Biggest turn off for me is how unbalanced the enemy is. Usually in games when you have terrible AI programming, you result to letting the computer players 'cheat' or have drastic advantages. In this game, the deck is stacked so hard against you that it isn't even funny. Pass on this game.

There is a grocery store near me. It is probably one of the few sanctuaries of old fashioned small town American thought left in existence and I mean that as both a positive and a negative. The store hires 70% local kids, makes them all be cleanly shaven, wear suit shirts and has a strict no smoking policy. The store isn't open on sundays, the baggers carry your groceries to your car for you. Visiting the store is like entering a time machine.
At the exit to the store is a small gumball machine. For 25 cents you get one gumball. The thing is the machine is broken. It will 9 times out of 10 give you 2 gumballs. I bought this game on an extreme sale for 25 cents. If that gumball machine only ever gave out one gumball instead of 2 I would recomend the game over the gumball machine. As it is I get more long lasting enjoyment out of 2 gumballs than I have out of this game.

Some interesting concepts here but it doesn't come together for a fun experience. The campaign is very short, the card mechanics are too reliant on sacrificing cards to boost your creatures, no deck building and the scenarios are always stacked against you. That second item (saccing cards) really ruined the game for me. I have no problem with playing cards to give you bonuses but what you are doing here is not casting a spell. You just discard it and your creature gets a bonus. Many, many battles are won by who can sacrifice the most. Not fun at all. With some tweaking this could have been a good game but it falls short. You are better off spending your time and money elsewhere in my opinion.

This game feels overly complicated. While that alone isn't bad, the player is often left in the dark or cannot comprehend how certain actions and numbers are calculated. Everything feels like pure chance way too often. And I haven't found any ingame help or manual that explains the underlying structure of the number crunching. You just cannot play a strategy "card" game, if you do not have the means to successfully develop a strategy with the things you are given.

This looked fun on paper, so I rolled the dice on this game... and started regretting it about an hour after. Each stage in this game drags out for what it seems like a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ eternity, models and animations are plain ugly, the outcome of battles is overly dependant on the luck of the draw and thus AI tends to gain unfair advantage here and there, all resulting in a really frustrating and daunting gameplay. Zero strategy, no deck builder, not fun. No multiplayer, no replay value, no involvement with the story either (was there even one? I cannot remember).

I suppose you could buy it when it's on sale if you're crazy about card games like me. I really like the concept but this game simply fails at too many aspects to be worth its current price.

Genre - Strategy Fantasy turn based card game.
This game looks exactly like a game I would like. Unfortunately it dissapoints for two major reasons:
1) The game plays too slow Zzzzzzzzzz
2) The AI seems over powered on most levels HELP!
With a bit more play testing and balance this game could have been fun as there are some interesting concepts included that were fairly original at the time. Instead it just feels like an un-rewarding chore.

Game is ok, lack of customizing, hurt the game. The developers didn't really support the game taking over a year to fix a simple bug and never adding in the features they said they would.

Play this game if you want to go up against hard to impossible odds in single player and prefer luck over strategy to get wins in multiplayer. Nothing quite like setting up a big attack only to find out that your opponent god-drawed a card to disable all support effects, or crippling the opposing hero and getting to watch as he gets healed four times in a single turn.

Guardians of Graxia is an innovative strategy card game that offers a detailed tactical challenge on a battle map, combined with the random element of card draws. The strategy is quite deep and not immediately obvious. You can't expect to jump in and play it well without first learning how the game works. Once you understand the mechanics though, it's easy enough to play, but not so easy to win! This is a hard game, which might put some people off, but for those that love a hard challenge, it can be very rewarding.

I must admit, when I read the other reviews, I was shocked to see so many negative comments, which is why I felt compelled to add this review of my own. Looking at those reviews, I noticed that many of them were by people who haven't put many hours into the game. Since it takes quite a while to master, I suspect that a lot of the negativity came from not playing it long enough to figure out the best strategies.

I'd like to address some of the points made in other reviews:

Overly complicated - Yes, it seems that way at first, there is a bit of a learning curve involved, but it's not that hard once you get used to it. The in-game help tells you all you need to know, you just need to take the trouble to read it. As for "ridiculously complicated" units with many different abilities, that's a good thing. It creates a lot of variety in the game, making the strategy more complex and interesting.

