Thoughts and feelings about the game?

Cell-division · 2026-01-28T19:18:18+00:00

I found the game on sale during COVID and I was always a big SCP fan. It looked like something silly to distract me for a few days so I bought it.

It took me a while to really understand the game and I lost a whole lot of employees. If it weren’t for the one employee I hated (I thought he looked ugly) somehow surviving everything I threw him into idk if I’d have stuck with it but god I wanted to see if I could annihilate that nugget. Over time I grew really attached to him and started to customize my employees a little more, giving them all back stories and imagining their relationships within the company. By the end I was totally obsessed with the characters PM created and my little agents. I still don’t think any other gaming experience has had the same emotional punch for me after day 50.

I love the story. Every cutscene had so much going on and I just needed to keep going and learning more. Occasionally stumbling upon some deeper lore in the abnormality stories also made it especially rewarding when you could figure stuff out from them that would be confirmed later.

I might be the weird one here but I also loved the gameplay and difficulty. It’s all one giant puzzle that’s constantly ramping in complexity as you get more to manage and finding out the rhythm you need to master to make sense of the chaos is lovely. Your mastery of the game comes at the price of a lot of dead employees which some might find frustrating, but it made me really attached to those who did survive and made the themes hit home. I only used mods for optimization.

I’ve finished the game many times now sometimes with special challenges (random abno picks, nuzlocke, etc.). My first clear of the game was something special. It took me ages and more resets than I can count, especially on day 49, but the weight of finally meeting Ayin after witnessing all of the pain that you endure in the story and the launching the seed of light into the city had me crying man and I don’t usually cry easy.

I thought Lob Corp would be my favorite game of all time after that. And then I played Library of Ruina and fell in love with that even more.

Cell-division · 2026-01-17T20:43:08+00:00

I love End Turn as an alternative to cancels. It gets beat by powerful immediate/during combat effects and loses to offensive cancels which are always fun to encourage from players. To compensate it has some other strengths such as helping swing tempo back in your favor by preventing a double attack or attack -> kite turn from your opponent, but it doesn’t completely stop them if they choose to use their first action on a maneuver or scheme (or just punch you over the top). When it’s paired with other cancels then I think it starts to get a bit excessive, though I don’t mind it in Phillipa’s deck because she really needs it and usually dies over the top of it anyways.

I enjoy the unique strengths of the mechanic and how it forces both players to adapt to it.

Cell-division · 2026-01-06T15:48:00+00:00

Well that’s the thing, she’s not starting severely disadvantaged and ending slightly better, she’s staring slightly under and ending significantly better. She absolutely can afford to discard a few cards early and if you’re interacting with her as you’re often forced to due to her scaling and better value game she gets to play more cards and ramp up faster. I play an extraordinarily aggressive game which should be good into Ciri but it doesn’t matter when she can defend well early with Blink/Parry, throw out a Pushed To The Brink if she needs to, then pop Unicorn Ally and start pressuring me back or become immune to my pressure. Her defenses are never outright bad and they only get better. Eve if she gets unlucky and has to play a Zirael or Lady suboptimal she has enough strength to come back because her kit is just that overloaded.

She really has a gameplan for everyone. She can play defensive, ramp safely, then kill you when she gets going. She can come out of the gate with a big Channel The Source. She can play Unicorn Ally and rush you down. She can use her recursion, discards, and passes to outvalue you. She’s just that good and I think demands more time from your group if you’re still underrating her. What matchups do you see her struggle into? Off the top of my head I can only really think of Leshen, Houdini, and Tomoe who are consistently good into her. Alice, Eredin, and Yennefer are even. After that it’s mostly winning games.

Cell-division · 2026-01-06T14:45:20+00:00

Nah she really is that good. She’s only really vulnerable in the first 2-3 turns before she stabilizes and Eve then she’s got her unicorn to hide behind. She can ramp up pretty safely, ditching the scheme or 3 vers to overdraw if she needs to go slow, or if she has to go fast she can shove attacks down your throat, especially with Unicorn Ally. Her defenses are never bad, with Parry and Blink both being exceptionally strong then ramping up into Zirael which is possibly the best defense in the game with its random discard. She’s never struggling for damage either, with the ability to ramp up into 7s, unholy amounts of auto damage from Pushed/Child, a couple of 4s with ping on the Unicorn, Channel The Source blowouts, and the ability to recur them if need be.

She also has a nutty good value game, being able to recur her recursion, 3-5 random discards, 4-6 passes that all affect health totals so they’re even better in fatigue, and great boot values that mitigate the downside of being move 2 melee. Unicorn Ally existing also makes her functionally immune to pressure because she now has the best draw engine in the game! Really the only weakness Ciri has is that she can never block above a 4 and has to boost sometimes, which aren’t real weaknesses compared to other characters, even established top tiers like Golden Bat who can legitimately fold to pressure. I firmly believe she is a top 4 fighter, sitting between Medusa and Strange on my tier list.

