Info about Journey to the West:

Official game description:
Forge your path as a heroic legend in Journey to the West! Battle mythical creatures with your all-star squad, unique deck, powerful relics, and consumables! Uncover the twisted fates behind the omen of darkness, and fight your way to become the savior of the Realm of Divinity.
Game Feature Overview
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*   Choose from 5 playable heroes, each hero can lead a team of 5
*   20+ recruitable companions
*   120+ unique NPCs each has unique skill sets and background stories
*   500+ cards, 300+ relics and consumables
*   4 chapters of adventure with 60 different endings
Legendary Heroes such as Wukong with Unique Mechanics and Storylines
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Get ready to embark on an adventure inspired by a classic novel, where you'll take on the role of one of five legendary heroes, each comes with their unique powers, a distinct pool of 75 cards and special storylines:
*   **Wukong,** equipped with his special weapon, the Monkey King Bar, can unleash devastating AOE attacks, shapeshift to learn skills from any NPC, manipulate fire to inflict the burning status, and deftly dodge incoming attacks.  
*   **The Holy Monk** has a unique ability to apply either a "good" or "evil" status on enemies, allowing him to either convert foes to his side and create new teams or unleash powerful attacks and create magic barriers to protect himself. He can also take advantage of curse cards, forming special strategies around them.  
*   **White Dragon**, traveling with his twin sister's spirit (Dragon Princess), has the power to manipulate water and use Guardian Swords to trigger potent boosts. He stores unused energy as spirit power and can access it when needed. The Dragon Princess also has the ability to learn cards from companions, adding to their combined strength.  
*   **The Swine King** is no ordinary hero, able to consume consumables to obtain hunger points and boost basic status, use transmutation to learn powers from enemies and absorb HP and Max HPs during combat. Additionally, he can transform into a monster when completing his eight principles.  
*   Last but not least, **Faithful Devil** is a versatile hero who deals increased damage based on an enemy's position and can summon Spirits of Five Elements (Gold, Wood, Water, Fire, and Earth) into the enemy's team. With their unique abilities, Faithful Devil can build strategies around each spirit and unleash deadly attacks on unsuspecting foes.  
Unique Team Combat Experience
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You don’t need to fight alone along this difficult journey to the West - build your own all-star squad by recruiting from a pool of **20+ companions** and **summoning NPCs** up to 5 teammates.
Companions are permanent teammates with unique talents and sets of 2-4 cards that remain with your team across multiple combats until they meet their demise or are dismissed. On the other hand, NPCs are temporary teammates who will depart or die at the end of each combat.
There is a multitude of ways to summon or convert NPCs. You can use consumables like the Love Potion to attract NPCs to your side or the Purification Bottle to purify evil NPCs. Alternatively, you can capture weakened NPCs using the Bottomless Bag, a neutral card. And let's not forget about the Holy Monk, who is an expert in creating NPC teams.
Choose your teammates wisely as they'll play a vital role in your success along the treacherous journey!
An Immersive Story-rich Adventure
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Immerse yourself in a rich, story-driven adventure that goes beyond just the battles. Each hero has a plethora of unique storylines inspired by the legendary tale of Journey to the West. These storylines provide different opponents, events, and quests that vary based on your choices and strategies.
As you progress through the journey, you'll encounter over 120 unique NPCs, each with their own skill sets and background stories. With interconnected events and choices, each decision you make will lead you down a different path toward the final destinations of Heaven, Soul Mountains, or the Plane of Eternity.
Every step you take is critical in determining the fate of the world, so choose your actions wisely. Experience a truly immersive adventure that will keep you engaged from beginning to end.
So what are you waiting for? Unleash the true power of each character, confront legendary creatures, and become the hero you were always meant to be. Play Journey to the West today and experience the adventure of a lifetime!

