Kiri-Ai: The Duel

 As of recently I've reviewed stuff that will hit you for a hundred plus bucks. It fit with my usual MO, but it still felt really weird to tell people that it was okay to sink two hundred plus bucks for two boxes.

This one is easy.

Kiri-Ai is 15 bucks. It's about two samurai dueling on a cliff. You have to get into a proper stance, judge your ranges, and read your opponent better than your opponent can read you. It's fast, intense, and psychological.

And it's amazing.

First off, the cards. They're really high quality and felt great in my hands. They're quite sturdy. I can't imagine needing (or wanting) to sleeve them. Yes, I think they're that good.

Second off, look at this carrying case:

This is so much more impressive in my hands than it is as a picture. It feels so freaking good. Someone really did their homework here. When Blake originally handed me the whole thing I actually gasped, coz normally something this small feels cheap. This don't feel cheap. At all.

Okay, so the production's nice. What about the rules? The rules are just as good as the presentation. They are clearly laid out and it didn't take much to figure them out. Look at the picture at the top of the post: there are range "diamonds". You start at opposite sides of the "battleground" card. You have two sets of five functionally identical cards, in red and blue varieties. These five cards are combined with a simple "stance" system, telling you when and how you can use the cards. You put down two cards, face-down, at the same time as your opponent, and then flip them up in order, simultaneously. The second card you played is left out on the table, and the other cards are brought back to your hand. This means that you don't always have all the resources that you used and puts you into all sorts of sticky situations. That card you had to leave on the table? Your opponent can see it. And you can see what they can't play either. Since you both have the same cards, you have a general idea of what they're capable of now and can figure out more or less what your opponent might do. I've played enough of this game to tell you that what your opponent is like as a person becomes very important. The options are just open enough to where reading your opponent becomes paramount.

"But Nathan," the astute will say. "Rock paper scissors only allows for a limited number of combinations. This is rock paper scissors with more combinations, sure, but that means that you've got a closed system. It's possible to figure that kind of system out. Even with leaving that card on the table, face-up." And you're right! And the game agrees with you! There's three special cards. They're very powerful, but they always have consequences in the game and they're gone when you use them. So not only do you have to be careful when trying to read your opponent, you have to be mindful of these two super-powerful cards, one of which you have no knowledge of, and the other one is yours but when you spend it is gone.

I cannot begin to tell you how much this screws things up.

The matches are fast, psychological, and intuitive, with consequences every time you act. The longest I've ever seen a match go is twenty minutes, and that is as long as you will ever get. Most of the matches are five minutes long and they play out like a samurai film. The tension just builds and builds and then washes over you as a blow gets through and everyone goes "OOH MAN!" coz you got hit once...

But what a story of you getting hit!

Get this. It's a steal for 15 bucks.

Exceed Fighting System

Andy has been telling me about this game for years. Like, with glowingly high praise. Andy also thinks Dr. Who is a legitimate show.

OK, that last part isn't very fair. I couldn't keep watching after Rose left, she was my favorite part of the show.  

The point is, I ignored Andy. It wasn't that I wasn't interested, I just had my own rabbit trails I was following and didn't want to take the time to jump onto another. I'm like that a lot.

But when Lv99, the folks who make Exceed, decided to mail out completely free decks of Ryu and Ken from Streetfighter, I decided to take the bait. I didn't even have to pay for shipping! Even that minor excuse was unfounded! And besides, if I didn't like the game, I could donate it to a Goodwill or something. What was there to lose? Legitimately nothing.

About a week later everything came in. I was impressed with the rulebook. It reads pretty well and I was able to ascertain the following from it, with few questions.

There are nine "range" cards, which set up the physical space your characters are fighting in. Players place their character cards on this make-shift range of cards. There are mats that you can buy. I think I may get one, because goodness gracious the cards are annoying. The physical space demand surprises me every time, and not for the better. Besides, the cards are always moving, which also annoys me.

Characters in this game are compromised of a thirty-card deck. Cards have two different abilities on them: a strike and a boost. If you play the card as a strike and hit with it, it goes into your Gauge. If you play it as a boost you discard it. Your Gauge may be used to either power the Critical abilities on some cards, or to get you into your Exceed form, which amplifies your character, sometimes exponentially.

There are a wide variety of actions you can take, but you can only do one action a turn, so turns usually go pretty rapidly. If you do any action other than one that involves a strike you get to draw a card at the end of your turn, which means that striking all the time is generally a pretty bad idea. You have the option to Wild Swing, which is where you just pull a card off the top of your deck and pray to God it works, but that's a pretty crappy option. You can do it if you need to, but why would you want to when you can swap out cards from your hand to draw more, or just draw more cards in general, or move, or activate your character ability, etc? There is a surprising amount that you  can do, but the options never really felt overwhelming.

This game encourages card counting. And it would fall apart if it didn't. When you play your strikes against each other you play them face-down, which means that you have to have a reasonable way to figure out what you opponent is up to. Half the cards in your deck are completely universal, and the other half are summed up on a handy little card that you can reference at any time!  You also have the right to check each other's Gauge and discard piles, meaning that you can create a reasonable picture of what your opponent is capable of as time goes on. Of course they can reshuffle their deck once a battle and throw you off, but more on that option in a minute. The point is that you can actually develop a pretty legit strategy, even while praying that they didn't play that one card PLEASE NO NOT THAT ONE OH GOD NO.

I stand by the decision to use this picture. It is appropriate.

I drafted my brother, who is definitely not a gamer, to try it with me. He very politely sat down with as I raved about how interesting I found the rulebook and that I wanted to see if he would pick it up as quickly as I did. I asked him which character he wanted, he picked the defensive Ryu, leaving me with the offensive Ken.

He beat me two times out of three.

And I won the third by the skin of my teeth.

Yeah, I think he picked it up.

The interesting thing about the game is how you have to be willing to completely embrace what the character is about. Ken's special moves were mostly up-close and personal and granted a lot of closing ability. The game where I won I had to willingly trade enough blows to get my Gauge up, so that way I could get to my Exceed ability, which turned Ken into a tank of death and destruction. My brother only needed a few questions after being taught a few of the rules to settle right into playing Ryu. Yeah, he wasn't exactly playing very deeply into the mechanics (neither was I), but he certainly got the basics! And that's not nothing. We had a great time and I found myself wanting to try out other characters to see how they played.

Exceed is a bit crunchy, but the system is designed well enough to where I could get someone who thinks himself not a gamer to play and thrive. The physical set up is something I dislike, but that's a pretty small nitpick for a game that produces an experience like this. It's fast-paced, technical, and deeply rewarding. I'll definitely be getting into this more. A lot more.