Malkyrs: The Arenas of Eternity is a connected card game, it was created by Malkyrs Studio, a French studio. Thanks to the success of their campaign on the participatory platform Kickstarter, the game was able to be developed. What is the interest of this product compared to traditional online card games? In the first place, not difficult to answer this question, lovers of cards will have plenty of time to collect them because it must be said but their design is really worked. But what is Malkyrs really worth?
The Principle of Malkyrs: The Arenas of Eternity
The principle is simple, you have cards, a Malkyrs card reader (or your phone with the NFC option and the nomadic app) and the game on your pc. When you put down a card, it appears on the screen. Nothing simpler. It must also be said that the recognition of cards by the reader is very fast or even instantaneous.
Your ultimate goal will be to create your first deck, decks work very simply, you have a champion card. This is the master card of your deck, it is your champion who will attack and gain experience as you fight. To support him, you will have 10 action card slots , it's up to you to choose your strategy according to your champion, his skills and your strategy. Know that even if your champion is a pure warrior and brute force is his main asset, you can also make him fight with cards turned towards mages (intelligence), it will work even if obviously it will not be very optimized.
Once done, you are already able to go into combat after a few minutes. Well, you will have to remember what your cards do, since as you will see, the details of their abilities are not revealed on the cards. But by dint of a few games, if your strategy is well established you should know what your cards do and when to use them. Namely that your champion will have action points to spend during the game (max 10) and that this will be used to use cards, or to use the abilities of your cards. In turn, you will have to put your cards on your reader to attack your enemy, strengthen your abilities or defend yourself. Attention the majority of cards have limited uses. Some cards also have instant abilities that allow you to defend against an ongoing attack. The goal is to bring your opponent to zero hit points. You have 30s to put down your card when it's your turn, if you don't do it within the allotted time, you automatically pass your turn.
To give you a little detail about my rookie strategy, I have my champion here, whom I will nickname Grongron. This one is a warrior who gives me several basic assets:
- His passive ability : under a certain level of health, Grongron gains 10 action points. (150,100 and 50PV)
- Its active abilities : which basically cause bleeding on your enemies and therefore heavier damage.
But that's not all, Grongron also has traits and equipment at his disposal to make himself even more destructive. Thanks to a character trait, Grongron loses 40 PV at the beginning of the game but gains + 4 in strength. Grongron can also equip an item, I chose a sword that increases damage when my enemy bleeds.
The chosen trait is then particularly interesting to implement with passive capacity. From the beginning of the game, Grongron will start at 160PV (200-40), as soon as he suffers an enemy attack, it will certainly drop below the 150 HP mark. His passive ability will then give him the 10 action points almost from the beginning of the game. I then have a card called "tearing the flesh" that uses this formula: 6 + STRENGTH + 2 x PA. Basically, the enemy in front will take a strike equivalent to 46 PV less (6 + 20 + 2 * 10), which is huge when your opponent has 200 HP! My card being usable twice, this allows me to very quickly put it in danger. Coupled with a map that drains the life of an enemy if it bleeds…And you have a combo that works very well.
Know that after each fight, your champion will gain experience and favor, he will unlock additional abilities and evolve (traits, equipment). The favors allow you to evolve your action cards but also to buy equipment at the antique dealer. That's why there are no details on the maps, otherwise they could not evolve. And it is also easy to imagine that the studio wanted to honor the artworks on their cards, which it must be said, are successful. Your action cards will be able to evolve and become more powerful with mastery systems to choose a faction… But for that, it will be necessary that a maximum of your cards are at the same level and in the same faction to take advantage of it.
Anyway, the simplest strategies are sometimes the best, my strategy could certainly be even more elaborate with other cards. The Malkyrs universe has many cards, but unfortunately this comes at a price.
A poorly exploited system
It's hard not to be excited by a system where you have cards in your hand, and where you can interact with a reader that gives them … Life? Truth be told, we are not in Yu-gi-oh! where the cards really come to life. It's a shame to see exactly on the screen what we have in front of us. We would have really liked to see the characters of our cards come to life, the champion would then be an army master who would send his soldiers to attack or who would act according to the cards played.
If the cards can make you want to collect them or even buy them to perfect your strategy, the packs are unfortunately very expensive, count 25 € for 10 action cards and a champion (shipping costs not included). This makes the game even more redundant if you always play with the same cards. The budget then very quickly becomes a problem, and this is in my opinion what will prevent Malkyrs from attracting people who would simply like to "test".Since if you do not have a phone with NFC technology, you will have to pay 49.90 € to access the reader, a champion and 10 action cards …
Also note that apart from the fights in quick game, you obviously do not have access to much others for the moment, but fortunately the game quickly finds players to compensate for this lack of content. We would have liked, a game system in DUO vs DUO maybe or online tournaments that would make us climb in a ranking. However, it is possible to play against a local friend with a single reader, but also to exchange your cards with him.
Malkyrs is a good discovery, and shows that we are still able to have good ideas without giving in to the easy, it is just a shame that the cards are so expensive and that it does not necessarily make you want to invest more than in a pack or two. Malkyrs has its own universe but will certainly struggle to seduce the greatest number when very large platforms offer card games, certainly not physical but with the possibility of playing for free. Malkyrs, even if it lacks this more visual side for me, finally has as main flaw to be unknown, if it had been called Pokémon, people would have screamed genius.
