Final Stardust: Cosmic Nexus is a simple card game that features monsters with elemental properties much like Pokemon. I’m playing the preview build so not a lot of features are in the game yet but I can write about what I’ve played so far and how it feels.
For starters the game is very simple. The playing field only has three character slots and the main cards you have are your basic monster cards, evolution cards, and some spell cards. The monsters have a health and attack rating. The way to win is to defeat all of the opponent’s monsters and attack the player directly until their health is brought down to zero. This is very similar to other card games such as Yugioh, Magic the Gathering, and Hearthstone.
And much like other card games, there are two phases in Final Stardust. The first phase is where you can place down your monster and spell cards. The game only lets you play one monster and one spell at a time. This makes things very simple. Using an evolution card counts as playing one monster card. Using an evolution card is also very simple. If you have a level one form, you just place down the level two form and it replaces the monster with the evolved form. You cannot play a level two form by itself.
The second phase is the battle phase and this is where you can attack the opponent’s monster cards or the opponent themselves if they have no defending monsters.
I feel like the game is a little bit too simple. The amount of cards you have are very limited and there’s not much strategy involved. It just boils down to whoever can get more monsters down first wins and there’s really not much else you can do. I didn’t try out the other decks so maybe there are different strategies available but considering there are only three monster slots on the field and only one monster and spell card can be played during the deployment, it really limits your strategy.
I’m not saying the game needs to be super complex, I quite like the simple approach of Final Stardust. I do think it just needs a tad more than what it has currently. The feel of the game also needs to be improved. The user interface feels very clunky. Selecting cards feels unresponsive but I hope this is fixed before the launch of the game. For a card game it is essential that placing the cards down feel satisfying.
There are other systems mentioned in the game but they were not functioning for the preview build. You can talk to each character and then battle them repeatedly to raise your relationship level with them in order to unlock new cards.
Overall, Final Stardust: Cosmic Nexus does have some potential but right now it feels too shallow and too repetitive, in addition to the user interface feeling unresponsive. This is only the preview build so it may be the case the game will be much improved by launch.
Additional Info
Steam Store Page : https://store.steampowered.com/app/1896570/Final_Stardust_Cosmic_Nexus/
Review Score: 0 reviews as of this writing as the game isn’t out yet (12/11/23)
Developer: Nour Saidana
Publisher: Nour Saidana
Release Date: Dec 15, 2023
MSRP: TBA
I received a key from Keymailer. Thank you so much for the key!
Time spent: 0.8 hours
Achievement Score: N/A
Ducky Obrien 