SNK vs. Capcom Card Fighters DS, totally flawed

After pushing through a couple of floors on both the SNK and Capcom sides of the tower (yeah they’re separated) I’ve found out that SNK vs. Capcom Card Fighters DS is a pretty big mess. The problem is the inherent system is completely broken and the computer doesn’t use any different tactics besides attacking. There are lots of different abilities you can use in the game like reshuffling your deck, healing your cards, tapping cards for extra colored “force” energy and doing counter attacks. The computer doesn’t do any of these halfway through the game. Instead the AI only has one strategy attack and leave some of the cards free to block with. That’s a problem, but it gets worse.

At the beginning of every round dice are rolled to see who gets first act. If you win the roll you can put your attacking cards on the board, they’re frozen for a round while your opponent puts his/her cards on the board. Here’s the problem, after your opponent lays their cards on the board they are still frozen when it’s your turn. You have one round to attack them free of any obstructions. This leads to a simple, yet boring strategy, putting out a bunch of weak cards that use one force each. If you can put out five cards that give 400 BP of damage you can win a fight in a single round. This isn’t too difficult to do once you start collecting Axl (Mega Man X7), Adon and Poison (Final Fight) cards you’ll have a nearly invincible deck.

There’s still time for SNK Playmore USA to fix this problem, by adjusting the game’s balance. Hopefully they will make some changes. On the plus side there is one neat touch screen feature. When you buy cards they appear wrapped on the touch screen. You can use your pen to draw a line across the top of the pack, which rips it open.