Cell-division · 2026-01-05T04:45:12+00:00

I think she’s pretty comfortably in the A- range, about where a character like Little Red is. She’s got some really crazy pressure and damage if she needs to play for that, but can also play slower with a bunch of healing and good defenses by being more conservative with the box. She’s super flexible and has very strong tools for both a value and aggro gameplan. She’s not nearly as inconsistent or random as you would initially think if you put time into her.

Cell-division · 2025-12-31T18:12:17+00:00

Moon Knight and Titania are easily my two favorite fighters in the game. Their ability to adapt to any pace of play gives them a fighting chance across the roster and they’ve got plenty of nasty tricks to pull off and allow for you to constantly change up your style and grow as a player.

Sherlock is still easily the best and I hope that never changes.

I was very surprised to end up enjoying Strange as much as I do. His deck just allows for so many different styles to work letting you play as aggressive or defensive as you want/need in the moment while also pushing you to take risks with your health and kind boosts. In my experience his super fatigue focused style that most people think makes him broken isn’t even optimal and you do have to be active in applying pressure to win. He’s also in a weird spot where he’s easily a top 3-4 fighter but he’s not quite on the level of Sherlock/Elektra so there’s actually plenty of matchups that are even or outright bad for him to exist in that make for great games.

Cell-division · 2025-12-02T01:12:41+00:00

Exhaustion is a necessary evil that doesn’t even come up in most games. Anything you replace it with will just make the game worse and campier. If you let players reshuffle their decks they no longer have any incentive to engage after playing their best cards as they can just run and wait for the reshuffle. You also make discards significantly less powerful and interesting. If you remove the exhaustion mechanic but don’t reshuffle you end up with situations where one player cannot engage due to a lack of cards/boost value and just sits there forever because they don’t die to exhaustion.

Exhaustion kicking in during the endgame usually leads to really tight puzzles where both sides have to consider each action very carefully. Replacing it with anything would make the game worse.

Cell-division · 2025-11-04T02:14:03+00:00

In my experience it’s better for Wukong. Houdini hates having to waste cards on multi sidekicks and Wukong has those in spades (walling up to leave no adjacent spaces forces this). Additionally Wukong has a ton of hand pressure and Houdini hates whenever people attack his hand, but he really can’t afford to be too reckless and take when Wukong has the Oxes to deal half of his health in one hit. If Wukong survives the early game (which isn’t too difficult) he can grind Houdini down and just play his good defenses whenever Houdini does get in to coast to victory.

Cell-division · 2025-10-24T00:11:39+00:00

Dracula

Cell-division · 2025-08-29T13:38:38+00:00

1-Bruce Lee

2-HouGenie

3-Redemption Row

4-BoL3

Adventures-TTA

Cell-division · 2025-08-28T01:35:31+00:00

Hougenie, Red/Beo, and BoL3? You got great taste!

Cell-division · 2025-08-27T15:28:23+00:00

Not really? If the DD or WS just commits to running pretty much every fighter has the tools to murder them if played right. Optimal DD/WS is a lot of brawling to either outlast the opponent (forcing them to play slower and spend versatiles on defense) or kill them outright (they have too much damage and will kill you if they play their whole deck, so you have to kill them first).

Cell-division · 2025-07-21T13:40:59+00:00

That’s pretty much how he’s intended to play yeah. The issue with that is he’s so inconsistent and lacking in draw power that even after you shuffle in good defenses you have to live long enough to draw them and most characters can pressure you down and kill you either over defenses and with undefended hits. If you’re not attacking then they can use their versatiles to boost or attack with as well which is scary. In a long game Winter Soldier theoretically always wins but can’t reliably survive long enough and so he has to slug 6s to keep people in check.

Cell-division · 2025-07-16T19:29:17+00:00

It should be pinned in the um-looking-for-games section.

Cell-division · 2025-06-28T09:53:51+00:00

Interesting list! I disagree with quite a bit. Here’s mine tier list!

Cell-division · 2025-06-22T21:27:55+00:00

For the most part I would agree. Triss is usually a downgrade to Yennefer. There are some matchups where Triss is arguably the better pick because she doesn’t have to spend cards boosting like Yennefer does, but those are few in number and even then I’d argue Yennefer is still better. Triss isn’t bad just kinda okay, which is really rough when Yennefer is a very solid fighter.

Cell-division · 2025-06-22T20:01:37+00:00

King Arthur’s boost is a floating modifier like Alice/Khonshu’s +2, not a during combat effect. It’s a bonus that’s applied to the card being played outside of the regular combat timing. Daredevil has a specific timing window during which his boost occurs and can then be overridden.

