Now, similar to my experience with The Elder Scrolls Online closed beta, I came into the beta for The Elder Scrolls Legends with zero experience with Trading Card Games (TCG) or Collectible Card Games (CCG), so my review of TESL will be from that of a complete n00b in every sense of the word in relation to the aforementioned card games. I will be unable to make any comparisons to how the game plays against other established games like MTG or Hearthstone, so for those types of articles, you would be best to check out PC Gamer, IGN, or Kotaku.
First off, I wanted to reiterate that Bethesda and ZeniMax are not the developers of this game. The developer is Dire Wolf Digital, so any complaints that this "dumb-ass card game" is just a money grab by Bethesda and only delaying the release of The Elder Scrolls VI, is pretty untrue. I mean, it may in fact be a money grab by ZeniMax,
Initially I was a bit skeptical as to how card game mechanics would lend themselves to the world of The Elder Scrolls and what that would be like. Would it be two people meeting and fighting with summoned monsters from cards a la Yu-Gi-Oh! From what I was able to gather, the story is told about your character, an unnamed champion/hero from Tamriel's past. The story takes place in the 4E 171 during The Great War when the Thalmor invade Cyrodiil. The story being told around the campfire is about a character/avatar that you choose prior to starting the game.
Each race comes with the typical racial description along with what the racial benefits are in relation to the card game. All of the races are as follows:
Now I have no real idea as to how the benefits for each race play out in the overall game. If one is better than another in the early game, versus the end game, versus the best benefit while fighting against other players, versus deck building. It is that I understand the "you will more quickly collect weapon-related cards," but I feel without a background in card games, I do not know how weapon or other item cards will benefit the overall deck being built and how that will affect game play. As an Imperial, is it better to have a larger army, and what does a "large army" mean in the context of the card game? Does it mean that where everyone is only allowed to have 15 cards in their hand during a battle, that an Imperial can have 16? There are a lot of questions that I have, mainly based around game mechanics, and the game has barely just started! There is a glossary of sorts, but just starting out, it all seems a bit overwhelming, but as is the trend that I've noticed (especially with rule heavy games like Mansions of Madness and to a lesser extent Pandemic, these games seem a lot more complicated at first and are actually pretty easy to understand when you are not staring the rule book in the face.
How the game is played, can be summed up pretty well from the Wikipedia page for The Elder Scrolls: Legends, so I will borrow that since whomever wrote it clearly has a better understanding of how the game plays:
"The Elder Scrolls: Legends is a collectible card game which revolves around turn-based matches between two opponents. The cards are based on creatures, characters and lore found in The Elder Scrolls series. At the start of every battle, each player starts off with three cards and one magicka, which is used to deploy cards. When deploying these cards, the player can place them on one of two sides, called lanes. Lanes can have special abilities which alter the fields of battle. A card in one lane can either attack another card in that lane, or attack their opponent directly. If either of the two players take enough damage, one of their runes will shatter. When this occurs, the same player will immediately draw a card. The game consists of five game modes, which are a story mode, solo arena, versus arena, versus battle, and a practice mode."
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| The beginning of a battle. I don't know if I know what I'm really doing. |
I will say that the tutorial levels/chapters were somewhat fun and the only times when I felt that I was not having fun, was when I was imagining having to go up against a real person in either an online battle or playing a similar physical card game and my opponent becoming frustrated with having to play against someone who would play that one card when obviously it was meant for later in the game and holy crap, I just threw the game away. Sigh.
I will admit that I only played a couple of times during the closed beta and what I played, I did like. The downside, is that the game is, at least currently, only accessible through Bethesda's new game client launcher. Currently there is only TES:L and Fallout Shelter available with this client, so it is pretty easy to forget about these games when they are on their own separate gaming client. I am not sure if TES:L will be put up on Steam when the game launches some time later this year. but since the game is "stored" in a games client that I am not used to (in that I barely have a reason to open it), I tend to forget that it is there which leads me to forgetting to tinker around with the beta.
While writing this article, I have felt a pull again to play, at least to relearn the basic mechanics and since my first time around during the closed beta, I did have fun. It was fun finally deciding that I would give TCG a semi-real shot. I am a sucker for Elder Scrolls games, as I like exploring the world, its histories and the lore, and since TES:L covers a part of history that takes place between TESIV:Oblivion and TESV:Skyrim, I am very interested to see how the events unfold from within those events, even if it is from a storytellers perspective.
~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
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