Trouble Man said that the game doesn't explain the number crunching, but it does. When in battle, there's a small arrow underneath Projected Health. Click this and it shows you the Damage Calculations. All the modifiers are listed to help you understand exactly what's going on in the battle.

Luck not Strategy - Not true! Sure, there's a lot of luck in which cards you draw, but hey, it's a card game, that's kind of the whole point! But once you've drawn your cards, what you do with them is pure strategy. There's nothing random in the combat calculations, it depends entirely on which cards are played. Of course, you don't know what cards the computer will play during the battles, but that's not luck, it's making strategic choices based on the cards it has available.

Just as the computer can ruin your attack by playing a powerful card, you can do exactly the same if you have one. Choosing which cards to play and which to save until later is a big part of the strategy. Tip: make feint attacks with unimportant units to force the computer to waste valuable cards, then make your important attacks with your best cards later, once the computer is out of good cards to defend with.

Another important aspect of the strategy are terrain effects and unit special abilities. Place units on tiles they gain an advantage on, not on ones that give them a disadvantage. Surround enemy units to gain support advantages. Capture many tiles quickly to increase your mana generation. There's loads of strategic possibilities on the battlefield.

Hard AI, scenarios stacked against you - This is true. It's not an easy game, but if it were then it wouldn't be much of a challenge. It's a pity there aren't more easy scenarios or different difficulty levels to make it easier for new players, but that's just the way it is. It may seem daunting at first, but it gets easier once you figure out the best strategies. People often criticise the AI for being too easy in many games, so it makes a nice change that this AI offers a hard challenge. If that scares you, then don't buy it, but if you love a hard strategical challenge, this may be for you.

Turn limits - Some people don't like this, but again, it's all part of the challenge. If you had unlimited turns it would make the game too easy. You'd just grab most of the tiles, get most of the mana and simply out-produce the AI. Besides, many people complain about the slow turns, so do you really want the game to go on for even longer?

Slow Turns - True, this can be annoying. I wish there were a way of speeding them up. But it's not the end of the world. You can always watch TV or do something else while the AI is taking its turn, or check your Facebook page, or whatever...

Story? What story? This is a strategy game! Who cares about story! :-)

Some reviewers compared the game to Magic the Gathering. Why? Because it's a fantasy game and it has cards? As I see it, this game is nothing like MtG, the game mechanics are completely different. IMO, this is more of a turn based strategy game than a card game. If MtG is what you are expecting, think again.

Saint Killjoy said "don't ignore the bad reviews, they were given for a reason" - That sounds fair enough, but I suspect that the two main reasons for the bad reviews are:

1. Having the wrong expectations about the game - perhaps thinking it will be like MtG, or thinking it will be easy because it's a card game. Don't buy it based on what you think or hope it will be like, buy it based on what it is. Check out some YouTube videos first.

2. Not playing it for long enough to figure out the best strategies. Yes it's hard, but you shouldn't give up too easily or pass judgement too soon. Good strategy games often take a long time to master.

My advice would be this: Make up your own mind about this game based on the kind of games that YOU like to play, not on the opinions of others who often have different tastes in games.

I'm not saying that everyone should like and buy this game. I'm sure that there are many people who would hate it. But for those that enjoy challenging turn based strategy against a hard AI, with some card based randomness thrown in, I highly recommend it. Just be sure that you know what you're letting yourself in for.

For the current sale price, it's a no brainer IMO. And even if you don't like it, you won't have lost much. But if you do buy it, make sure to buy both DLCs as well. There are only 9 maps in the base game. The DLCs add another 16 maps (some of which generate random terrain) and two more guardians, providing a lot more replayability.

To sum up:

PROS:
Challenging and deep turn based strategy.
Huge variety of special abilities.
Card based randomness ensures that every game is different.
Battles are quite hard.

CONS:
Gameplay seems a bit complex at first.
It takes a while to figure out the best strategies.
Slow AI turns.
Battles are quite hard.

Nice graphics, good ideas for the units, end of positive points. Interface is clunky, you have to guess things out. Descriptions of the cards don't give you enough information. Animations during the combat phases slow down an already extremely slow game - the AI takes forever to move one card. Goals are impossible to reach because each map is timed and the AI cheats on everything - they can slay five of your units with the weakest of theirs. Maps are thought as bottlenecks : only one strategy, only one direction to go.

