While you know you will fight monsters, you won’t know what monsters and how many you’ll get before entering a fight. The map has seven symbols: normal encounters, elite encounters (think sub bosses), random encounter, merchant, rest site, treasure, and the boss of the act. You’re presented with a map with a few paths that all lead to the boss battle, you can’t jump from one path to another (unless you have a limited use relic) but there are a few forks in the path, so you can plan ahead the best route. You start with a relic (which adds some effect that applies to all battles if the conditions are met) specific to the character, and a few cards from the character’s deck.
While there are cards that are common to all four, each has their own deck of cards, and unless you get specific relics you can’t get cards from the other characters, additionally, two of the characters have mechanics specific to them. When you start a game, you choose a character (at the start only one of them is unlocked) among four, the difference is more than just their design. Attacking, blocking attacks, exhausting cards… all have distinct sounds effects, no complaints here. On the sound side, the music is orchestral, it gives it a somber, dangerous, and epic feel to it, and while you might not walk away humming its songs, when “I’m going to play for a few minutes” easily becomes a couple of hours, I think it’s a good decision the music is relatively unobtrusive, so you don’t fin them repetitive. There are around 4 dozen enemies, and over 300 cards, each with its own art. Although, animations are basically the bare minimum for the game to not look static, the actual effects that play with actions are good, and the art itself is good.