It’s rather shocking to consider how few card games there are on the Switch today. Sure, there are quite a few deck-building roguelites that incorporate elements of card games into their design, but these don’t quite manage to scratch that same itch. Luckily, Cygames has seen fit to bring over its popular Shadowverse mobile game in the form of Shadowverse: Champion's Battle, a full-fledged RPG that’s built entirely around the card game. Shadowverse: Champion’s Battle is a resounding success in what it sets out to do, providing a compelling and enjoyable take on the genre that we’d strongly encourage you to check out.
Shadowverse: Champion’s Battle follows a typical Shonen school drama narrative about an anonymous, mute new student to Tensei Academy. In both the school and the surrounding town, a card game called Shadowverse has completely taken over the zeitgeist, and your character of course has an uncanny natural ability to play the game amazingly well. One thing leads to another and your character finds themselves joining the school’s mysterious Shadowverse club, which is weirdly unpopular and underground considering the prevalence of the card game literally everywhere else you go. As a result of its decline, the school’s class president wants to close the club down for good, but she agrees to let it go on if you and your friends can win the Shadowverse world championship.
Sure, Shadowverse: Champion’s Battle doesn’t net any points for its extraordinary storytelling, but the narrative here nonetheless proves to be surprisingly solid. Your gang of fellow Shadowverse enthusiasts all have quirky and well-defined personalities, and there’s a fair bit of character development that takes place across the board as you and the crew overcome obstacles keeping you from glory. It’s the kind of story that just feels good with its unflinching sense of optimism and hope, and you’ll likely find yourself attached to this world and its characters once you reach the end of the narrative. It does feel a little bit odd that Cygames opted to forgo drawing from all the rich lore of the existing dark fantasy universe that the real-world Shadowverse has built in favor of this more kid-friendly anime storyline, but it makes sense considering that this approach likely appeals to a much broader audience.
The main draw of the gameplay here is, of course, the titular Shadowverse card game, which has been fully adapted without being watered down or simplified to match the friendlier aesthetic. The basic rules are a little bit akin to a game of Hearthstone, with the main goal being to reduce your opponent’s health to zero before they can do the same to you. Each player accrues ‘play points’ with each passing turn, and these are then spent to play whatever cards you’d like from your hand, with the better cards almost always having a much higher play point value. Most cards have an attack and defense stat which governs how much damage they can give or take, while Spell and Amulet cards are used as one-offs that cause some sort of effect to immediately take place.
As you’d expect of a CCG, there’s an absurd amount of strategy that goes into how you play. For example, cards often have additional effects that slightly change the rules of their use, such as how a Fanfare allows a card to have a passive effect that triggers as soon as it’s first put on the board, or how Ambush prevents a card from being targeted by enemies until it acts first. Additionally, you’re allowed to Evolve cards after a few turns, which lets you power up a card of your choosing to bolster its stats and sometimes give it extra effects. It feels like there’s no end to how many ways you can choose to build and execute a given deck, which effectively gives Shadowverse limitless replayability.
Things are made much more interesting when you take into account that there are seven different classes of cards, each of which plays radically different form the next. Forestcraft, for example, is built around you having a swarm of low value fairy cards in your hand. Higher value Forestcraft cards often have extra powerful effects if a certain number of cards are played first that turn, which incentivizes you to build a deck around keeping your fairy supply topped up so you can keep feeding your juggernauts.
Bloodcraft, on the other hand, incentivizes a riskier strategy wherein cards become inherently more powerful as your character takes more damage. Here, cards are often centered around safely inflicting damage on yourself so you can quicker get to the massive benefits that low health can offer.
You’re not allowed to mix cards of differing classes in the same deck, meaning you’re best served picking a class that fits best with your playstyle. At the same time, however, you’re expected to have at least a general understanding of how other classes work and how best to counter them. For example, if you’ve built yourself a deck that only really comes into its own in the late game and you’re preparing to battle a class that generally peaks early, tweaking your setup to better counter that early game play could mean the difference between victory and defeat.
Suffice to say, there is a ton of depth to Shadowverse. 600+ cards spread across seven classes ensures that no two matches are ever the same, and the extent of this depth can occasionally be intimidating to newcomers. Fortunately, Shadowverse: Champion’s Battle understands that barrier to entry, and begins with extensive tutorials and explanations of the finer points. You’re not just thrown into the deep end and expected to figure it out; things are introduced to you layer by layer and shown off in a way that anybody can understand.