Release date: 28 Jun, 2023

Categories: Deckbuilding, Roguelike, Single-player Story, Multiple Endings, Character Progression, Unit Management, Turn-based Combat, Character Customization


- Hardware Profile: No data
Feature extractions:
- Community Price: No data
- Playtime Metrics: No data
- Time-to-fun: No data
- Player Archetypes: No data


Below are summaries of things people say about the game per category.
Each point is assigned a weight that represents how often it is mentioned across all reviews.
What players like:
- High Quality & Addictive Gameplay (weight 0.92): Players highly praise the game's overall quality, finding it fun, addictive, and well-designed. It's considered a top-tier roguelike card game, especially within the domestic market, offering substantial content and replayability for an Early Access title.
- Diverse Characters & Mechanics (weight 0.87): The game features diverse and unique characters, each with distinct mechanics and numerous build archetypes. The companion system, character-specific abilities (like Wukong's transformations or Xuanzang's monster recruitment), and varied enemy designs contribute significantly to the strategic depth and replayability.
- Rich Replayability (weight 0.79): The game offers extensive replayability due to its varied card archetypes, numerous companions, diverse enemies, and branching events. Players appreciate the ability to save and quit at any time, enhancing the convenience of repeated playthroughs.
- Excellent Westward Journey Theme (weight 0.78): The game's integration of Journey to the West lore is a major highlight. It creatively adapts classic stories, characters, and items, offering both familiar elements and fresh interpretations through its narrative events and character abilities.
- Appealing Art & Music (weight 0.76): The game's art style, often described as traditional Chinese or 'old Shanghai,' is highly appealing and complements the Westward Journey theme. The background music is also consistently praised for being pleasant and fitting the game's atmosphere.
- Dedicated Development Team (weight 0.75): Players commend the development team for their dedication, continuous updates, and active engagement with the community. This commitment to improvement and player feedback is highly appreciated.
- Accessible Learning Curve (weight 0.74): The game has a smooth learning curve, making it accessible for new players to quickly grasp mechanics and card interactions. Features like the ability to restart battles without exiting the game further enhance the user experience.
- Great Value for Price (weight 0.7): The game is considered to offer excellent value for its price, especially when compared to similar titles in the genre.

Common complaints:
- Inconsistent difficulty and pacing (weight 0.97): The difficulty curve is inconsistent, with some sections being too easy and others, especially later chapters and boss fights, becoming overwhelmingly difficult. This often leads to prolonged, tedious battles or sudden, unavoidable defeats, making runs feel like a waste of time.
- Poor game balance and mechanics (weight 0.96): The game suffers from severe balance issues, particularly with card values, character strengths, and enemy scaling. Many mechanics, like the hostage system and certain boss abilities, are poorly implemented, leading to frustrating and unfair gameplay experiences. This makes it difficult to build effective decks and often forces players into specific, narrow strategies.
- Unpolished visuals and UI (weight 0.85): The game's visual presentation, including graphics, UI, and art style, is frequently criticized as unpolished, unappealing, and confusing. Issues like small, unreadable fonts, cluttered UI, and generic card designs detract significantly from the overall player experience.
- Confusing mechanics and poor explanations (weight 0.79): The game's complex mechanics are poorly explained, with unclear card descriptions, confusing status effects, and a lack of a comprehensive tutorial. This forces players to spend excessive time deciphering information, hindering their ability to understand and enjoy the game.
- Weak and unengaging story (weight 0.76): The narrative elements are generally considered unengaging and shallow, with players often skipping dialogue due to lack of interest or the inability to fast-forward. The story's length and depth also fail to provide a compelling experience.
- Performance issues and optimization (weight 0.72): Players report significant performance issues, including frequent frame drops, stuttering, and long loading times, especially in later chapters. The game also causes devices to overheat, indicating poor optimization.
- Lack of originality (weight 0.68): The game lacks originality, heavily borrowing core systems from 'Slay the Spire' without introducing enough unique or innovative elements. This leads to a feeling of sameness and a lack of fresh gameplay experiences.
- Presence of unaddressed bugs (weight 0.02): Players have encountered various bugs, including issues with the hostage rescue mechanic, which negatively impact gameplay and overall enjoyment.
- Low game popularity (weight 0.01): The game has not gained significant popularity, which might be attributed to its various design and technical shortcomings.
- Boring character gameplay (weight 0.01): One specific character, Sandy, is noted for having a boring gameplay style, suggesting a lack of engaging design for certain playable characters.
- Overly punishing gameplay (weight 0.01): A general sentiment among players is that a rogue-like game should not be overly punishing or frustrating, implying that the current design creates an unpleasant experience.
- Large file size (weight 0.01): The game has a large file size for both installation and download, which might be a deterrent for some players.

