Card City Nights 2 review
:: A NIGHT TO YOURSELFPrice: $4.99
Version: 1.2.4
App Reviewed on: iPad Air 2
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Single-player card game fans rejoice! Card City Nights 2 has arrived, and it’s a collectible card game with a full-on single-player campaign. It also happens to be a fun, streamlined take on the genre with relatively unique gameplay mechanics. There is one, specific stability issue and a multiplayer mode that virtually no one plays, but otherwise, Card City Nights 2 is a some great card collecting fun.
Cards in space
At the outset of Card City Nights 2, you find yourself waking up on a space station full of interesting characters who are all obsessed with the latest trend: The Card Game. After getting a brief rundown of how this game works, you are then tasked with battling your way to the top ranks of the station and building an ever more potent deck along the way.
The Card Game in Card City Nights 2 is a collectible card game that’s all about positioning. In each game, players take turns placing one card on a 6x3 grid. Cards can be placed anywhere, but each card in the game has a certain amount of arrows surrounding the edges of it. Connecting three cards via similarly colored arrows allows you to activate a countdown, at the end of which the card disappears and performs any ability that is written on the card.
Blockchain
The key to doing well in Card City Nights 2 is through ensuring you can keep a chain of cards going while also placing cards to block your opponents’ chains. At the beginning of the game, this is relatively simple to do, but as cards get more complicated, you’ll need to get more creative with your strategies and build decks full of cards that specifically work well together.
In order to build decks that keep up with the competition, you’ll need to unlock new cards, which can be done in a variety of ways in Card City Nights 2. There are vending machines that spit out booster packs of random cards, folks on the space station you can trade cards with, and even special challenges that grant new cards if you successfully complete them. Although the variety is nice, there is a little bit of a grind to earning cards in Card City Nights 2, but it’s nothing compared to free-to-play card games like Hearthstone or Faeria.
Lonely nights
As a single-player card game, Card City Nights 2 has a lot to offer. In addition to being a pretty fun card game, it also presents a world that is bursting with goofy and colorful characters that keep it from feeling like “just another card game.” That said, there are a few, specific issues with Card City Nights 2 that might be dealbreakers.
The first is that—although Card City Nights 2 has a multiplayer mode--you’ll have a hard time actually playing it. In my time with the game, I queued up for minutes at a time waiting to play someone and never matched into a game. Secondly, there is a secret arcade machine mini-game in Card City Nights 2 that promises special cards for beating it, but it always seems to make the game hard crash out to the home screen. The rest of the game seems totally fine and playable, but for some reason, this little side challenge contains some huge technical issues.
The bottom line
If you like card collecting games, but you don’t want to feel the need to keep up with an evolving meta, or just like playing by yourself, Card City Nights 2 is a worthy purchase. Its positioning-based gameplay makes for an interesting card game, and its single-player content is filled with charm and a surprising amount of story. Just don’t expect a completely polished experience or the ability to test your skills online, and you’ll have a fine time.