A frustrating experience I'd recommend only to my worst enemies.

Similar to magic the gathering, but with some cons.

Pros:
-Similar to MtG as I said, but mixed with a strategy board game
-Several missions
-Price

Cons:
-Many missions have turn limits. I hate being forced to do some objective at a certain speed. Sometimes is almost impossible to make the mission in time.
-Slooooooow gameplay. Terribly slow, i hate the game being so damn slow.
-Some bugs. I remember a mission when the AI get stuck because I blocked the teleports (to avoid being chased by enemies). No matter what I did, the game got hang up. A mission what takes about 3 hours to get to that point!!!!

Pros: Good concept, decent presentation for what it is, short campaign means I'm done quicker.
Cons: Gameplay is slow, AI takes forever to do anything, campaign missions have arbritrary events that will ruin your battle plan without any warning that only get worse as the campaign progresses, CCG elements are shallow with no customization or even a card viewer, tactics elements are shallow with low variety and boring grindy levels, the in game UI is almost good but gets frustrating at times as you fight with popups that get in the way of what you're trying to do, the story is forgettable and told via pop up text boxes with no other in game elements.

If you like the concepts of this game (CCG meets tactics with hero unit/avatar) then I'd recommend Mage Wars (Board game from Arcane Wonders) instead. There's a link on the Subreddit to the official forums with a way to play it online even if that's more what you're looking for.

I just can't seem to grasp the fundamentals of Guardians of Graxia at all. I don't understand how battle outcomes are determined. I don't understand card sacrifices. It doesn't feel intuitive and often times it just comes off as a completely user unfriendly card game. I have managed to work through several of the tutorials but I still haven't been able to make sense of the results.

I can accept that there are just some games I'll never get, and this is one of them. Thankfully there's plenty of alternatives out there.

Wow thats what I call wasted money... It might look fun, but don´t make the mistake and buy it without checking the game on Youtube and/or other sites.

Beginning the game

I've been playing for a couple of hours and I really have no clue what is going on. I get the basic mechanics but the details are not available in an explanation anywhere, such as what does a portal do and how do I use it?

I've done my years playing trading card games and I get they can be very complicated. So big fail on getting the player up to speed on the details of the mechanics, but I don't mind learning by experimenting if I have to, if the reward is a fun game.

Then drops the other shoe

The problem with experimenting to learn the mechanics is that the game moves so slow for every little thing. Then, the UI works, but interacting with it is painful. Like if you click the wrong card, does ESC back you out or right click? Because one works in one situation and doesn't in another. Overall it just becomes frustrating.

Then I get to the 2nd scenario and the huge giant just pummels my guys from afar with boulders (8 wounds jeeze) and 2 of the units they gave me, at the opposite end of the board no less, are dead within the first 2 turns. I still don’t know how to use portals, and it seems it would be useful here but it doesn’t work.

This is when I realize:

1) After 2 rounds and 2 hours, I don't know how to play this game well enough to compete even with a bad AI.

2) Trying to fight with bad UI, lack of any kind of decent instructions and the punishingly slow game progress is simply a waste of my time.

3) This game was probably a waste of money.

I say probably, because the strategic board game/TCG hybrid is interesting to me and is in my niche. It is conceivable that if I knew how to play it, I could get past all the bad (though the bad is terrible), and get some of my money's worth out of the game.

I hated Blood Bowl when I first played but, after watching some experts play through it, I got it and I ended up enjoying the game. Maybe this game could be that, but there is no such walkthrough to watch, no wiki to read, nothing.

Skip this game or trade it instead of activating it on Steam.

A very challenging and complex strategy game which combines classic turn based strategy gameplay with a card playing system similar to Magic the Gathering.
Be aware that this game is HARD and takes a lot of time and patience to learn everything you need to know.
Unfortunately, the game is a bit short, as the campaign only have 6 missions. However there are DLCs with many new maps and cards.

Quite possibly the most boring game I ever played. This is coming from someone who loves card and board games.

Guardians of Graxia is a fantasy turn based strategy game mixed with a card game. The problem is that they took all the cons of card games and didn't add the pros. It would have been better of as either a full turn based strategy game or card game.

Too complicated.

I like the whole idea of the game, but just the fact that it is such a slow turn-based game is what got me. And to add on to that, most the the AI units are OP and you have to have alot of mind power to overcome them.