Gameplay feedback:
- Diverse Characters with Unique Playstyles (weight 0.47): The game features a diverse cast of playable characters from 'Journey to the West' (Tang Monk, Monkey King, Pigsy, Sandy, White Dragon), each with multiple unique playstyles, complex mechanics, and distinct card sets. New characters and alternate versions are also introduced through DLC.
- Robust Companion System (weight 0.41): A key feature is the companion system, allowing players to recruit and level up multiple NPCs (up to 6) with unique abilities, including captured enemies and even powerful Boss NPCs. Tang Monk, in particular, excels at converting enemies into allies.
- Roguelike Deck-builder with West Journey Theme (weight 0.4): The game is a Roguelike deck-builder with a strong 'Journey to the West' theme, drawing inspiration from 'Slay the Spire' for its core card-based combat and progression. It integrates Chinese mythology and a unique art style.
- Structured Run Progression (weight 0.4): A run typically consists of three stages, featuring various encounters like battles (normal and elite), random events, merchants, treasure rooms, and rest areas. Completing runs unlocks new trait levels to increase difficulty and contributes to a leaderboard score.
- Strategic Card Management (weight 0.39): The core card gameplay involves managing energy, drawing cards, and strategically playing attack, ability, skill, and companion cards. Players can acquire, upgrade, and remove cards from their deck, with specific card combinations enabling powerful builds.
- Accessible with Strategic Depth (weight 0.35): The game is generally considered accessible for new players, offering a relatively low entry barrier while still providing strategic depth.
- Late Game Becomes Easy (weight 0.34): Some players note that the late game can become very easy, allowing for less strategic play due to high character values.
- Minor UI/UX Issues (weight 0.32): There are some UI/UX issues, such as misleading card prompts, unclear skill point indicators, and persistent hover hints when interfaces are hidden.
- Numerical Balance Inconsistencies (weight 0.31): While the DLC 'Purple and Green Swords' is noted for good numerical balance, the base game's current version has some strange numerical values.
- Additional Gameplay Mechanics (weight 0.29): The game includes various additional mechanics such as consumable items, a small skill tree, relics, and the ability to see enemy intentions.
- Specific Combat Tips (weight 0.26): Specific combat tips include playing AOE attacks first if they don't rely on damage, playing wood cards last for damage, and the game having a fixed starting hand of ten cards.

Performance notes:
- Poor game optimization (weight 0.06): Players are experiencing significant performance issues, including long launch times, frequent stuttering, and high GPU temperatures even on high-end hardware. This indicates poor optimization across various aspects of the game.

Recommendations:
- Recommended for genre fans (weight 0.17): Many players recommend this game, especially for fans of roguelike deckbuilders or those interested in the Journey to the West theme. They see potential for future updates and improvements.
- Compared to Slay the Spire (weight 0.16): Players frequently compare this game to 'Slay the Spire,' noting that while it's a good entry for newcomers to the genre, it might not offer enough original innovation for veterans of 'Slay the Spire' or its mods.
- Feature suggestions for future (weight 0.03): Players have specific suggestions for new features, including more control over starting cards, a multiplayer mode, and enhancements to the endless mode, indicating a desire for more content and customization.

