When talking about
Alteil, the newly translated online card game from Japan, a lot of people like to bring up a few things; it's beautiful art, ease of play, and community. Yes it is true that the art is drawn by some of the most famous artists in Japan, known for their work on several different works of Manga, Anime, and Videogame alike. It is equally true that
Alteil is a game that is basically free with infinite levels of complexity that can be played from any web-browser, or even an iPhone. However, I am going to stray from the path a bit and talk about something I find much more important, the gameplay system. In the end, the one thing that draws me to
Alteil is the fact that it is one of the first online based trading card games that does what offline trading card games cannot, i.e. capitalize on a digital interface.
There are a lot of online trading card games out there, but many of them are just a hop; skip, jump, and a load of paper and printer ink away from being plain old table top gaming.
Alteil, however, cannot, and while others may criticize the game for being overcomplicated, I actually commend the game for showing innovation. To really see how
Alteil separates itself from other online games, you have to start at the beginning.
First of all, a standard
Alteil deck is made of 30 cards, which is much less than other games out there. This deck, believe it or not, is also your hand, mostly because there is no hand, or drawing in
Alteil. While playing
Alteil you always have access to every card in your deck (except for a few cards that are only activated once you take damage but I will get to that later) which brings me to point one of how
Alteil could not be played offline, the immense strategical options playing with a full deck brings.
Offline a player would have to spend decades wading through his cards to find just the right one if he were playing with his whole deck, but the
Alteil interface is very simple and streamlined. When it comes time to play a card, your whole deck is laid out in front of you in a card by card basis. Mouse over a card and the details of that card are shown across the screen. Then you simply make a few clicks and your card is played.
Overall
Alteil's interface is easy to navigate, but until you get used to the game you may be spending a lot of time searching for stats, which brings me to one of my only big gripes with the game, cards are represented by picture only. You cannot see a card's name, stats, or abilities when they are in play unless you mouse over them, and while you are building a deck or looking at your deck you only get to see their level and HP, which isn't enough info. I'm not a psychologist, but I believe that people primarily think of card games in text, rattling off their favorite card's name before saying “that one with the picture of a dragon on it”. After playing several rounds of
Alteil, I still don't know what my cards are called, and half the time I don't know which I should use because I have to re-read their abilities, or which opponent's card to attack because I can't easily see his card's HP and defense.
Still though, all this does is make the learning curve a bit higher, and since the game is already astoundingly simple to learn it's not that big of a problem. The game has 3 phases, the set phase, the active phase. These three phases are all pretty simple, making the game itself pretty easy to pick up.
The set phase is where you play cards. There is are two real resources in
Alteil, SP, and Spheres of Influence. Spheres of Influence represent your power level in the different factions/elements of the game. The different factions are Lawtia, Gowen, Refess, and Falkow, which correspond to the colors Black, Red, White, and Blue respectively. Each color has its own themes and abilities of course, and each card in
Alteil falls into one of those colors. For example, the game cycles through day, night, and dawn, and at night, Lawtia cards are more powerful, while in the day, Refess cards are more powerful. Each card also has its own level, and to play a card you need to spend an amount of SP equal to the level of the card, and your rank in the card's Sphere of Influence has to be equal to or Higher than the card's level.
To raise a Sphere of Influence one rank, you spend one SP, which you get back at a rate of 2 per turn. You start the game with 5 sp, so for example you want to play a level 2 Gowen card, you need to first spend 2 SP to raise your rank in Gowen to 2, and then spend another two to play the card for a total of 4. Sphere of Influence ranks don't drop (unless as a result of an ability) so every level 2 Gowen card thereafter only costs 2 sp to use.
Cards themselves in
Alteil only come in two varieties, Units, and Grimoire cards. Units are your basic attacking and defending forces, while Grimoires are your basic one shot effects.
After the set phase, there is the very brief active phase, where players pay any upkeep costs that are needed, the battle time cycle of night, day, and dusk changes, and cards you played (and this is important) LAST turn get to take the field. Yes this means that any Unit you want to play has to wait before it comes into play, but considering that you can only play one card a turn any way in
Alteil, this isn't much of a hindrance, as weenies won't be stomping all over you any time soon.
