Mahokenshi

This not just another Slay the Spire clone.
And that is good.

If anything, it's a super "lite" version of Mage Knight, with an L5R skin.
And that is great.

Mahokenshi is an interesting spin on the deckbuilder genre. Its a deckbuilder strategy game with roguelite elements. The game does two fairly unique twists to innovate in the fairly saturated market of deckbuilders.

First, the game is played on a hex based, overlay map. That means movement is done alongside card plays, with movement costing energy along with cards. Enemies and objectives are littered throughout the map, which means that you can run away from an enemy by, well, literally running away from them.

This combined design of hex movement and engaging with objectives creates more dynamic encounters than a standard deckbuilder. In most deckbuilders, you go from instanced combat to instanced combat. In mahokenshi, you can find yourself dodging combats to get to objectives and going for upgrades.

This leads into the second unique aspect of the game. Rather than having a standard overworld map where you go along a track and pick which encounters you want to face, growing in power as you progress and culminating in boss fights, Mahokenshi has you go on missions. In each mission you start out with the same weak starting deck of cards, and minimal base stats, and you can improve yourself throughout the mission. At the end of the mission, your progression is removed, since it was for the mission itself.

The result is that each mission is a distinct play experience from the previous. This is why Mahokenshi does not fit into the standard mold of a roguelite deckbuilder, and rather feels more like a strategy game with a series of missions with roguelite elements.

There does exist a form of metaprogression outside of the missions, and you have your standard deckbuilder features like classes with different cards and relics and treasures and whathaveyou. You unlock new cards avalable to be drafted in a mission, new treasures to find, new equipment, through the metaprogression.

But ultimately the enjoyment in the game comes from the missions. You'll be thrown into a mission and told, for example, that you need to make sure no enemy crosses a specific threshold before a turn timer. You could do that by killing them, or just by aggroing them and tanking, or by slowing them down and throwing summons in their way - there exist multiple avenues to success.

For the most part, this results in pretty enjoyable gameplay loop. But this game may not be for you for two primary reasons.

Reason 1: The game is short. There aren't a whole lot of missions in the game, and the missions themselves only take 20-30 minutes. For a game which currently has a base price of 25 dollars USD, this is a shockingly short game. For the fiscally minded gamer, wait for this to go on sale. The game has next to no replay value; once you've done a mission, you've usually solved the puzzle of the objectives and replaying it has little to offer.

Reason 2: It plays far more like a strategy game than a deckbuilder. You aren't going to be getting crazy cool combos of your cards doing a million things in a turn, feeling like an absolute god, in 95% of missions. You're usually going to be trying to figure out the puzzle of how to achieve the mission objectives. That shift in the gameplay is what I find engaging about the game, but for someone looking for a more traditional deckbuilder this game will not fit the bill.

But if you're a fan of strategy games and want to try taking on an interesting and engaging twist on using a deckbuilder in a strategy game, I would suggest Mahokenshi.

Believe it or not, deckbuilding is not the most important aspect of this game, as you don't keep the deck you built from one level to the next. And this is not a bad thing. It allows you to focus on being adaptive and to try different combinations quickly.
In some ways, it's more of a turn-based tactics game rather than a deckbuilding game.
The story isn't particularly rich, even though the theme is very interesting and eye-catching.
It's a great pick for completionists. I was able to beat it 100% in around 30 hours without too much difficulty. Best if you get it on sale, of course.
I'll be on the lookout for a sequel.

Mahokenshi is a solid hex based strategy game with a light deck-building element where you take your team of four spirit infused samurai-mages through a 10 hour campaign slaying bandits, goblins and oni in order to save the world (well, floating islands).
The game is tightly designed, each character has its gimmicks and all of them can become massively overpowered with the right synergy. Each main mission has another separate side mission and all scenarios have a win condition and several bonus objectives that reward you with tokens you can spend in a upgrade tree. The artwork is beautiful and the music is atmospheric (although there's not many tracks).
Not necessarily much replayability here but it's a decent game that's worth trying.

This is a fun twist on the roguelike/roguelite deckbuilder genre. Each mission looks like it's hand-crafted, which feels really good and makes for a great experience. I assumed that would harm replayability, but there are multiple characters, optional objectives, and multiple difficulties which works really well.

The meta-progression feels good - the bonuses are impactful and require some real thought as to how I want to play.

The characters all feel distinct and are fun to play. There's multiple way to play/build each and they offer a lot of playstyle options.

I also want to point out that the way movement abilities and cards work with the hex layout results in a really neat implementation of movement - maybe the best I've seen in this genre. Hit-and-run skirmishing and ranged builds are absolutely viable and make for a fun time.

Not the most in-depth deck building roguelite game, but I enjoyed myself. The missions are more like puzzles as all the enemies, objectives, map locations, and card/chest pickups are in fixed positions. The only RNG is what card drops you get, and what the shops and castles have. Unfortunately there isn't a continuous progression between missions, i.e. the deck and money you built up in Mission 1 doesn't carry over to Mission 2. You start every mission with the same basic cards and have to rebuild each time.

There is meta-progression in the form of three different upgrade trees, equipment, and card unlocks. In order to obtain new abilities on the tree you need to earn a currency by completing the side objectives in each mission. The equipment and card unlocks come from leveling up each character, with equipment being able to be used by everyone. Each character feels unique, but I did find myself using one in particular for over half of the game because they were just that good.

My main complaint with the game is that it can be buggy at times. There were a few times when I used equipment too fast and it caused the game to go into a sort of softlock where I couldn't use cards or end my turn. The game saves before every turn so a quick alt+F4 and reloading the game would get me right back to where I was. However, I quickly found out that if you crash or leave in the middle of a mission, the objective tracker can bug out and sometimes you can't complete the mission. If something like that happens, it's best to just quit the mission altogether, and restart it from the mission select instead of continuing from your save.

It's a bit tough to recommend Mahokenshi simply because there are much better deckbuilding roguelites out there and the weird objective breaking bug, but overall I still liked it. It's the perfect game to grab on a deep sale if you want to play something simple but somewhat different.

Overview: Fun little game with mixing tactical strategy with deckbuilding and roguelike elements. Nice setting and style. Fun different maps and four distinct game play styles via different characters keep the game loop repeatable and fresh, but not for a completionist run. Slow early game, shines in the mid game, boring by the end game. Too easy most of the time. Needs balancing and refining. A click-to-skip story that has nice art and poor text. Seems like only 10% of buyers played to the end. Shows potential, not quite promise. 6 of 10 stars.
Pros:
-Strategic Gameplay
-Lots of open choices around play style
-Style and presentation
-Fun and short
Cons:
-Too easy, overpowered
-Needs balancing and expanding (undercooked? maybe wait for a couple patches?)
-Meh story