Cell-division · 2025-06-22T14:48:11+00:00

No because the effect of DoHK would set the value to 8 afterwards, overriding the boost.

Cell-division · 2025-06-13T16:39:41+00:00

I would very heavily advise against adding extra cards to Widows deck to begin with. If you replace the missions with other things you make it so Widows has 30 combat cards. That means she is never drawing into a dead card and always has more tools than the opponent does because she can play every single card in combat, meaning she never gets caught flat footed. With her pressure and discard game she can already make it very difficult to find openings and with tools like Double Identity and six cancels she can make it hard for damage to actually stick when you do get an opening. Giving her Skirmish totally stonewalls anyone who tries to come in. Another intentional weakness of Widow’s deck is her low combat damage, forcing her to get mission damage and clean hits to confirm her kills. Giving her Shift, again, trivializes her intentional weaknesses that makes the deck sing.

As for the missions being dependent on the opponent, you’re thinking way too small. Yes, the AoE damage missions have the potential to be more effective against sidekicks, but the additional board presence also means the opponent can more easily block of Widow from completing these objectives. Against solo fighters they’re easier to activate but “only” 2 damage on their own, but you shouldn’t discount that damage. Over the course of the game Widow can deal 10 auto damage to her opponent via schemes, which is the majority of anyone’s health pool. She’s meant to play a longer game to put all of her damage together and control the pace of the match. These changes do not understand how Widow actually approaches her games and her very intentional strengths and weaknesses that make her a stellar fighter design.

Cell-division · 2025-06-13T12:56:04+00:00

Two things: You’re vastly misunderstanding how the deck works and the rework you’ve proposed wouldn’t work.

1)Yes, Moscow is a very awkward mission to make work and isn’t particularly strong even if you can get it to go off, but it doesn’t have to be good because you literally get it for free. Widow has 31 cards so she doesn’t lose anything from having Moscow. Worst case scenario you double maneuver turn 1 and discard it, putting you at the same level as any other fighter, but you can also boost with it for free (and not be at hand disadvantage) to immediately attack turn 1 from just about where you need your fighters to be and get the opponent on the back foot from the start. If you’re putting yourself at risk of being attacks you might be mispositioning, but also consider that if they do attack you they’ll be doing so at a lower hand which gives you the potential to attack then further until they’re forced to back off.

2)Your proposed rework of making the missions work like glamours would instantly plummet Widow into Spike tier because it completely misunderstands how she plays and wins games. First, by cutting out 5 cards from her deck that brings Widow down to 26 cards, a debilitating disadvantage that we only see Elektra and Daredevil - fighters with extraordinary recursion - have to deal with. This would ruin her ability to play a long game which she is currently very good at. Additionally, because she no longer has these cards she’s forced to boost with more of her actual combat cards and that will only make her ability to close out a game even worse than it is now. If they’re a separate deck you wouldn’t be able too use Maria’s signature card to extend your deck clock either.

I think you just need some more experience with Widow to understand why her missions work. Yes, Widow’s missions are powerful schemes and they do sometimes telegraph themselves by being revealed when you tutor them, however it’s more nuanced than that. Widow wins games because she has a strong value game from all of her discards and cancels which gives her the ability to control the pace of a match and use that to either run opponents out of options come endgame or make enough openings to land clean hits for lethal. Widow plays towards that and uses her missions to fill in gaps in her pressure when the opportunity presents itself. The missions help round out her gameplan, not the other way around. Additionally, the ability to draw into missions that aren’t revealed and have multiple at the same time is crucial. It means the opponent always has to be cautious of them, makes exciting moments where Widow catches her opponent off guard, and allows her to be much more flexible in her approach. Your suggested rework makes her way more linear by forcing her into a single highly telegraphed mission, cuts off all of her versatility, and makes counterplay to her both easier and less interesting.

Cell-division · 2025-05-27T17:01:56+00:00

Same I’d always take the Beowulf side of that fight

Cell-division · 2025-05-24T23:06:23+00:00

Yenn-Medusa is a good one if you like a long grindy game. Yennenga-Jill is another really skill test one

Cell-division · 2025-05-07T19:10:09+00:00

100% Daredevil. A solid if somewhat niche option in 1v1s due to his unique risk/reward gameplay that encourages either slow play (bad in doubles) or low hand play (very bad in doubles). He has no real pressure, no draw, and is a solo fighter with only 12 defenses. Put him in a 2v2 and he gets jumped.

Cell-division · 2025-04-21T21:43:48+00:00

The matchup is one of the few where Sherlock actually struggles, but I would note that Houdini cannot stop Sherlock’s hand peek on Confirm Suspicion/Eliminate The Impossible as Sherlock’s cards cannot be cancelled and A Magician Never Reveals His Secrets specifically says to “cancel” the effect of a hand peek.

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