Recent reviews by Weaboo Jones

Summary:
Fantastic free-to-play CCG experience. The core gameplay is fun and inventive while staying accessible to players of similar digital card games like Hearthstone, Shadowverse, or Runeterra. The devs are extremely generous with rewards, allowing you to collect a majority of cards within a week or two of gameplay. The only big downside is the lack of a large player-base, meaning you'll often be fighting bots on ladder. However, this allows new players to learn the game, test decks, and collect cards without being beat down and discouraged by experienced players. Overall, this game gets a glowing recommendation from me, especially for those looking for a fun, accessible, and generous alternative to existing CCGs.

Ratings:
Enjoyment - 4.5/5
Accessibility - 5/5
Innovation - 3.5/5
Balance - 3.5/5
F2P Experience - 5/5
PvP Experience - 2/5
Overall - 4/5

Overview - What is Echo of Combats?
EoC is a traditional digital CCG most similar to Hearthstone (and so, I will often be comparing the two). You have a mana bank which is used to play cards, either creatures or spells. There are 5 rarities: free (your starter cards), common, rare, epic, and legendary. Yes, they follow the same color scheme as Hearthstone. You can get these cards via chests (in the shop for 100 silver) or from the many rewards the game grants. More on that later. You also have a selection of 6 heroes, based on 3 castes which can each be of either light or dark influence.

Innovation - What makes EoC special?
The first thing of note is the mana system. Unlike Hearthstone, your mana doesn't increase each turn, nor do you have mana cards like in Magic. Instead, there is power. You have a power level starting from 2 and capped at 7. Each turn, you gain mana equal to your power. The way you gain power is by returning a card from your hand to the deck; this increases both your power and mana pool by 1. Or, rather than pitching a card to increase power, you can draw two cards instead. Also, mana is unlimited, and saved between turns. The culmination of these mechanics makes for unique and interesting gameplay, allowing decks to be more consistent and flexible.

Rewards - How do I collect things?
You'll mainly collect cards via chests. Chests can be acquired through the campaign, where each battle yields either one two chests, and the final boss of Chapter 1 yields a legendary. The chapter 2 boss yields many more rewards I believe, but I forget exactly what. You can also buy chests for 100 silver in the shop. You can obtain silver by playing matches. I won't get into the details, but you can gain a maximum of 220 silver via matches alone. However, you will likely also gain silver via achievements. Speaking of, there are 93 Steam achievements in the game currently and ALL of them give rewards, some more or less fair than others. Some are easy and may grant 5 to upwards of 10 chests, while others are hard and only give 50 silver. However, given the sheer number and range of achievements, earning rewards is a breeze. The last way to get rewards, and perhaps the best way, is to play arena. It's draft style like Hearthstone's arena, but you only need 9 wins before 3 losses, and because most of the players are bots (we'll get to that next), achieving 9 wins is quite easy, and yields tons of rewards.

PvP - Am I facing real players?
No, not at first anyway. There isn't a large player base for this game, so in order for players to actually be able to play without huge queue times, bots are queued in, even on ranked ladder. I imagine most people playing have been playing for at least a little while, which means most of the human players are at the top of ladder. Starting from the bottom means you might be playing a lot of bots. However, I didn't find fault at this in the beginning, because simply exploring and collecting cards is a fun game in and of itself, and the AI is at least somewhat competent at low levels of play. Even at the top of ladder, I find myself having difficulty or losing to the bots every so often. It can become frustrating, especially at high levels of play when you have all the cards and just want to train against humans, but this is a problem that is solvable: if only more people are willing to play. But why play unless the game is fun?

Gameplay & Balance
There are some pros and cons to the gameplay. The first con I'd identify is that the game isn't as flashy as something like Hearthstone. That is, there aren't really any crazy, rng, card-generating effects that allow the gameplay to vary wildly. Most cards have modest effects and stats, so gameplay is mostly centered around knowing your fundamentals. There is a variety of strategies, however, which I've found are about even in power level, from burn to OTK to control and buff strategies. The only exception may be the Crossbow hero, which certainly has the largest representation at high play, due to its access to ranged attacks (which can attack any enemy without taking damage) and plenty of damage/removal. Also, the mana and mulligan system I explained previously really does make the game feel unique and full of potential, and allows decks to have much higher mana curves than other games.

Conclusion
Despite the length of this review, I feel I've only scratched the surface of my thoughts on this game. Do I recommend it? Absolutely. I think this game is great and has potential to become even greater with a larger and dedicated playerbase. The developers continue to regularly update the game with pretty big changes, the latest being Campaign Chapter 2, Hard Mode, and Arena. And that's while providing an extremely generous reward structure for F2P players, meaning you don't have to sink tons--or even small amounts--of money into the game. As a final note, I think many of the other reviews (particularly the negative) of this game are unfair, misguided, or just factually wrong. That doesn't mean everyone has to like it, but I think it's deserving of a fair shot, rather than being disregarded as a Hearthstone clone, P2W money-sink, or "just another card game" on Steam.

In short, give it a try. I hope to see you on ladder.