Captured on Nintendo Switch (Connected)
Taking a trip to hell has never looked better than in Nadir: A Grimdark Deck Builder. The stunning graphics are enough to draw you in, while the card mechanics take seconds to learn but provide a constant challenge. There are plenty of highlights in Nadir, but technical shortcomings and weird design decisions keep it from achieving greatness.
Nadir: A Grimdark deck builder wastes no time throwing you into the fray. The tutorial sees Joan of Arc fight her way through a trio of unholy creatures, using card-based combat to fight her way to the hellish city of Nadir. The mechanics are explained by the floating head of the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, perhaps best known for his statement that “God is dead”.
The tutorial does a solid job of explaining the basics of the game, where the player draws cards that have blue and red power. The power you can play depends on the number of red or blue cards drawn by the enemy. You can always know exactly how the enemy will respond to your attacks, allowing you to plan your strategy accordingly.
Captured on Nintendo Switch (Connected)
This is a roguelike though, so don’t expect things to be easy. Even the basic enemies you encounter can inflict serious status issues, which stack on top of each other. While this can help you pull off some awesome combos depending on how you’ve built your deck, it’s more common for your opponent to bleed, rust, and decay en route to another failed run.
Frustratingly, the tutorial section explains very little about what these status ailments do, and the checks don’t make it easy to check. Since this is a port of the PC version of the game, you have to try to navigate to the correct state to get a summary of what it’s doing, which can be tricky for Joy-Con controllers . Other card powers, like Stealth, aren’t explained at all until you try to use them, which is a baffling decision in a game that forces you to bend the rules in your favor to survive. A little more care in how the game presents this information would have made Nadir much more fun to play.
Between races, you can spend the resources you collect to build your base of operations. You can expand your deck, increase the health you recover as you descend further into hell, or you can unlock different characters to play with. Each character plays slightly differently, letting you choose how you’ll handle the variety of demons you face.
Captured on Nintendo Switch (Connected)
You start as Joan of Arc, representing pride, and eventually unlock Vlad the Impaler as the embodiment of lust, and Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés, the latter representing the sin of greed for his attacks on the natives in this which is now Mexico. in the 16th century. It’s an interesting choice to include real historical figures in this way, especially those known for their brutality. The severe impact of Cortés’ actions, for example, is still being felt around the world today. Then again, he’s in hell, so he’s barely glorified for what he’s done.
In classic Dante’s Inferno style, you must fight your way through four Infernal Circles, each ruled by a different Great Demon. The game’s opening page shows a message from the developers, saying they’re still working on balancing these fights and it’s painfully clear when you reach the end of a circle and face the final boss. They have so much health and face so many status ailments that it seems impossible. We know roguelikes are supposed to be tough, but it gets frustrating after half a dozen tries and you still don’t feel close to victory.
A handful of technical bugs surfaced during our time with the game. Any of the ones we found were minor, such as the explanation of card powers sometimes not showing up when you highlight them, but causing Nadir to feels inconsistent, unpolished and unfinished at this point.
Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Offline)
The one area where this game consistently succeeds is its visuals. If you’ve ever seen a metal album, you’re probably familiar with Nadir’s artistic style. Looks like a Guns N’ Roses or Iron Maiden album cover has come to life and we mean that in the most complimentary way; the twistiest mix of life and death as depicted in thick binders at your local tattoo parlor. There are touches, like the thick outlines and generous use of shading, that looked very chico infernal for us.
Nadir looks best in docked mode, where images have a chance to shine on a larger screen. The art still looks good in tablet mode, but it also makes some of the text too small to see clearly. Especially at the shop that pops up occasionally during shopping, we had to squint to see what to buy. Keys like this reinforce the feeling that this was a rushed port to the Switch from the PC rather than something the Switch considered itself from the very beginning of development.
At launch, it’s hard to recommend Nadir: A Grimdark Deckbuilder based on its gameplay. The steep difficulty curve is more frustrating than challenging, and the lack of information about certain mechanics is just baffling. If the devs released an artbook with these character designs, we’d be all for it. However, the gameplay surrounding it feels almost like an afterthought, leading to an inconsistent and frustrating experience, but one that has potential.
conclusion
Nadir: A Grimdark Deckbuilder manages to deliver a visually stunning experience, but the gameplay around those gorgeous metallic visuals doesn’t seem to have taken the same care as the art design. It’s extremely difficult, a fact exacerbated by inconsistently presented information and issues with how game controls have transferred to the Switch. It’s a game that feels unfinished, despite the visual flair it offers.