Voice of Cards The Beasts of Burden Review: Yoko Taro’s new game

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Voice of Cards The Beasts of Burden Review: Yoko Taro's new game
voice of cards the beasts of burden review: yoko taro's

The creator of Drakengard and NieR returns with a new card-based JRPG, the latest in a series of three games released in less than a year.

Voice of Cards The Beasts of Burden Review: Yoko Taro's new game

Now used to waiting long years before being able to get their hands on the latest episode of our favorite videogame sagas – and accustomed to the continuous postponements due to the repercussions suffered by the industry due to the pandemic – it is certainly unusual to see the release of three episodes of a series in less than eleven months. The reason is quickly explained: Voice of Cards: The Beasts of Burden is in close continuity with its predecessors, especially from the technical and gameplay side, playing it safe and not pushing in any way on the capabilities of the hardware on which it is available starting from last September 13th.

Continuity, we said, or laziness, for the most malicious. The Beasts of Burden not only does not renew the series, but rather leverages on the most trite stereotypes typical of the JRPG, without the pen of Yoko Taro manages to give grit to a story that tries to take off only in its very last lines, and without the game system, as usual based on cards, acquiring a depth worthy of a masterpiece like Slay the Spire. If you want to deepen the characteristics of the two previous chapters of the Voice of Cards series, we refer you to the review of Voice of Cards: The Isle Dragon Roars and the review of Voice of Cards: The Forsaken Maiden.

And then we went out to see the stars again

The story of The Beasts of Burden begins in an underground village that has long been threatened by monsters. Where they come from? What is their goal? The young protagonist of the story, just 14 years old, does not ask herself too many questions: she is in fact busy defending the people she loves – and in particular her mother – to investigate the nature of the mysterious threat.

It is the girl’s mother who provides food for thought on the narrative shortcomings of the latest effort by Yoko Taro and associates. In one of the most abused clichés in videogame history (and not only), the woman is murdered by a giant troll after less than an hour of play. If that is true the narrative device is really too simple and trite to amaze or excitethe problems come by reading the story of the character in question.

In a special section of the menu it is in fact possible to deepen the objectives, characteristics and aspirations of the protagonists, supporting actors and enemies: at first a single face of the card is unlocked, while only after a sufficient number of encounters or upon the occurrence of particular events you can find out more. Upon the death of the woman – found pouring into a pool of blood from her daughter – we learn that she was the strongest warrior in the village before becoming pregnant with her. It is difficult to understand how her supervening state of pregnancy could have made her completely unable to defend herself, leading her to an end as tragic as it is of mere service with respect to a forced patheticism of the story. The destruction of the village leads the girl to have to leave the dungeons in which she lives, now about to collapse, and to have to put her past behind her.

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Leaving her house, the warrior admires the sky and discovers that the sun never gives way to the stars she dreamed of seeing: it is one of the many references to the universe of Drakengard / Nier that – we are sure – fans of Yoko Taro’s work will only appreciate. In the early stages of the adventure you meet the rest of the team. A gloomy warrior, a somewhat foolish scholar and a girl with a mysterious past: the protagonists are unable to leave their mark and the memory of their events vanishes within a few hours.

Luckily the character design by Keiichi Okabe raises the game from an aesthetic point of view, providing The Beasts of Burden with some memorable designs, particularly for the monsters that the protagonists face during what is a journey that can be completed in fifteen hours.

You shouldn’t expect much from the developments of the story, whose narrative twist in the final bars is widely understood from the very first bars of the game. Honorable mention for the very pleasant narratorwhich we advise you not to deactivate when, in the choice of options, you will be given the possibility: we have found it a real added value in the context of a scenario that is not excellent from the point of view of writing.

Bash from orbi to blows of cards

As in the two predecessors, The Beasts of Burden game system is entirely card-based. When we talk about the “game system” we refer to the exploration, the narration and also the numerous fights that we will have to face: the movement of the characters is represented by a pawn that must be moved on the cards that make up the world; they are always cards that represent the characters themselves and the supporting actors with whom they have a dialogue; finally, the actions that can be taken in combat are also cards to be managed and chosen according to our strategies.

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This simplicity was undoubtedly the key to allowing the team to develop three episodes of the series in a very short time. Arriving at the latter, however, it can be said that there was one perhaps excessive continuitywhich has been replaced by a certain sense of repetitiveness.

Another sore point is a level of difficulty that is decidedly too accommodating, which undergoes a sudden surge in the very last battles of the adventure, so much so that you risk arriving at the end unprepared and too confident in your abilities. On closer inspection, we found ourselves using the same sets of cards for long hours, without in any way feeling the need to review strategies or the composition of the “deck” (only improperly defined as such, because in reality the cards / actions do not ” draw “, and are always available to the player, as long as he has the necessary gems to use them).

There is no sense of urgency in one’s choices: to give an example, when we are warned that we will no longer be able to return to a specific city, a few steps are enough to find a settlement of merchants who offer the same items on the market in the place just closed to us. There is no real narrative tensiontherefore, and in the same way our choices, both in combat and in the preparatory phases, do not count for much. There is a constant push to play it safeabandoning the cards to be combined when throwing a dice because they are too risky: it is better to do certain damage rather than relying on the whim of the dice and the unknown of the numbers that result from the throw.

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This lack of tension, coupled with the truly staid pace, takes away the urgency and bite of the adventure in a world where the surprises of the “event cards”, designed to add spice to the most important battles, are not enough to engage the mind and heart. of the player.

The Beasts of Burden has an excellent Italian translation, and the music will be recognizable and pleasant for lovers of Nier, Nier: Automata and Drakengard 3: in fact the composer Keiichi Okabe is back, capable of structuring a sound and inspired counterpoint, even without a truly memorable theme. From a technical point of view, our test on PlayStation 5 of the PlayStation 4 version of the title was impeccable, but as mentioned the technical level of the title is largely manageable by the old generation consoles and by medium-low-end PCs.

Voice of Cards The Beasts of Burden
Voice of Cards The Beasts of BurdenVersion Analyzed PlayStation 4Voice of Cards: The Beasts of Burden recycles aesthetics and ideas from the two predecessors, and a bite-free storyline risks failing to involve players in the story of the warrior and her companions. They don’t help overly abused clichés and an interesting, but underdeveloped combat system. The Beasts of Burden underestimates the players and could be a good entry point for those not accustomed to the world of JRPG, but we would like to recommend it only to fans of Yoko Taro and the DrakeNier universe, who will be able to grasp references in the narration and in the settings of a title that, for the rest, is easily forgotten.