do nothing but click around and move. You might fight one or two bad guys but not much leading up to the first boss.

The same OST played through my entire playthrough no matter the situation or what was happening. The transitions between each chapter is also jarring, disrupts the pace, and in my opinion, isn't needed. A forced transition or black screen would make the experience feel that much more cohesive.

No voice acting, but that's not a huge deal.

All in all the game feels very boring, low impact, and just meh. However it still has potential and I hope the devs expand on these things. I really want to see this game succeed, however these very small issues need to be addressed in order for this to happen.

Big potential, small impact

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Brief review

The game in its current state is a good idea but does very little to bring that idea to life. The story feels like it was an afterthought and the missions have very little variety in maps. There are a few text boxes with no translation which don't seem important but being unable to read them they may be. The multiplayer with bots seemed interesting but the very limited timer makes strategy feel impossible. In the current state I feel the game is a 6/10 but with work (and active players for multiplayer) I can see this going far.

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Main review

Gameplay

8/10

The core game play of using cards for both movement and for actions works very well. In the story and mission modes were you have time to consider your actions and get to view the state of the map this feels fantastic as you can plan what you are going to do making your actions feel they have weight, in the multiplayer mode were you have very limited time it feels more chaotic with very little strategy involved.

The story mode progresses very slowly and tries to teach you how to play the game step by step but this quickly feels more like a chore than enjoyment of the game, which I feel dissuades from learning the mechanics and jumping straight into another mode and not knowing the mechanics of the game.

Mission mode is currently the only mode with a real impact. This mode has a roguelite element with branching paths and being able to upgrade or add cards to your deck as you go though it. Enemy variety is maybe lacking but this is similar to the original game were there was no variety either.

Multiplayer as it currently stands is not in a good state, with little to no playerbase all the games are bot games. I don't count this against the review score as this is not a problem with the game itself but has to be considered when purchasing the game. The deck building mechanic of multiplayer feels slightly lacking as when you have a choice of upgrading or adding a new card to that characters deck if you dislike all options you still have to choose an option to take, then the only way to reverse this is to delete the deck and start again from level 1.

The character system for the multiplayer is nice but the characters all feel too similar to each other for it to feel like a substantial choice. This may just be the starting decks but without knowing the potential for the characters it feels the best choice the character you prefer the look of.

Visual and audio

5/10

The visual style looks great, an updated version of the original game. This may not appeal to everyone but it gives the game a good feel and it is anything but generic.

The music in the game is very, very limited. This is a major downside to the point of turning the music off completely to play separate background music.

The sound effects are okay, there is nothing that stands out with these, its not a positive or negative thing for the game.

Controls

4/10

The controls are probably the biggest issue in the game currently. Going through the menus, choosing cards, selecting targets, and more all use different keys to go through, and a lot of these you are unable to use the mouse for which for a card game feels like a very odd choice. The controls feel like they were built for controller with keyboard and mouse being an afterthought. Whilst this is currently an issue I feel this could be improved very easily.

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Final Thoughts

As per the title I feel this game has major potential but it just doesn't quite do what it is trying to do. With time I honestly feel this could become a game that I could recommend to anyone, but in its current state I can recommend it to people who enjoy games that feel different and people who want something different. I cant recommend it to the casual player as there is not enough content for them to enjoy

Hard Edge - Bug Zone

I'm not refunding but leaving a negative review for now.

The game needs some serious work and it's not ready for release.

I tried playing online, didn't find anyone but at least has a bot match. The online match has a timer for each player. Once my timer finished the match was just stuck and not progressing. At least I could quit to main menu.
Edit: This can also happen in single player, the game can freeze when you select an action and the only thing you can do is quit to title (or quit the game).

Then I tried missions. Instead of taking you to the mission select screen the game just starts a mission I don't know with what logic. The game was stuck at that screen (the 3d level view) and didn't progress, had to force close the application.

Then the Deck menu, it has Japanese localisation on the return button and it shows the wrong button to return to the menu.
What is the difference in Equip and Equipped? You just select that in a character and says equipped. But doesn't change anything that I can tell, I played with characters that don't have equipped selected and could use the deck too.

I tried the Mission again and it worked and I finished a mission. That's when you get to the mission select screen and you can't go back to the main menu, the back button doesn't work. I had to join another mission and quit to title. If you select Mission from the main menu again it directly starts a mission again.

I'm sure if I keep playing I'll find more but just to give you a taste after my very sort play.

Worst one: Amateur movement programming. When you try to plan your move the moment you press to a new block that is committed. What I mean is, if you backtrack then your character will walk ALL the path you set. Obviously the solution they give for that is undo that character's movement but that's not good enough.

I'll update my review if there are sufficient fixes.

Edit: Updated my comments.