Deck-building games are only auspicious if you've managed to create a gaming loop that keeps the player coming back. That, and online multiplayer. Library of Ruina is definitely none of those, it's an enigma of a game, packed alongside an intricately well-written story that plays out like a visual novel as well.
It's not asking for anybody to play, it's stubborn enough to play out by its own rules that the user itself needs to tolerate its quirks and estranged ways to learning to play. It has a high learning curve, and it can be pretty difficult to play because of what it'll throw at you. But I kept moving on, there was something driving me to move forward, and see it all work out.
Created by Korean developers, Project Moon, this is a sequel or spin-off to their earlier game Lobotomy Corporation. Whereas that title was a monster management sim, this is a visual novel/card battle game. Few of the main characters here are related to the other title. But outside of that, there are no relations, so it isn't necessary to play that game out in order to comprehend this one.
Mind you though, I had a difficult time adjusting to this game, some people whom I've heard playing said that the game's difficulty is only suited to rise up when you least expect it, there are no readable signs that something like that would come, and so failing battles is part of the initiative to learn and adapt.
A game that is taking place in some neo-cyberpunk dystopian city, called The City which has 26 different districts. A largely populated sprawling world that consists of criminals of all kinds, including body organ harvesters. Nobody cares who goes missing, since the population of this city rounds about 7 billion(based on the wiki I've read). With people of all cultures co-existing. Basically, the entire population of the world is encapsulated in one city. You can learn more about it from this link if you're curious.
Becoming enslaved to an A.I.-based librarian isn't something that happens every day, but a has-been fixer named Roland pretty got caught in her web. After losing a few of his limbs, Roland sees that they've been replaced with human-like prosthetics and that he is now under contract to serve Angela, the A.I. in charge of the library to be one of her librarians.
It was getting difficult to comprehend the full extent of what's going on in the story in the first few hours, which is why am grateful that Roland acts as the audience's translator for the complex and interwoven world-building given to you by both dialogue and Korean voice over. You'd easily catch on more about it if you're familiar with grimdark Science-Fiction writing.
Since most of the city deals with criminals, it wouldn't be a problem for Angela to send invitations to some of them in order to receive data(cards and personality profiles basically), but acquiring these data means fighting to them to the death. They sign an agreement where they have to fight, in order to get the necessary information(by a book) they're looking for. Meaning they have to duel with her librarians, including ones outside of Roland.
There's little to no sympathy given, but at times the characters question the purpose of their battles and often contemplate on the inhumanity they partake in, bordering on the philosophical message the game sends. Learning more about the librarians, Angela, and all the other side characters shown in the game with more battles.
Librarians like Malkuth lost their bodies a while back, and from the arrangement made with Angela, are now living in a new human body. Though she doesn't seem too pleased with herself. Outside of her frail demeanor, she seemed like someone with a tragic past. But from there, as I kept playing, I also met another librarian named Yesod. He fixed Roland's tie but later scoffed him off after asking him about working with Angela. Of which the response he wasn't too pleased about hearing.
These librarians are complex, multi-faceted, and often have distinct personalities. Playing the game would let me learn more about them, and be immersed in LoR's world. Each story segment introduces a new type of criminals I have to fight, and new librarians that I would meet. But also surreptitiously opens up about its narrative in ways other games won't ever do, and that is thanks to the highly intelligent writing present and largely expanded lore.
I don't have a good grasp of the battles in this game, what I can say here just to summarize is that the gameplay involves both dice rolling and having the best deck set out for each battle. Deck-building should be prioritized on 3 kinds of damage; slash, pierce, and blunt. Enemies have resistance and weakness to 3 of these kinds of attacks. Defense moves of cards are block and dodge.
Dice rolling dictates the output of these moves, the best roll gets you high damage, lowest damage for bad rolls. The same is true for defense moves. Successful attacks reduce STG(Stagger) resistance, which stuns anyone for one round if it goes to zero, open to all kinds of attacks. Emotions gauge also affect outcome of battle, blue slots mean good, red means bad.
Cards come in limited supply, but I can redo battles I've previously done to farm for. Think is tho, am not a fan of the U.I, and how card page saving is kind of barebones. Especially since I have to tweak a lot of the cards for each individuals, maybe there's a way it works in the game, but this was something that really bothered.
And then there are abnormalities, these are entity-based special abilities for the librarians. Each with their own unique collection. You unlock these by fighting the entities in the canards. Each time you win, you get a personal assistance to join you in the game per patron.
I easily assumed that this game would go easy on you for the first few levels before I unlocked my second librarian and his entity was brutal as hell. The Forsaken Murderer for Yesod took me 9 different tries. This is where the game told me "you didn't learn the game well enough", before realizing I can don the personalities of the enemies I've defeated by equipping their card profiles. Doing so increases the health, STGR, but also changes the weakness to the 3 types of attacks.
Battling enemies, and winning rewards you with their books. Here, burning books unlock your cards. That should be simple enough, prior enemies defeated can be battled with multiple times in order to farm for cards.
When I did unlock Malkuth and get her assistance, I got her participating in on a battle with these up, and coming cocky fixers. During the fight, their stats didn't seem intimidating but at some point they'll bend over the rules a bit and will start adapting. But the weirder part is Malkuth, her attacks don't even hit well, I wasn't sure if my dice roll on her were bad, but then her assistant for some reason survives almost anything. Even got a shield in case he got staggered to avoid death so easily. Fights were really uphill with these bunch, but after finishing this and Yesod's, I got a 3rd new librarian.
I went as far as unlocking Hod, sorry for no screenshot but the point of it is, after playing 10hrs, I thought I had the game figured out. But am still kind of scared that it'll throw other weird surprises at me, and will throw me off balance. I never played a game this weird since Resonance of Fate. I had to research through articles and learn from YouTube guides to figure this game out. Even then, it counter-balances the difficulty with its ridiculous enemy encounters.
Nearly everything you do, every single stat counts, as brutal as the game's lore and characters are, the battles are almost Sisyphean in nature. But I think that's probably half of the fun as well.
You know, the more I played this game, the more it feels like one of those type-moon games, and the lore is aiming to work much like the Nasuverse. Then I did some digging and found out, yeah that's pretty much the case and even more when they announced Limbus Company a while ago.
Library of Ruina is a pretty esoteric game, but I feel like this game does something that no other game will ever do, it surprises you while retaining its enigmatic figure. Like, there are times you'll feel like this game doesn't want you to figure out how to play it. But man, I kept pushing forward, and despite getting my ass handed, my morbid curiosity got the better of me even then.
I wish Korean devs made more games like this, such a weird charm. It's sort of for the hard-core weebs out there, but I think that demographic has gotten bigger than anybody would normally estimate right now.