The final action phase is where all the… er… action takes place. Units move in order of AGI (a stat they have) and choose to move, rest (and recover HP), or attack the enemy. When a card hits 0 HP, you can revive it, by spending SP to replace it with another card from your deck, or you can let it die and take a hit to your own life points. The amount of Life Points you have is based on your “soul cards” basically cards you choose from your deck which have their own abilities and life point ratings. When a card's life points are reduced to zero, their soul effect comes into play. Better soul effects generally net you fewer life points and vice versa. The first player to be reduced to 0 HP loses the game.
I went over a couple other interesting things that made
Alteil unique in my rundown of gameplay mechanics. First of all, the set phase happens simultaneously. Both cards played are revealed at one time (something else that couldn't really be done IRL without lots of counters and hiding cards behind your back). This introduces a level of blind fairness to the game that I haven't seen since the original Avalaon Hill Dune Board Game.
Secondly, although the game has a “turn” limit of thirty (have 30 sets of phases and the game is a draw) the game is essentially turnless. People do not proceed in any sort player based turn order, the only order that exists is as a function of unit AGI. I have been saying for some time that turnless games would be the next big advancement for collectible gaming and
Alteil managed to do it well.
Thirdly, the cards are just complicated enough to leave their management to a digital system. HP, Attack, and Defense values generally hover around the two digit range and calculations based on these values are better left out of the players hands. In fact the only resources the player ever has to worry about are SP and Spheres of Influence. In essence, the game allows two players to play in a system that is quite complicated in a very simple way, and that is a big relief.
Finally, the game is fast, and this is a very good thing. Sometimes turns in collectible card games can last upwards of 10 minutes or more.
Alteil actually puts a time limit on each decision you make. Let the time run out, and you lose, pure and simple. Eventually individual moves in
Alteil take no longer than a few seconds once you get into the groove of things, and games only last a few minutes as well. It makes the game feel very fast paced, giving it an “anime battle” type flavor, which fits very well with its art. Also, the game doesn't take any sort of time commitment so it is the perfect game to play while killing time or even when mobile.
So we have already covered the fact that the game system is tight through its innovative use of a digital interface, but now it's time to pimp the game for what it is commonly known for. First let's talk about the art.
The art in
Alteil is beautiful and hard to describe honestly. Basically, imagine those art books you can buy featuring your favorite anime and manga artists doing unrelated sketches. Well each and every unrelated sketch seems to have its own card in
Alteil. All of the images are pretty much generic monster or generic impossibly badass anime hero, but there is nothing wrong with that. Part of the reason I enjoy playing
Alteil is looking at each piece of art, from the fire cat girls, to the witches in training, to the dual gun wielding heroines. In short, the art is very good. It is very deeply in Japanese style though so if that isn't your thing you may not like it, but still it is very very good.
Finally, if there is anything that is going to draw you to
Alteil, I would have to say it would be the tournament scene.
Alteil tournaments are the most interesting tournaments I have ever played in. Offering everything from basic elimination, to crazy formats like giving you access to a full play set of every card in existence, tournaments have a little of something for everyone. Sometimes you have to pay to enter and sometimes you don't but always you get prizes, of either cards or cash (which of course can then be put into buying more cards).
So the game is good, the art is good, the setup is good, so what is bad? If I had to say anything it would be the community. Not because the people in the community are bad or annoying, but that the community is just so small right now. It takes a very long time to find an open game, so you more often than not find yourself coordinating with friends who also play rather than getting a random opponent. This is really just a function of the game being new, and as more players join it will naturally handle itself, but for not it is kind of annoying.
So is
Alteil worth a try? Well honestly, what do you have to lose. The game opens up in a flash window right out of an internet browser so it's not even like you are losing hard drive space over it. Just go to the website and check it out. At best, you find a new addiction, and at worst, you get to play 10 or so minutes of a game that is eyecandylicious. Right now the set is small, but as more sets are released to American market, the game is sure to pick up steam, and we here at TCGplayer will be sure to review them all in depth as they go live.
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Presentation Rating = 7.2
Showing stats on cards would be a lot better than always having to mouse over. The interface is good and the art is beautiful but the translation is still suffering somewhat.
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Gameplay Rating = 8.1
Overall, the game is fun. Many people play it for the art but I play it for the actual game.
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Support Rating = 7.1
The tournament support for this game is absolutely phenomenal, but the tutorials are still somewhat Engrish. Still errata and rulings are done clearly so I have to give a thumbs up.
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Innovation Rating = 7.5
The game itself isn't anything all that new, but its use of the digital interface is definitely something above and beyond the standard of some other online games.
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