Other player notes:
- Solid core gameplay and IP (weight 0.07): The game is generally considered decent and a good time-killer, especially for fans of the roguelike deck-builder genre. Its foundation on a popular IP like Journey to the West is also a significant draw.
- Mixed art, good characters (weight 0.03): Player opinions on the art style are mixed, with some finding it unique and others perceiving it as messy. However, the character illustrations specifically receive positive feedback for their aesthetic appeal.
- UI and QoL need polish (weight 0.02): Players suggest that minor improvements to the UI and quality-of-life features, such as better buff visibility and general operational details, would enhance the experience. These are seen as areas for gradual refinement rather than major flaws.
- Decent in-game text (weight 0.01): The in-game text and narrative elements are considered to be of good quality, contributing positively to the overall player experience.

Emotions:
- Frustration (weight 0.26): Players experienced frustration due to a combination of factors including unbalanced character strength, sudden difficulty spikes, and technical issues like poor optimization and bugs. The complexity of character mechanics, unclear UI, and design choices that led to excessive run lengths or unfair boss encounters also contributed significantly to this negative emotion.
- Satisfaction (weight 0.23): Satisfaction stemmed from the game's rich variety of gameplay styles, distinct character mechanics, and effective integration of its theme and story. Players appreciated the overall quality, replayability, and unique features, especially when specific character builds proved effective or the game's art, music, and narrative elements created an immersive experience.
- Disappointment (weight 0.19): Disappointment arose from perceived limitations in build diversity due to starting hand issues, unbalanced numerical values, and a general lack of challenge in the late game. Players also expressed disappointment with the lack of unique systems compared to similar games, insufficient content, and unoriginal or unintuitive mechanics, alongside issues with art style and optimization.
- Excitement (weight 0.08): Excitement was driven by the game's extensive variety of character builds, the depth of its card system, and the challenge it presented. Players were also excited by the prospect of future development plans and updates, and the unique core gameplay that allowed for powerful build achievements.
- Anger (weight 0.05): Anger was primarily caused by perceived game balance issues, problematic design choices, and unaddressed flaws. Some players also expressed anger over perceived plagiarism and a general lack of originality or low quality in the game's design.
- Appreciation (weight 0.03): Appreciation was directed towards the developers for their continuous updates, dedication, and effort in optimizing the game. The high quality of the game's music and its strategic depth also contributed to players' appreciation.
- Hope (weight 0.03): Hope was expressed regarding the game's future potential for development and improvement. Players offered suggestions, indicating their desire for the game to evolve positively.
- Joy (weight 0.03): Joy was experienced through the unique gameplay experience, particularly with specific characters, and an overall positive engagement with the game's core loop and general experience.
- Amusement (weight 0.02): Amusement came from encountering alternate versions of characters in DLC, the characters' adherence to novel traits, and humorous elements within the game's side stories.
- Enjoyment (weight 0.02): Enjoyment stemmed from the game's difficulty and strategic depth, engaging gameplay despite similarities to other titles, and intuitive card design combined with character-specific mechanics.
- Disgust (weight 0.02): Disgust was specifically directed at certain boss designs and aspects of the character art design.
- Surprise (weight 0.01): Surprise occurred when players unexpectedly enjoyed the game despite initial visual impressions, or were surprised by the game's innovation and overall quality.
- Curiosity (weight 0.01): Curiosity was piqued by the game's interesting mechanics, prompting players to explore further.
- Fatigue (weight 0.01): Fatigue was caused by the complexity of skills and mechanics, suggesting an overwhelming amount of information or intricate systems.
- Discomfort (weight 0.01): Discomfort arose from the simplified portrayal of the character Sun Wukong, indicating a deviation from player expectations or established lore.
- Annoyance (weight 0.01): Annoyance was caused by the unpolished state of the game, including typos and arbitrary design choices that detracted from the experience.
- Encouragement (weight 0.01): Encouragement was given to the developers due to their continuous updates and the resulting improvement in the game's reputation.
- Addiction (weight 0.01): Addiction was attributed to the engaging gameplay loop, indicating a strong desire to continue playing.
- Confusion (weight 0.01): Confusion arose from unclear item effects, making it difficult for players to understand their impact within the game.
- Analytical (weight 0.01): An analytical perspective was applied to the game's design and its potential, suggesting a thoughtful evaluation of its mechanics and future.}