This sentiment applies to the deck-building aspect, as well. While you can of course build a deck from scratch if you know what you’re doing, winning battles often sees you gaining deck codes that offer up pre-built deck templates for you to use in future battles. Clearly, Cygames understands the difficulty of learning a new card game, and all these features are a welcome inclusion. And don’t worry, the difficulty definitely ramps up once you’ve proven that you can handle yourself.
When you’re not engaged in yet another card battle, Shadowverse: Champion’s Battle unfolds exactly like a standard JRPG, adding an interesting layer of a ‘game around the game’. There’s a big, gradually expanding world for you to explore, packed full of treasure boxes to find, NPCs to challenge, and shops to peruse. Collecting every card in the game is a major secondary objective here, and there are a lot of avenues to get it done. You can spend money won in battles at various vendors around the world and buy card packs, which contain an assortment of randomly selected cards. Then there are some cards that you can only obtain by completing sidequests for characters or beating particularly difficult NPCs.
Battling with a deck based on a certain class will allow you to level up that class, which usually rewards you with more money and rare cards that you can’t get anywhere else. Additionally, your character has an overall rank that goes up as the story progresses, and higher ranks allow you access to tougher opponents and better cards. There is a very clear sense of forward progression that’s always present in Shadowverse: Champion’s Battle. No matter where you go or what you do, something is leveling up or being improved upon, which helps to prevent any feelings of stagnation or boredom.
When you’ve inevitably exhausted the mountain of content that single player has to offer, you’ll be pleased to know that Shadowverse: Champion’s Battle offers a full multiplayer suite with its own separate progression. Your rank here is independent of the main game, and you can only improve by battling players around the world and coming out on top. There’s a season system in place too, with daily and seasonal missions available that move your progress along a Battle Pass which has the typical dual track of free and paid routes. Most notably, there are no microtransactions as far as we can tell, which is a nice break from the overall design of the main game on mobile. You can unlock all 600 cards from diligent and thorough play across either multiplayer or single player, and while the Battle Pass appears like it’ll be an ongoing additional charge, the rewards offered there are largely cosmetic in nature.
In terms of presentation, Shadowverse: Champion’s Battle absolutely excels. The overworld and character design calls to mind the visual style of Yo-Kai Watch, with brightly colored anime visuals and peppy music. In card battles, the card art is suitably detailed while the neat effects when powerful cards are played help to imbue the gameplay with some much-needed energy. Voice acting is top notch across the board, too, with both storyline characters and each card being just hammy enough to keep things interesting without being too groan worthy.
Conclusion
Shadowverse: Champion’s Battle is without a doubt the greatest card battling RPG on the Switch yet; an addictive and incredibly deep card game wrapped up in a heartwarming and enjoyable RPG that supplements and supports the potent core gameplay in all the right ways. Dozens of hours of content in single player alone, combined with a full-fledged online multiplayer, ensures that you’re getting plenty of bang for your buck, while the anime presentation and detailed card art and animations keep everything looking and sounding nice all the way through. If you’re at all into card games, don’t waste your time deliberating: go buy this game immediately. Shadowverse: Champion’s Battle is an extremely easy game to recommend, and absolutely worth your time.
Comments 29
I'm getting flashbacks to the first TCRPG I played, Pokemon TCG for the Game Boy Color. I really hope this is a revival of the TCRPG because I have been hoping for a more story-based RPG-style TCG, and this sounds great!
Whilst I liked anime style and the idea of a card game, ultimately the game itself put me off during the demo. There is just a massive mis-match between the anime graphics and the card art that it feels like a completely different game. I am also not drawn to heartstone likes so maybe that dissuaded me from picking this up.
Damn fine game! Shadowverse is a great foundation and have beautiful card art. Easy to get started but tons to learn. The Demo fights are mostly super easy and more like tutorials, later on you get much more restistance.
Seen this game's ad plaster all around this site and glad it's a good well done game. It's just too bad I don't like card based battle game otherwise I would had considered it.
Very tempting, I loved Cardfight Vanguard EX, so I’d probably enjoy this as well.
It's time to d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-duel!
I'd love a modern game like this where you play with Pokémon cards. Why hasn't a sequel to the Pokémon tcg titles ever released?
