Chrono Faction

Abandonware.

Game was looking really promising, but development stopped out of nowhere after version 0.3.1. Then suddenly they "left early access" at version 1.0.0. There were some patches after to fix some stuff, but there were so many other things that were supposed to be coming.

I enjoy the game so far, and it has only gotten better as Early Access has continued. It is a cyberpunk-themed card game where you play as a member of a faction in confrontations against the other factions and NPC groups in the city. Unlike most card battling games, you take turns laying out attack segments on opposing sides of the track, using things like accuracy and power to determine which cards overrule eachother. At the end of this round when each side has played all of their cards, combat plays out in real time, with your agents shooting at eachother with each successful segment.

The developers seem to be actively engaging the community, talking to players in their community boards and asking for suggestions on things to implement into the game. Multiplayer isn't out yet, so I cannot give a review on that at this time, but if the game continues to grow in this direction I believe it will have a thriving community developing strange and interesting strategies.

This game is better than okay. I feel bad for the devs because they failed a third Kickstarter (they're pretty bad at those, sorry guys but it's true) and had to resort to early access to get this game out, but hey, it didn't turn out bad! The music is the best aspect, and the actual "playing cards on a track" mechanics are decent, but it has many other faults that keep it from being truly great.

-Lacklustre enemy variety
-Boring tutorials
-Low impact for playing certain cards
-Controls are finnicky, especially on the District map
-Survival mode is a nice playground but doesn't earn you anything
-No online multiplayer mode

These are mostly problems they COULD have fixed during early access, but didn't. I don't blame them tho, the game has had an incredibly small playerbase before launch. This is mostly due to niche appeal and lack of marketing for a small team with no publisher.

It does have positive aspects, though, and those are what make me still want to recommend it to people.

+Presentation is strong, has a good aesthetic and character/card designs
+Music by Mitch Murder is easily the best aspect of the whole game. Synthwave does very well for this cyberpunk feel.
+Outplaying the AI is fun, even when they can be dumb sometimes. Card synergies feel good.
+Matches are short so it's easy to pick up and play quickly.
+District Run feels well-thought out and intuitive, even though the core gameplay can take a bit to properly get into.

Overall, I feel the price is fair and I wanna see more from these devs, so I recommend City Wars: Tokyo Reign with a 7/10.

Great concept, original gameplay with a cool setting.

However, way to many bugs, questionable design decisions.

I was forgiving until I saw this was not an Early Access title.

Way more frustrating than fun, though.

The game it self is a very unique and fun card battler, if you can tolerate the hard RNG, but after leaving early access i have noticed that some cards don't work propely. For exaple that cards that suppose to spread effects doens't do it anymore.
And some other cards aswell but i can't recall wich one. These need to be fixed.

I reccomend it for a try, but it still needs polish and some work on the balance.

Maybe a card draft system at the start of a run can give the player a bit more control over this RNG.

From the small amount of time I played this, it really wasn't fun. Ignoring the graphical bugs, which are enough to make you feel ill, the flow of the game just feels uninteresting. I've not seen another game do the card track thing, which makes it interesting in theory, but the battle flow in practice feels just unfun.

This new rogue-lite card game definitely deserves your attention! At the moment it offers a deep single-player mode with procedurally generated districts. In the future there is also Multiplayer planned as well as possible new single-player modes.

It's rare to find a card game with something really new and creative - here in the form of a track-based battlefield, cards that have different durations and strenghts to counter cards from the opposing track, and with active participation during the animated battle outcome phase. But it's not just that - there are many creative ways e.g. repairing the battlefield to place your cards there or many combo opportunities.

For an Early Access title, this game feels quite smooth and polished already. Great artwork on the cards with a unique and consistant style. I prefer the game to be single-player only first to get the card balance right. Don't rush the Multiplayer. I can't wait to see what comes next :)

Solid card game experience with mechanics that I've never seen before. Still work to be done for this game to be finished, and the current price may be a bit steep but I'm enjoying it.

The game is SEVERELY unbalanced in its current state. Coming from playing many deck battlers out there like Vault of the void/Ring of pain/roguebook/slay the spire, those games have very fair balance in how they're laid out. In this game's current form, enemies on the first or even second encounter of a run have the ability to just end your run instantly.

RNG is TERRIBLE right now. The game assigns you 20 cards at random for your "starter" deck with absolutely no synergy at all. There's no actual way to deck build, or start a run knowing what cards you will get. Even worse, there's no mulligan system in place. I had a run where my hand was just 5 shield (defend), which normally in other games wouldn't be much a hassle, but attack cards from your opponent do more damage than you can possibly defend. There also is almost next to no healing in this game so far, and after every "boss", you also don't heal, whereas in other games you can try to gamble not wasting potions to see if you can narrowly beat the boss to enter the next chapter fully refreshed.

And don't even talk about Meta progression. The currency to buy meta progression for future runs is tied to each individual faction, and is very steep. There is LOTS of grinding you have to do. And the lack of an undo button just feels terrible. I accidentally clicked a button that made me buy "art" from the gallery which costs META PROGRESSION POINTS. And now that's just wasted progress.

This game is severely frustrating right now and also has lots of notable bugs.

*Edited/Updated 01/05: Great game, devs are very active, clear progress being made, loving it.