Easy money, c'mon!
Huh well this sold me. The demo was pretty enjoyable
I’ve been dying for a good Card-based RPG since the Gamecube heyday (Lost Kingdoms, Baten Kaitos), and this sounds really interesting, but I gotta ask myself:
How anime is too anime?
Might have to wait until after SMTV raises my tolerance level due to prolonged exposure.
@SwitchVogel Out of curiosity, are all the rewards from the battle pass, season missions and so on only for multiplayer or are they also used in the single player experience?
I'm super interested in playing a single player RPG CCG campain, but I really don't want to deal with all those free2play-like mechanics to be honest ^^;
@Ralizah Please!!! Pokémon TCG is my favorite Pokémon game.
I was sold when I heard the Murican dub. Most publishers can't be bothered to dub Japanese developed games, usually content with just translating the sub.
Too bad the point system completely breaks the game in later story battles by allowing the cpu to draw their entire hand in later duels and the less I talk about burn card spam and servant multiplying cards, the better.
Can confirm this game is an amazing experience. I have fond memories of the older Yugioh spinoff games that they no longer do where you traverse different areas in a city and duel/level up, and this game feels like those did, but with voice acting and story/character development. I think those games were GX Duel Academy and The Sacred Cards, maybe even Reshef of Destruction. So lucky to have a game like this!
@Jersa7Darkangel I could actually see that as well. Totally agree with you. Now I want to go play it again after all these years... Also, did you know that Pokemon TCG game got a 2nd sequel? The West never got it, but we can play it on an emulator and it has the next few sets after base set (including the Fossil set). The game is called Pokemon Card GB2: GR-dan Sanjou! They made an english fan translation for the whole game a few years ago.
was very pleasantly surprised by the demo. They kind of just threw out the very mature-themed lore of the cards themselves and focused on the anime characters which I wasn't sure would work, but next thing I knew I was spending hours farming random NPCs for new cards
Now I have to crack mine open.....
Well I suppose I might as well get it, the saturday anime look and setting is a big turn off but I do like card games and deckbuilding.
I'll keep an eye on this, I think one of the reasons why I never make it that far in YuGiOh's Legacy game is that...well, the battles are kinda just, like...a normal card game. lol
I mean, yeah, that's what it is, but...why can't the monsters pop out and have battle animations and stuff? No idea if this game does this or if it's the same, but yeah it looks interesting.
(I also tried getting into another card game on Switch, but...eh, it was alright, but it felt like too much of a mobile game)
@BakaKnight The rewards apply to both. As far as I've seen, the rewards are mostly cosmetics (like card sleeves or emblems) with a mixture of extra rupies and card packs thrown in. You get positively showered with rupies and card packs in the main game, enough so that I wouldn't say the Battle Pass is pay to win. It's just yet another abundant source for that stuff.
The graphics look great, but the card battles in the demo just weren't fun for me. I like slay the spire & steamworld quest, but I'm pretty picky about card games. I can't just like any card game, sadly.
@Kiz3000 same, the card game part of the demo wasn't fun for me.
@Joeynator3000 exactly. The card animations & graphics are very underwhelming, imo. The "outside the card battles" graphics are great, tho.
@SwitchVogel Thanks a lot for the clarification.
Your review made it abundantly clear it's not pay2win, but it still bother me a little to know that some 'unlockables' available for the single player mode, like cosmetics, are bound to those systems.
Anyway thanks again for the clarification and, obviously, thanks for the great review. Despite my worries I really can't avoid to still be very interested in the game since how much you praised it and clearly enjoyed it.
@ItsATM Yep, not only heard of it, but have played it multiple times. While it was also a great game like the first, there were a few cards missing from the original sets (in PTCG) that I wished were in the sequel. Story and gameplay were still pretty decent, though.
i am interested in the online versus of the game. do you all think it will have s healthy online playerbase?
I'm kinda excited for this, the last tcgrpg I played was MTG shandalar waaaay back in the day.
@lovesushi That’s a question of mine as well, but you can always download the mobile game for free and it has ton of players and cards. I definitely plan get this though as I love Shadowverse. One of best card games I’ve played.
The game is high quality. I like the package so far. I wish these kinds of games would sell better. It's just out now and difficult to find an online opponent. Not a good sign, sigh
Game is so good! However, online is next to impossible to find players
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