Very clearly Early Access with some extremely silly bugs (i had a great run and then the game just kicked me out and ended my run...why? I still had 100 health left and was in Traders district on the road getting upgrades with +125 luck and -100 enemy health) but the underlying game is unique, very stylish and could be absolutely amazing.
Its quite good right now if you can deal with a few bugs but VERY hard, which i imagine will HAVE to be toned down because there is "roguelike that is technically possible to complete on a first try but extremely extremely difficult" and then there is this which is the "you will HAVE to get a few permanent upgrades to even stand a chance, expect to get your a__ kicked a lot to begin with, you pretty much can't win when you start".

There are fresh ideas here, getting ironed out as they go but VERY fresh feeling ideas here for how to work out the kinks in the card game genre with a focus on action, and less on the stress of deck building. The customization feels like it's coming along, and the strategies are there, but overall I would recommend this game if you want a slick, Early-Access offering with a ton of potential, and a decent amount of content already in the box.

There are things I don't like... but I keep playing. Fun overall.

Positives:

-Interesting take on card battler. Good strategy ideas.
-Graphics are good.
-Game runs without too many bugs.

Negatives:

-Too many enemies that mirror your own deck. It is very lame to fight against enemies that clone your deck in the first place. And these enemies are frequent, which I hate.

-Enemies that steal cards every single turn are very annoying. Same reason as fighting your clone. Having a faction that keeps stealing your cards every turn is the same thing as fighting a clone again. Not many ways to combat this action. Makes that faction far stronger than others.

-The coin toss at the start of a fight is way too important. Most fights are 1 round. There is a huge advantage in going 2nd, since the game is all about countering the other player. In the single player game, it would be great if you just always go 2nd, and there is no coin flip. In multi-player, the coin toss will be a huge determining factor in who wins. I would not want to play this game against other human players.

-I hate the energy mini-game. In a turn based game, there should not suddenly be action based elements that require really good click accuracy and speed. I play turn based games, so that I don't have to deal with such things. And it is not like these mini-games don't matter. They have a HUGE effect and can completely nullify enemy damage...

-Gun sounds are too loud. It makes me turn down my volume... now I can hear the gun sounds at a decent volume, and I can't hear the other interface sounds anymore, which is terrible.

-I didn't "place a card fast enough" and the game ended my turn, without me being able to place the card. This should not be possible in a turn based game. It timed me out??? Why would there be a time-out mechanic in a single player turn-based game?

-Same exact boss at every level. I assume this is because of Early Access.

-Interface is bad. Weird buttons are used to do things. Doesn't make much sense. Feels like a console/mobile port (probably is). I have moved down the wrong path before, because of the bad buttons and mouse interface.

-Why use the Backspace key as an Escape key? Just use the Escape key... like every other game. I had to map the backspace key to a mouse button, just to make the interface not be as annoying.

Fun. A different take on the Rogulike.

This game is worthy your attention. With a blend of old and new innovative concepts, there is a lot to discover right off the bat. Initially, "luck of the draw" dominates a bit until you develop more powerful cards and combos (especially those cards that modify the timeline dynamically during the play phase). Production quality is high, and I encountered only minor bugs (the odd card/charm effect here and there not firing); nothing unexpected for an Early Access game. As with any game trying something new, there is a risk of frustrating players who recognize some game elements but find them to work differently. Once you are able to get past that, this game is a blast and will find a permanent home in my collection.

I would make it a neutral revieuw, it isn't to bad but it isn't great either. It is a fun take on the card battle BUT there are a couple of issues with the game:
Mostly the flashing, i don't have epilesy but i couldn't play the game for long since the dev likes adding falshing to every single cutscene where it even started to hurt my eyes. also these cutscenes would at the start of every battle and certain card activations.

they should make the flashes either a bit longer or just flat out remove them.

there is quite a lot of rng involved and it does mostyl boil down to having the biggest and strongest cards since high accuracy cards cna block you opponents attack while also dealing damage in return. Sometime you will lose a run trough no fault of your own since the AI placed a card on a certain slot you can't defend against.

and IMO it isn't worth the 20 euro they are asking, i bought it on sale for 5 and i would say 10-13 euro is a fair price atm

Played the demo. Interesting combat system. Beautiful art. A lot of style. But the game is not fun.

Every new run you get a new randomly generated starter deck, which sucks. You start with no synergy and deck building is not possible because there are no meaningful ways to alter your deck. The shop has a limited, random selection of cards. you don't earn enough credits during a run to significantly upgrade your cards. This has to change somehow or the game will be dead on arrival.

The runs are simple attrition. Empty spots on your track which are impossible to defend against will guarantee some amount of damage against you each round. The game includes an expendable item to fix these empty spots but you don't have enough credits to buy enough and it still has to be dealt to your hand randomly during a round. There are few persistent upgrades to help combat this built in attrition, and it takes a lot of grinding to get them.

Accuracy determines if your card or their card activates in opposing spaces on the track. If you draw your low accuracy cards that are part of your randomly generated starter deck, you will not do well that round. There is no planning or skill that can avoid these draws if they occur. There has to be more Accuracy changing effects and situations or this game will continue to be boring.

The AI can make some dumb decisions.